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In our last house we knew 90% of the people on our street and regularly interacted with them. We have been in our new house for just over 2 years and only know

In our last house we knew 90% of the people on our street and regularly interacted with them. We have been in our new house for just over 2 years and only know our neighbors on one side of our house. The neighbor in the other house moved in just a week after we did. In those 2 years we have seen him only once, they day he moved in when he pulled up in his car, got out (without looking our way), opened the garage door, drove in, and closed the door. We literally have not seen him a single time since. The only way we know anyone still lives there is the garbage cans going out and coming back in each week (though, nobody has ever seen him putting out or retrieving his cans). Anyway, it’s hard to get to know a neighbor who doesn’t seem to exist. In our previous house, we lived about halfway down a dead end street, so anyone from one end walking by would come past our house. Also, there was a neighborhood garden which brought people together. In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors.

kilbuz 3y ago
The global pandemic may be affecting their behavior.
- infogulch 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - signalToNose 3y ago
    Why put pandemic in quotes?
    - Invictus0 3y ago
      Because it's over
- xattt 3y ago
  My street was full of older folks that we got to know over the years. Some moved to assisted living, some are getting there, and some passed away from unexpected diagnoses. We have new Gen Z neighbours for the last two years who seem to exist in their bubble, shutting out the immediate world and interacting only with their social circle. Barely an acknowledgement even if we’re out in the yard, shovelling snow or cutting grass. I don’t expect much, but maybe small talk once every couple of months to get a sense they’re alright, and not gone off the deep end and bottling their urine in mason jars. At some point, you start to fill in the blanks by noticing little things like what’s on TV through the window (hockey 24/7) when you drive by, who does the yard work (she does) or the decorations they put up on the outside. I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online. It’s also possible that we seem intimidating or unsocial — but our interactions with other neighbours don’t seem to give this vibe.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    > I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online. I think it's likely some of that is at play, yeah. A less confrontational way to phrase this could be: perhaps people who were raised with the Internet feel they find sufficient socialization through talking with their friends online, and don't go looking for it elsewhere. In any case, I wouldn't read too much into it, or take it personally. I'm 35 and have lived in my house for 10 years and have only really met three of my neighbors beyond "hi". If we were neighbors, maybe you would think I think you're intimidating or unsocial, but that's not the case, I'm just shy and have a hard time being around new people. Talking with strangers is a major event for me, and I'm usually not up to the task without a lot of mental prep work. I wish I was more social, but well, I've tried, and I'm just not comfortable with it. It is what it is.
    - pastaguy1 3y ago
      I agree. I'm not quite so shy, but on that same side of the spectrum for sure. The deal with me these days is that I've got a couple kids; one thing that comes along with that is quite a bit of social interaction with people you're not 100 percent at ease with. So, that energy - the same type id use to do some small talking with the neighbors - is almost always on E for me.
- allenu 3y ago
  I wonder about this, and not in the sense that this person is being extra cautious still. In my case, I moved into my house a few months before the pandemic struck. When I moved in, the couple across the street came by to introduce themselves when I was moving in. We had a short friendly chat and exchanged numbers. Once the pandemic hit, everyone sort of disappeared, and I hadn't even talked to the neighbors on one side of the house. During that period, I got more introverted and sort of started avoiding social interactions with people, and not because of a fear of catching COVID. I just became more withdrawn since I wasn't socializing in general. Anyway, after it got safer and more people were getting out, I now felt awkward seeing the people who introduced themselves on that first day since so