Local community groups on Facebook seem to want to be affirming, aspirational spaces where people stoke joy and goodwill, keep each other up to date on fetes and bring-and-buy-sales, and share uplifting nuggets of news about small businesses and local heroes. In reality, though, these groups are like small online wars, each post a Howitzer waiting to go off. And, by God, that’s not an insult. Who wants a saccharine space run by the ‘Aw, that’s nice’ crowd when you could have a non-stop barrage of insults, rants and smack-downs designed to make people cry, and re-ignite potentially violent neighbourhood blood-feuds? No-one, for Christ’s sake. Would women’s magazines still be popular if they jettisoned all the murder and sexual assault and just stuck to recipes and keep-fit tips? Of course they bloody wouldn’t. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see a picture of an impossibly beautiful, blandly smiling woman dressed in pastel-coloured spring-wear unless it’s accompanied by a caption that reads ‘MY NAKED, BUS-DRIVER UNCLE RITUALLY SACRIFICED MY DOG ON CHRISTMAS DAY – THEN HAD SEX WITH THE TURKEY’. Accompanied in turn, naturally, by a caption that reads: ‘TEN PATHS TO A HAPPIER YOU’.

Anyway, here are the types of people who make our local community pages great.

Or at least typical.

The person who doesn’t seem to be aware of the existence of the internet despite having a Facebook account

Every community group contains at least one person who hasn’t quite cottoned on to how the internet works, and will invariably, sometimes daily, ask things like, “Does anyone know what time the Garden Centre opens today?” As if they couldn’t just Google it and have the answer within 0.003 seconds. Instead, they prefer to cast their net wide and trust in the local townsfolks’ almost divine knowledge of the operations of ‘Cherry Blossom Garden Centre’. And they’ll wait, piecing together the truth of the Garden Centre’s secrets over many hours, like a detective in a murder enquiry. What would these people do if the internet were to suddenly break? Spread some cat guts over their dining table and jangle magic runes over it while chanting backwards in Bulgarian until the devil himself appeared in a cloud of smoke to say, “Sorry, Brenda, love, the Garden Centre’s closed for refurbishment, information for which you’ve now forfeit your mortal soul. Come along with me, dear. I’m quite looking forward to jabbing you up the toffee-tunnel with my flaming-hot trident as you hunch over a table replying to an infinite stream of social media commenters, who are all asking ‘Does anyone know how long Brenda’s arse is going to be open for flaming-hot tridents?’ and you reply, ‘Oh, forever and ever. My arse is going to be like a caved-in burnt blancmange.”

Just google it, you fannies. If you’re lonely, just phone someone, eh?

The Permanently Obnoxious Woman

It doesn’t matter what topic is raised, what manner of debate is entered into, this stern-faced, contrary and compassionless woman will always be on hand to sprinkle a hessian sack’s worth of self-righteous horse-shit all over it. You’ve lost your dog? “Not been funny but shd you no have been more carefool? Shouldnae huv a dog if ye cannae look efter it.” Rabid teens smashed up your local park, shat in the duck pond, or trussed up a vicar on the swing set and set fire to him? “Honestly, folk just need something tae moan aboot!!! Aff yer high horse, we were aw young once, it’s no like the kids have got onyhing else tae dae! Ratbag!!!” You’ve just been violently murdered? “Whit an attention seeker!!! In ma day ye just got murdered and got on wi’ it, none oh this ‘look at me’ shit! SNOWFLAKE!!!”

The Permanently Obnoxious Woman can be something of a lesser-spotted creature in the annals of the community group thread. This is because, at any given moment, she is incredibly likely to be on a Facebook ban for calling someone who suggests she’s being less than kind ‘a dick’.

That’s another way to identify her. Somewhere in her personal profile is a picture of her smiling proudly over the words ‘BE KIND’.

The Gollywog Controversist

These people tend to crop up most often on ‘Do you remember?’ community groups but, really, they can strike anywhere. “Who remembers having one of these?” the question comes, beneath a picture of the jollily smiling little racist caricature. “Of course, the snowflakes have banned them because THEY say they’re racist. Then I guess my GRAN was racist then, wasn’t she???”

