In the last few years, I’ve become a member of several “I Live In” or “I Grew Up In” Facebook groups, despite the fact that I didn’t grow up or live in almost any of them.
These groups can be good sources of local information for reporters and editors, if we can deal with the awkwardness of being an interloper. Once I happened to be interviewing a fellow member of the I Grew Up in Princeton page, and he told me he’d noticed that I’d joined the group.
“Where’d you grow up in Princeton?” he asked, excited to reminisce. “I didn’t,” I told him, admitting that I’d only joined so I could keep up with the Princeton Joneses. There was a pause. “Well, that’s all right,” he said, and I think he meant it.
Most groups are closed, meaning you have to ask to join, and a moderator has to let you in. So it’s not as if I’ve been sneaking around. I’m happy to report that no one has yet kicked me out of a group for being inauthentic.
Sometimes even living in town is not enough to qualify me as a straightforward member of an online group. I live in Chesterfield, where for some reason the local Facebook group is called “Chesterfield Moms.” When I was younger I would have felt weird about joining. But I’m too old to be too self conscious. Chesterfield is barely covered by any media, so the group is one of the best ways to stay in touch, and even though I’m only one of a handful of men in the group, I figure it makes sense to be in.
I don’t post there either, although I nearly did recently after news spread of an aggravated assault taking place a couple of blocks from my house. I live in a quiet neighborhood in the middle of nowhere, so the incident understandably got people’s attention. Still, when a few of the members starting writing that the neighborhood was “going downhill fast” and “time to rethink living here,” I began to bristle.
Here was the downside of community websites. On one hand, they help us stay informed, provide us with a local network that is perhaps wider, if not deeper, than has ever been available to us before. But turn that stone over and you’ll see critters from the damp darkness: fearmongering, runaway thoughts, gossip.
What we knew: a resident had encountered an intruder in his open garage, and as the intruder escaped, he knifed the homeowner. There is new construction near that house, so it wouldn’t necessarily be strange for unfamiliar people to be on the street. The homeowner was not too badly damaged, and the police (via the community site) informed us that he was home after a hospital visit.
You can imagine why this had everyone in the group wondering about our safety. (The next day, in a move that is either slyly opportunistic or offensively cynical, someone from home-security company ADT had hung a flyer on every door in the neighborhood.) But once the fog of fear clears, the facts are plain, that we live in a place that is over the years safer than almost anywhere else you can live. There was no reason to act as if a single stabbing was the start of a trend.
One person in particular was responding in every thread with a negative comment. On the Web, a single person can wield immense power this way. I was of a mind to suggest she reconsider her smear campaign, but my wife counseled me to forget it. “We’re all scared,” she said. “This maybe is her way of dealing with her anxiety. She’s not going to be swayed by what you have to say.”
She was right of course, so I maintained my lurker status. I wasn’t the only one rankled, though, and eventually some other people did attempt to counter her campaign. As my wife predicted, those forays went nowhere. Eventually, with no news coming, everyone got bored, and the feed was once again mostly about jogging strollers available free and new Zumba, Crossfit or yoga classes starting up. Around then I noticed a new group popping up in my Facebook feed: “Grew up in Hamilton Square.” I joined it immediately.
The nostalgia is thick. Members regularly post scanned photos from the past, reminiscences about teachers gone but not forgotten, obituaries, pics from recent reunions. I moved to Hamilton in 1977, when I was 4, so I don’t have quite the reach back that many have, but there have been plenty of posts that have moved me to recollect.
For now, I’m content to read. Perhaps at some point I’ll have something to share, like, “When you smell cigarettes burning outdoors in springtime, does it make you think about Nottingham Little League?” But even if I never write a word, it feels good for a change to have joined a group to which I actually belong.