much time has elapsed without conversation. (That's on me and my social anxiety, though.) I think it'll require me getting over my introversion to chat with them now. On the other hand, I have been over to a neighbor on one side of my house a couple of times, but that was them going out of their way to include me. I think what I'm saying is the pandemic created this weird empty period where people who had just moved in to neighborhoods didn't necessarily build connections with their neighbors and now it'll take some effort to bridge those gaps. On top of that, I think there was some social practice that many of us were out of, which made it even more difficult to just chat up strangers, but I feel like for me this is finally starting to go away.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Did you move into an affluent & predominantly white neighborhood? I will probably get shit for this, but this has been the norm in those from my experience. After I got into tech I lived in a couple of them for five years then just gave up and moved back to the underdeveloped part of the city I grew up in, where people are willing to acknowledge each other.
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  here’s your counter-point. now the sample size is two. lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring. lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted. lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold. the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole. affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof. larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves. established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Yes I was using those as lazy shorthands to avoid litigating the exact definitions or having to account for all of the nuance elided by them. They're affiliations and trends, not geo-destiny. Historical immigrant enclaves specifically tend to be really interesting counterexamples, one way or another.
  - 3y ago
dimva 3y ago
Why would you move away from such a nice situation?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors. " Some people like people ..
abyssin 3y ago
I also have an experience where the design of the neighborhood heavily affects interaction with my neighbours. I live in a street whose entrance is too narrow for cars. Except for the occasional motorcycle, the soundscape makes it possible to chat every time I exit my house and there’s no barrier between the houses affecting visibility. Hanging out in front of the house is enjoyable because the backyards are tiny. We have a great relationship with all our neighbours and they form a sort of extended family. In the beginning, one thing that surprised me was the social dynamics reminding me of school, but it still beats anonymity. There are great demonstrations of support with the elders, the parents, or the alcoholics of the street when they can’t open their door at night. We are quite different from each other but physical proximity overcomes it.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Yeah I had a similar experience at my last place. I actually attribute it at least in part to what kind of weather your area has. My last house was in a very temperate place, and I and my neighbors were very often outside where spontaneous conversation could manifest. I’m currently in Phoenix, AZ, and given regular temperatures over 105* F, there just typically aren’t many people out and about, save for a few hours in the morning. And that’s usually before sun up. I have noticed a general decline in my spirits not shooting the breeze with my neighbors from time to time.
gspencley 3y ago
Sounds blissful. I'm a fairly introverted, reclusive person. Much like your one neighbour. I keep to myself. I do know my neighbours. The couple on one side is delightful and the woman on the other side is a "Karen" who I prefer not associate with. She is an outdoor person and only "talks" to me when she has a problem with how I keep my yard. Ironically I would probably use my yard more (and thus tend to it more) if she were not always outside in her yard being loud. We have alley parking and garages in the rear, and I have workshop in my garage so I met a lot of my neighbours on the other side of the alley when working on projects... they came and introduced themselves and asked me what I was working on. They are delightful, but they also interrupted me which is annoying. My wife and I are easy to get along with and go out of our way to be friendly, but would honestly rather not know that our neighbours exist. Car doors, the sound of people talking, dogs barking, kids being loud, lack of privacy in our back yard are all things that really bother us. On the flip-side, when the tree in our front yard shed a branch so large that it was practically a small tree, the delightful couple next door helped us clean it up. I felt a sense of community that day and I started to get what others find enjoyable about it. Still, we often talk of going "going rural" and not having neighbours at all.
