I think we all have rotten neighbors that we can complain about. I know I have one, but I also know her name and her circumstances, which would probably make me turn into a rotten neighbor also if I was going through the same thing. However, I am not about to broadcast her address to the World Wide Web to forewarn anyone who might think about moving in near her. I do make sure that anything I do doesn’t make her life harder than it already is. After visiting rotttenneighbors.com, I came across some entries that left me a little confused.
What exactly classifies someone as a rotten neighbor? I know there are obvious signs, such as “has a meth lab in their backyard.” What I don’t understand is how “the woman smells like pickles” would classify her as a rotten neighbor. Maybe she cans pickles and the neighbor who made the entry is mad because she wouldn’t share her pickles. It makes me think of the story about the Little Red Hen when all the animals wanted to eat the bread, but none of them wanted to help make it. I get the feeling that some of the people that are generating these posts just don’t have anything better to do. My other thought is that they are so miserable with their own lives that this is just another avenue to try to make other people’s lives miserable too.
It seems these days people have forgotten The Golden Rule. Just in case you’ve forgotten it too, here it is. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While some people might say they don’t care if someone was to complain about them on the Internet, they are probably the same people that say, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Of course, we all know that words do hurt and the people that said they didn’t are most likely good candidates for therapy. I can’t help but to wonder how the others that are being done unto are reacting once they find out they’ve been labeled as a rotten neighbor. It’s likely that they don’t even know their address has been pinpointed on Google’s map on the rottenneighbor.com site.
By looking at the site, it doesn’t seem to have really caught on as much as Brant Walker, the founder, would have hoped. I bet if he would have developed a site where you could tell everyone about good neighbors, that would have caught on. Everyone would be adding themselves and proclaiming how wonderful they are to live near. Instead of labeling a neighbor “Smelly Woman – forgot to take her annual bath,” which is a real post on the site, you would see neighbors labeled as, “Lovely Woman – has the most beautiful flower garden that brightens up the neighborhood.” The site’s hope is to help you find your dream house in a dream neighborhood by trying to establish where the “rotten neighbors” live.
I read once that the days of small talk were over. It’s very rare that you smile, let alone speak to the person standing in line behind you at the grocery store. Now it seems that the days of speaking to your neighbors are over with too. What if you were to actually knock on the door and meet the people that lived nearby the home or apartment that you are thinking of buying/renting? At the least, you would have your own impression of the neighbors to go by when trying to decide if you want to live in the neighborhood. At the most, you might meet a friend for life, someone that would keep an eye on your home while you’re gone and wouldn’t mind feeding your pets while you’re on vacation. Some people would rather inconvenience someone else who lives across town by asking them to do those things for them, instead of having to meet their neighbor. It’s so much simpler to rely on a website to make the decision for you.
I even found an apology posted by someone who was must have been sure they would be labeled a rotten neighbor, “Sorry about our yard – We really should mow more – now we have to bush hog, but ours is broken.” If neighbors were more interested in trying to be good neighbors than complaining about their neighbors, this lady’s yard wouldn’t be grown up with weeds or her bush hog would be fixed. There probably wouldn’t be a need for a site called rottenneighbors.com if more people would simply love their neighbors. I could be wrong, but if people were to abide by the Bible’s second greatest commandment, “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” wouldn’t this make most neighborhoods a better place to live?
Amidst some of the legitimate rotten neighbor entries are, in my opinion, way too many comments bashing people or businesses by name and entirely too many posts that use foul language just for the sake of being able to use foul language without the intent of labeling a rotten neighbor. As for being worried about being labeled a rotten neighbor, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. If someone is interested in moving into my neighborhood, they’re welcome to knock on my door so that they can meet me and decide for themselves. After all, who would want to live in a neighborhood if you’re not going to talk to your neighbors?