Yes. Yes she probably was.

It’s always befuddling to watch white people try to defend the innocence and honour of a toy that literally has the word ‘wog’ in it.

I understand that people might warmly connect a Gollywog with memories of their childhood. That, as a child, they might not have thought of their toy as anything other than a treasured night-time companion. How can the gollywog be racist if I loved that little offensive stereotype? Come on, though. Sometimes new information comes along that recontextualises how you should feel about something from your past, and that’s not a bad thing. For instance, I grew up watching, and enjoying, various singers and entertainers of the 1970s and 1980s but, believe me, my kids aren’t going to come home from school to hear Gary Glitter booming out of the kitchen inviting them to join his gang, as I treat them to classic episodes of Jim’ll Fix It and afterwards a thumping rendition of ‘Two Little Boys’ on the wobble board. It was okay to have enjoyed those things back when you literally didn’t know any better, but for fuck sake don’t enjoy them now!

“My budgie is missing. Has anyone seen it?”

Fair enough, if your dog or cat goes missing, spread the word. But your budgie?

Do you know who’s seen your budgie? A kestrel. Or a wee boy with a fishing net, a roll of selotape and a box of fireworks. That’s who’s seen your budgie. Your budgie is never coming home. It’s currently a pile of bloodied feathers topped off with a lopped-off beak, like an entrée at a psycho’s dinner party. You might as well use its empty cage to store biscuits, or magnetise it and use it to steal people’s car keys out of their pockets. What did you expect? This is a timid, shrunken parrot adapted to the dry climes of Australia. It’s got all the hardiness of a dead jellyfish, and all the defensive capabilities of a crisp packet. Out there in the Scottish urban jungle – with its landscape of bams, freezing rain and evil seagulls – that little ripper is a goner. Get a real parrot next time, you skinflint.

The humble-bragger

“Does anyone have a power-washer I could hire or borrow? It’s just I’ve had my massive garden re-landscaped and I’ve now got a trellis-fringed slab-feature in between the Japanese ornamental rock-garden and the bespoke designer garden furniture, and I just want to make sure that it’s spick and span in time for the summer garden party season,” they announce, alongside a series of photos, in one of which you can clearly see a power-washer.

Roughly translated: “LOOK AT MY FUCKING GARDEN AND WEEP, YOU CLASSLESS PLEBS!”

The dog-shit photographer

It’s not enough simply to tell you about the dog shit problem in Graham Street. You have to be made to gaze upon those dog eggs, sometimes in stomach-churning, extreme close-up detail, the photographer stopping just short of posting a video of themselves chomping on a particularly sausage-like example of canine piping, while shouting through an excremental moustache, ‘IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN?’

Jesus Christ, we get it!

No wonder the dogs are all shitting themselves with all of those fireworks going off all the time, though, eh?

Fireworks probably make up about 96 per cent of all chat on community groups. The other four per cent is people trying to give away their old Tupperware.

Sociopathic Men’s Men with Zero Compassion

Wherever you see a laughing face emoji on a post warning of danger or telling of misfortune, you’re bound to see these dead-eyed devils at work.

You’re worried about your grandmother dying of Covid? HAHAHAHA! You’re angry because some local youths are injecting heroin into their eyeballs as your three-year-old plays on the swings? HAHAHAHA! You’re scared because you’re a woman and you were followed home by a man with an axe who was loudly shouting the lyrics to Bizarre Inc’s 1992 hit ‘I’m Gonna Get You’? HAHAHAHA!

They just can’t get enough of it. Because they go through life not giving a shit about anything or anyone, and not experiencing discomfort or danger on account of them being mildly violent men, they regard most of the rest of the world as unreconstituted pussies, and aren’t shy about asserting their sociopathic selfishness dressed up as masculinity. If you see an inappropriate laugh-face, click on the person’s profile, and you’ll detect some or all of these things in their photos:

• Haircuts from a barber-shop that only offers two styles: ‘Peaky Blinders’ or ‘Vikings’
• An aggressive, dead-eyed grin from behind a bottle of booze
• A sports car
• A Union Jack
• A meme about Greta Thunberg being a wee bitch