- Invictus0 3y ago
  I think you'll find that community matters even more in rural towns. We are social animals. We can't do it all alone. That modern society has enabled us to be 'reclusive' is frankly a maladaptive outcome.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Hell is other people. Since we're apparently doing borderline thought-terminating cliches.
    - biogene 3y ago
      HN is a social community too. So are other online forums, discord chat groups, mailing lists, gaming communities, open source communities, etc. People are driven to social interaction, whether virtual or in-person. I don't know what is the big deal in acknowledging that.
TinyRick 3y ago
I'm one of those neighbors who doesn't seem to exist. I don't dislike my neighbors and would like to interact with them more often, unfortunately I don't often have time for it.
ndesaulniers 3y ago
I wonder if perhaps the neighbor might feel the same about you?
jacquesm 3y ago
Spooky. If not for the garbage cans you'd wonder if he was even alive.
- teddyh 3y ago
  “What’s He Building?” — <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM>
W0lfEagle 3y ago
I feel like I read this comment on another thread a while ago. Did I?
datavirtue 3y ago
[flagged]
alexpotato 3y ago
One thing my wife and I noticed during COVID (I live in suburban NJ): 6pm-6:30pm seems to be a prime time for people in general and families specifically to go for a walk. If you are outside with kids playing on the front lawn, this leads to a lot of organic conversation since no one is in a rush. If you happen to be preparing and eating dinner inside during this time (like we used to), you can miss out on a lot of opportunities to get to know your neighbors (assuming they are friendly).
darth_avocado 3y ago
It’s funny, I’ve always known my neighbors and talk to everyone on the block, but then I realized that most of them don’t talk to each other. Strange way to live because we are increasingly living in a world where you’re going to need help sooner or later and who else can you seek help from in emergencies other than your neighbors? We had a mom who had recently moved in, screaming in hysterics on the block one day because she thought her toddler ran away when she stepped out for a moment to throw out trash. My neighbor (who also talks to everyone) and I came out, and along with the mailman and a couple of construction guys around the corner, immediately did a search on the neighborhood blocks. She eventually found him hiding in the house, and was relieved, but then just walked away without so much as a thank you to anyone. Such a strange way to live.
- dhosek 3y ago
  In the novel I’m currently reading, Popco (which I think the HN crowd would totally dig), there’s a section where there’s a seminar in network theory talking about the reason things like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, or any network of connected nodes, manage to have connections with so few hops is because there end up being superconnectors which are connected to a large number of other nodes. I realized I had that role in my circle of friends in my 20s after I moved away and then came back for a visit a few months later and discovered that few of them had seen each other in the intervening months. You likely play that role on your block. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
  - danenania 3y ago
    Yep, in the last place I lived we had a really kind and friendly neighbor who is also a handyman of sorts and helps people on the block with whatever random small problems they have in their houses. He knows everyone and regularly introduces people to each other. I'd be standing on the sidewalk talking with him and someone else would walk by. He'd say "oh have you met Such-and-such?" and call the person over. He single-handedly makes that block like an order of magnitude more neighborly and sociable than it otherwise would be.
tptacek 3y ago
Did you go over and knock on his door and offer him a tray of brownies or a potted plant or something? I just moved, and that's exactly what happened with us. Nonzero chance we'll be looking after our other neighbors' amazing Bernese within the next 6 months.
bombcar 3y ago
Congratulations. You live next to an Oompa Loompa factory.

