You Can Either Be a ‘Karen’ on the Nextdoor App, Or You Can Learn More About Local WA Neighborhoods

I miss the olden days when if you wanted to talk to your neighbor, you'd walk yourself over to their house. Once you got to know each other pretty well, you would even start gossiping about what's going on in the 'hood. If you were lucky enough to have some really cool neighbors, they would bring over some freshly baked goodies to your door or at least say "What's up?"

Times have changed so much to the point where a lot of us don't even know the name of our next-door neighbors, but we sure do know who's got the "juicy gossip", thanks to apps like Nextdoor and Facebook.

Getting to Know the Nextdoor App

What can you do with the Nextdoor app? You can "Be a Karen", according to my sarcastic 14-year-old daughter, ha!

Don't be a Karen, be a friendly Nextdoor neighbor instead.

I downloaded the Nextdoor app years ago, but I never really used it. Cut to today, when practically everybody on my social media feeds and hallways at work are talking about it.

It used to be that Nextdoor was used to snitch on neighbors who were stealing flower pots off of patios for revenge or for alerting the neighborhood that a certain car was seen cruising around the block more than once. Now when I log in, I see a hodge podge of stuff.

Somebody about 3 blocks over from me is offering a 24-count carton of eggs for sale, another is trying to rehome their dog, and another person has a missing cat. Doesn't look like any "Karen" behavior to me!

You can ask general questions, post links to news articles or upcoming events. You can reach out to people in other neighborhoods to ask for advice or put out the words about your big garage sale this weekend!

Once you download the app, log in and see what kinds of posts pop up for your neighborhood.