I had long believed that I lived in an area where nothing much of interest happened – indeed, its dullness was its main draw, after a lifetime of living in hovels, being burgled and mugged. And that’s when the problems began.īefore I knew it, I had been sucked in by threads about stolen cars, evil foxes, annoying Amazon delivery men and the council’s decision to stop using pesticides on pavement weeds. Then I sat back and scrolled through some of the other posts.

Anyway, I signed up, and posted a message, explaining the conundrum. I imagined a kind-hearted space full of neighbourly love that would restore my faith in the toxic cesspit of social media. Like your street WhatsApp group, on a grand scale. It isn’t a dating app for small furry pets, but a sort of social media version of Neighbourhood Watch, that allows you to connect with people nearby. Have you been on Nextdoor, dear reader? If not, let me explain. “There’s bound to be someone else out there with another solitary guinea pig.” Anyway, the terrified codependent in me knew we had to find a friend for the surviving guinea pig pretty quickly, but how to go about it? “Try Nextdoor,” said a local mother, who had experienced a similar dilemma. Perhaps this is why I was drawn to them as pets – they reminded me of myself in my twenties, when I was stuck in a perpetual cycle of heartbreak because I kept getting dumped. When one goes, the other tends to become anxious and depressed. Guinea pigs, apparently, can only exist in pairs. One minute it was there, happily munching on the leftover vegetables from my nine-year-old’s lunchbox, the next it had shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving behind its brother, and my fairly distraught daughter. It was the guinea pig’s fault, for dying quite unexpectedly.

Like most bad habits, my problem with the Nextdoor app began innocently enough.

Download nextdoor app