kilbuz 3y ago

The global pandemic may be affecting their behavior.

infogulch 3y ago
[flagged]
- signalToNose 3y ago
  Why put pandemic in quotes?
  - Invictus0 3y ago
    Because it's over
xattt 3y ago
My street was full of older folks that we got to know over the years. Some moved to assisted living, some are getting there, and some passed away from unexpected diagnoses. We have new Gen Z neighbours for the last two years who seem to exist in their bubble, shutting out the immediate world and interacting only with their social circle. Barely an acknowledgement even if we’re out in the yard, shovelling snow or cutting grass. I don’t expect much, but maybe small talk once every couple of months to get a sense they’re alright, and not gone off the deep end and bottling their urine in mason jars. At some point, you start to fill in the blanks by noticing little things like what’s on TV through the window (hockey 24/7) when you drive by, who does the yard work (she does) or the decorations they put up on the outside. I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online. It’s also possible that we seem intimidating or unsocial — but our interactions with other neighbours don’t seem to give this vibe.
- coldpie 3y ago
  > I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online. I think it's likely some of that is at play, yeah. A less confrontational way to phrase this could be: perhaps people who were raised with the Internet feel they find sufficient socialization through talking with their friends online, and don't go looking for it elsewhere. In any case, I wouldn't read too much into it, or take it personally. I'm 35 and have lived in my house for 10 years and have only really met three of my neighbors beyond "hi". If we were neighbors, maybe you would think I think you're intimidating or unsocial, but that's not the case, I'm just shy and have a hard time being around new people. Talking with strangers is a major event for me, and I'm usually not up to the task without a lot of mental prep work. I wish I was more social, but well, I've tried, and I'm just not comfortable with it. It is what it is.
  - pastaguy1 3y ago
    I agree. I'm not quite so shy, but on that same side of the spectrum for sure. The deal with me these days is that I've got a couple kids; one thing that comes along with that is quite a bit of social interaction with people you're not 100 percent at ease with. So, that energy - the same type id use to do some small talking with the neighbors - is almost always on E for me.
allenu 3y ago
I wonder about this, and not in the sense that this person is being extra cautious still. In my case, I moved into my house a few months before the pandemic struck. When I moved in, the couple across the street came by to introduce themselves when I was moving in. We had a short friendly chat and exchanged numbers. Once the pandemic hit, everyone sort of disappeared, and I hadn't even talked to the neighbors on one side of the house. During that period, I got more introverted and sort of started avoiding social interactions with people, and not because of a fear of catching COVID. I just became more withdrawn since I wasn't socializing in general. Anyway, after it got safer and more people were getting out, I now felt awkward seeing the people who introduced themselves on that first day since so much time has elapsed without conversation. (That's on me and my social anxiety, though.) I think it'll require me getting over my introversion to chat with them now. On the other hand, I have been over to a neighbor on one side of my house a couple of times, but that was them going out of their way to include me. I think what I'm saying is the pandemic created this weird empty period where people who had just moved in to neighborhoods didn't necessarily build connections with their neighbors and now it'll take some effort to bridge those gaps. On top of that, I think there was some social practice that many of us were out of, which made it even more difficult to just chat up strangers, but I feel like for me this is finally starting to go away.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Did you move into an affluent & predominantly white neighborhood? I will probably get shit for this, but this has been the norm in those from my experience. After I got into tech I lived in a couple of them for five years then just gave up and moved back to the underdeveloped part of the city I grew up in, where people are willing to acknowledge each other.

catchnear4321 3y ago
here’s your counter-point. now the sample size is two. lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring. lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted. lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold. the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole. affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof. larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves. established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Yes I was using those as lazy shorthands to avoid litigating the exact definitions or having to account for all of the nuance elided by them. They're affiliations and trends, not geo-destiny. Historical immigrant enclaves specifically tend to be really interesting counterexamples, one way or another.
- 3y ago

dimva 3y ago

Why would you move away from such a nice situation?

hutzlibu 3y ago
"In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors. " Some people like people ..

abyssin 3y ago

I also have an experience where the design of the neighborhood heavily affects interaction with my neighbours. I live in a street whose entrance is too narrow for cars. Except for the occasional motorcycle, the soundscape makes it possible to chat every time I exit my house and there’s no barrier between the houses affecting visibility. Hanging out in front of the house is enjoyable because the backyards are tiny. We have a great relationship with all our neighbours and they form a sort of extended family. In the beginning, one thing that surprised me was the social dynamics reminding me of school, but it still beats anonymity. There are great demonstrations of support with the elders, the parents, or the alcoholics of the street when they can’t open their door at night. We are quite different from each other but physical proximity overcomes it.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Yeah I had a similar experience at my last place. I actually attribute it at least in part to what kind of weather your area has. My last house was in a very temperate place, and I and my neighbors were very often outside where spontaneous conversation could manifest. I’m currently in Phoenix, AZ, and given regular temperatures over 105* F, there just typically aren’t many people out and about, save for a few hours in the morning. And that’s usually before sun up. I have noticed a general decline in my spirits not shooting the breeze with my neighbors from time to time.

