Jackie McGregor: Love is in the air (fryer): lust, longing and the noisiest of neighbours
It was like a scene from a romantic movie: the script - woman desperately seeking handsome stranger. I got comfy with a cuppa and continued to read the unfolding real-life drama.
I’d gotten a notification about trending topics in a neighbourhood app I seldom looked at. Having recently made a daring escape from a mild hostage situation in my road’s WhatsApp group, I didn’t want involvement in another. Then I saw the woman’s post. She’d got chatting to a handsome stranger in a park and become smitten, so much so, that she put a call out to the universe via the app to find him. He’d made a fuss over her pooch. From their brief encounter, she’d decided he was ‘the one.’
Others scrambled to her aid. Columbo-style questioning ensued, some claimed they might know him. Suddenly we were all rooting for this besotted Juliet, hoping she would find her Romeo. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Juliet was still desperately seeking Park Man days later. He’d probably gone to ground for fear of being spotted or possibly panicking his partner might discover he’d been on the pull in the park.
Inspired by Juliet, another user decided to advertise for romance. He made a jokey post, listing his attributes including ‘air fryer owner.’
I found myself checking in again to see how our lovelorn app users were faring. Juliet had given up on finding Park Man, but Air Fryer Man had pulled!
He made the announcement that he’d been chatting to someone and out of respect for her, he wouldn’t be talking to anyone else, declaring himself off the market. However, days later when asked about the relationship’s progress, he reported he was being ‘breadcrumbed’ – a term that describes dropping someone ‘crumbs’ of attention but never intending to commit. He later deleted his posts.
Soon, I got caught up in another drama involving a woman’s problems with her estranged partner. Others shared similar woes. It’s unnerving how people share private information for any weirdo, scammer or nosy journo to read. People get a false sense of security on neighbourhood apps because real names and locations are verified so they boldly share their problems and fears unfiltered. It’s hard not to watch it all unfold, particularly for us Northern Ireland residents who have been revealed in a survey by Skoda to be the nosiest neighbours in the UK.
Once a province of curtain twitchers we have now gone from observing behind the nets to looking through the digital window of our phones to spy on neighbourhoods near and far. It’s the same nosey neighbour vibe, but with a turbo boost. You can now access peoples’ confessions and woes between the missing cat and rampant dog fouling posts.
In the movie ‘The Truman Show’, where Truman Burbank was the unwitting star of his own 24/7 reality show, Christof, the mastermind behind the broadcast claimed we’d become bored with watching actors give us “phony emotions,” so he created a reality for his star.
In our smartphone world we have all become Truman. These apps have created a fascinating arena of addictive mundane reality, where we, the UK’s nosiest neighbours, can regularly get our voyeuristic fix – peering into the lives of others and witnessing unsuspecting women succumb to the seductive allure of the air fryer.