Letters to the Editor: Stop reading Nextdoor if you want to live peacefully in your neighborhood

To the editor: I don't think Ralinda Harvey Smith is "living in denial" by believing what she sees in her neighborhood rather than what she reads on Nextdoor. ("I'm the Black person Nextdoor, trying to sort the site's value from its ugliness," Opinion, June 26)

I too am going on that site less and skipping right by posts that I know, as she describes, lead to the "rabbit hole of the ugly."

When I read some of those postings on my local site, I can't believe that so many people in Laguna Beach could be so tone deaf or, at worst, racist. Then I noticed that the same names appear over and over again in these postings.

I may be too hopeful, but I am thinking that these posters don't represent the majority of my neighbors. Meanwhile, the most argumentative posts I plan to open are the ones complaining about dog poop, or lambasting that one neighbor who never brings in the trash cans.

Then, maybe I will sign off Nextdoor for good. There is already enough in the world to raise my ire.

I hope Smith can continue to trust what she sees in her neighborhood rather than what she sees on Nextdoor. I am taking her lead and trying that too.

Diane Harrison, Laguna Beach

..

To the editor: A couple years ago while perusing Nextdoor, I came across someone in the neighborhood posting a warning to be aware of two Asians entering people's front yards and picking fruit off their trees.

I found this to be insulting and responded, "Why was it important to specify that they were Asian?" Shortly thereafter I received an email from someone claiming to be the monitor of our local Nextdoor site and was advised that I shouldn't be making politically charged racial comments.

Am I missing something? I wasn't the one who needlessly slandered a particular racial community.

Ron Garber, Duarte