gspencley 3y ago

Sounds blissful. I'm a fairly introverted, reclusive person. Much like your one neighbour. I keep to myself. I do know my neighbours. The couple on one side is delightful and the woman on the other side is a "Karen" who I prefer not associate with. She is an outdoor person and only "talks" to me when she has a problem with how I keep my yard. Ironically I would probably use my yard more (and thus tend to it more) if she were not always outside in her yard being loud. We have alley parking and garages in the rear, and I have workshop in my garage so I met a lot of my neighbours on the other side of the alley when working on projects... they came and introduced themselves and asked me what I was working on. They are delightful, but they also interrupted me which is annoying. My wife and I are easy to get along with and go out of our way to be friendly, but would honestly rather not know that our neighbours exist. Car doors, the sound of people talking, dogs barking, kids being loud, lack of privacy in our back yard are all things that really bother us. On the flip-side, when the tree in our front yard shed a branch so large that it was practically a small tree, the delightful couple next door helped us clean it up. I felt a sense of community that day and I started to get what others find enjoyable about it. Still, we often talk of going "going rural" and not having neighbours at all.

Invictus0 3y ago
I think you'll find that community matters even more in rural towns. We are social animals. We can't do it all alone. That modern society has enabled us to be 'reclusive' is frankly a maladaptive outcome.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Hell is other people. Since we're apparently doing borderline thought-terminating cliches.
  - biogene 3y ago
    HN is a social community too. So are other online forums, discord chat groups, mailing lists, gaming communities, open source communities, etc. People are driven to social interaction, whether virtual or in-person. I don't know what is the big deal in acknowledging that.

TinyRick 3y ago

I'm one of those neighbors who doesn't seem to exist. I don't dislike my neighbors and would like to interact with them more often, unfortunately I don't often have time for it.

ndesaulniers 3y ago

I wonder if perhaps the neighbor might feel the same about you?

jacquesm 3y ago

Spooky. If not for the garbage cans you'd wonder if he was even alive.

teddyh 3y ago
“What’s He Building?” — <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM>

W0lfEagle 3y ago

I feel like I read this comment on another thread a while ago. Did I?

datavirtue 3y ago

[flagged]

alexpotato 3y ago

One thing my wife and I noticed during COVID (I live in suburban NJ): 6pm-6:30pm seems to be a prime time for people in general and families specifically to go for a walk. If you are outside with kids playing on the front lawn, this leads to a lot of organic conversation since no one is in a rush. If you happen to be preparing and eating dinner inside during this time (like we used to), you can miss out on a lot of opportunities to get to know your neighbors (assuming they are friendly).

darth_avocado 3y ago

It’s funny, I’ve always known my neighbors and talk to everyone on the block, but then I realized that most of them don’t talk to each other. Strange way to live because we are increasingly living in a world where you’re going to need help sooner or later and who else can you seek help from in emergencies other than your neighbors? We had a mom who had recently moved in, screaming in hysterics on the block one day because she thought her toddler ran away when she stepped out for a moment to throw out trash. My neighbor (who also talks to everyone) and I came out, and along with the mailman and a couple of construction guys around the corner, immediately did a search on the neighborhood blocks. She eventually found him hiding in the house, and was relieved, but then just walked away without so much as a thank you to anyone. Such a strange way to live.

dhosek 3y ago
In the novel I’m currently reading, Popco (which I think the HN crowd would totally dig), there’s a section where there’s a seminar in network theory talking about the reason things like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, or any network of connected nodes, manage to have connections with so few hops is because there end up being superconnectors which are connected to a large number of other nodes. I realized I had that role in my circle of friends in my 20s after I moved away and then came back for a visit a few months later and discovered that few of them had seen each other in the intervening months. You likely play that role on your block. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
- danenania 3y ago
  Yep, in the last place I lived we had a really kind and friendly neighbor who is also a handyman of sorts and helps people on the block with whatever random small problems they have in their houses. He knows everyone and regularly introduces people to each other. I'd be standing on the sidewalk talking with him and someone else would walk by. He'd say "oh have you met Such-and-such?" and call the person over. He single-handedly makes that block like an order of magnitude more neighborly and sociable than it otherwise would be.

tptacek 3y ago

Did you go over and knock on his door and offer him a tray of brownies or a potted plant or something? I just moved, and that's exactly what happened with us. Nonzero chance we'll be looking after our other neighbors' amazing Bernese within the next 6 months.

bombcar 3y ago

Congratulations. You live next to an Oompa Loompa factory.