There was a time – which the current generation cannot imagine – when one remained isolated from friends, neighbours and even family if you didn’t live next door or nearby to them; when you found your home in darkness you either went through the futile throes of phoning the municipality (which has a penchant for not answering calls during the day) or the fire station (who answer promptly) at night to find out if you are the only one with a problem. You may know some people in your immediate neighbourhood and call them to see if you were in the same boat.
Since the advent of WhatsApp though communication groups have sprung up everywhere: street groups, suburbs, interest groups, school moms, pet lovers and the like. What a positive difference these can make! Our neighbourhood group is particularly useful during electricity or water outages – which occur often. We find out where to buy bulk water supplies, are given information about repairs to power lines after a storm and are alerted to security issues (which crop up every now and then). The group is also used to help people find the owners of stray pets, lost keys, ID cards and wallets.
During this week a missing Jack Russel was located: it had been stolen by dog thieves and sold. A Husky went missing and we were informed by a local security company that our overall crime rate has remained low – how comforting is that! Our group was informed that the frequent water outages result from the failure of the municipality to attend to the upgrades that should have been completed in 2017 and warned of possible industrial action by truckers and taxis ahead of the general elections next week. All very useful.
I was on the class parent group of one of my granddaughters a few years ago and couldn’t wait to leave it: questions about homework, time-tables, cake sales and sporting events (among the more useful ones) tended to be repeated ad nauseam despite answers having been provided until I began to wonder if people ever read properly. This is an astounding aspect of some community groups: the inanity of some of the questions posed and how few people bother to reply privately to questions no-one else really needs to know the answers to.
At the end of the day though, these community groups provide a valuable service by sharing information about what is happening; where to get what; who the best service providers are; as well as keeping the community informed about local fund-raising efforts, who has lemons to give away and so on.
I haven’t mentioned family groups … what a boon they are in these times of scattered family members.
HandsUp for WhatsApp!
Some of these groups can be a pain! 😎
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Should they become too ‘painful’ then it is time to either mute them or leave 🙂
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I agree🤔
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I agree with you, Anne. WhatApp groups are very useful. I have my notifications on silent so that I only need check them at my leisure.
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That is a good idea 🙂 🙂
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Die WhatsApp-groepie van bloggers wat soms saam skryf op WordPress het my gedurende Covid aan die gang gehou, toe verlange na SA baie erg geword het.
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Ek kan dit glo. Vir my is dit belangrik om met my kinders en kleinkinders te praat en by hou 🙂 🙂
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I only use What’s App for a group from work. I just can’t be dealing with yet more apps for things. Am I getting old? 🙂
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Our family group is valuable as our children live so far away from us and it is a great forum for sharing common news and photographs.
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I like the family groups but I have never come across a community WhatsApp group. From your description, this sounds like a good thing. I keep an eye on FB groups for community matters.
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I am not on FB so find the community group very useful.
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I imagine it could be quite handy. Not a user myself.
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I find WhatsApp particularly useful for keeping contact with my my scattered family.
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I have never tried that app. I don’t even text except from my computer to a cellphone.
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I use it daily to contact with my family and friends.
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That’s a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and not have to incur long distance charges!
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A good advocacy for a facility which I have never tried
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Thank you, Derrick.
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During Covid lockdown my children, who live in England, set up a family group – just the 3 of us – where we wished each other good morning every day. It was a way to tell each other that we were all alive and well without having to make a phone call which would cost money and mean the other person had to answer. We are still doing it! Of course we add other info and sometimes have long 3-way ‘chats’ but the original intention still works – I know they are both OK.
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Our family group is very special 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Pingback: Pet owners WhatsApp groups - General groups for pet owners on WhatsApp.
I’m glad you find it useful. There’s a similar app here called NextDoor that apparently is useful in the same ways, although I hear it also provides some wonderfully amusing postings. I’ve never used any of them — including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and so on. So far, I haven’t noticed the lack. I do use one site from time to time. When a website goes down, ‘isitdownrightnow’ allows checking to see if it’s just me, or if it’s down for everyone.
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You are right about the amusing (and often inane) postings 🙂 🙂 The usefulness far outweighs any annoyances though.
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