Opinion

411, Good for No one.

Editor-In-Chief Orlando Angelone

Gloucester is what some may call a "Small town." And to an extent, that may be true. A majority of the county is rural and we have the look of a small town in many areas. But it is more than that. Most of the people in Gloucester still like to think that we have the homely values of hard work, family, and community, and there is no place that exemplifies those views of our county more than Gloucester 411.

Gloucester 411 is a closed group on Facebook that started in 2016. According to the groups about page, their mission is to, "Spread the word about events, ask residents questions, news, pictures and anything pertaining to public interest." In theory this is great, providing a space for people in the community to share information and news, but when it comes to the execution of this idea, Gloucester 411 is nothing but a let down.

You may be asking why I would say this, considering that on the surface, Gloucester 411 seems fine. If you log on to Facebook and mosey onto their page, it may seem fine on your first scroll. You will see people asking about where to get their cars fixed, or what a good restaurant is, but this is just a facade.

If you look closer you will see that the community aspect of Gloucester 411 is barren and hollow, at best. Looking deeper into the page, it is full of redundant posts that seem to get happen over and over again in an endless loop that restarts every couple of days. Some common posts that occur are, "what was that loud noise?", "Why are there cops in [insert area here]?", and "Why are people such bad drivers? Rabble Rabble Rabble!"

And that is where I find Gloucester 411 to be the most dangerous, is with posts about bad drivers. Of course there is the common theme of them all being somewhat pretentious and annoying, with the same rinse and repeat, "Thy are endangering my child's safety!", "Why don't people know how to use their blinkers!", and "People don't know how to park!" But that isn't the real problem. The problem usually arises with the photos that accompany the posts. People find that it is necessary to take photos of what they believe to be the offending car, sometimes including their license plates.

This cannot and should not be allowed. Disregarding the fact that on many occasions people will complain about the driving of others, and then proceed to take a photo of the car with their phone whilst they're driving, it is simply an invasion of the privacy of the person whose car that they are posting. That person did not ask to have their car plastered onto a Facebook group where they can be derided without being able to tell their side of the story.

And therein lies the deeper problem. All we are seeing is a photo of a car, where we cannot see that action that they supposedly took, so we just believe what the poster said, and this can be dangerous since people have a tendency to exaggerate things, where a simple mistake made by another driver can be turned into a life threatening event. It seems that the community of over 13,000 people on Gloucester 411 then decide to pile on to the offending driver and it creates an echo chamber of vitriol and assumptions. This speaks to the larger problems that we as a society have faced since the rise of Social Media as a major force in communication, information, and entertainment.

The comment sections of the 411 posts become full of negativity and disparagement, where people seem to only confirm each other biases, and if anyone dare challenge those biases, an attack squadron of angry Gloucestonians will come after you with the ferocity of an invading army.

This does not only apply to the posts about driving, either. On any post that commands opinion in any way, you are sure to see an argument in the comments. Gloucester 411 is a breeding ground for confirmation bias.

The dangers of confirmation bias are simple, as "the tendency to be irrationally resistant to accepting information that challenges one’s preconceived views or beliefs in a given situation," according to Psychology Today. This can extend to a plethora of things, such as business, sports, politics, religion, and many other day to day things. It is dangerous because of what it is. Once somebody has been introduced to an idea, they then begin to seek out information that confirms their view on that thing. Then you begin to disregard any information that runs counter to what you happen to believe, no matter how credible it may be. We are all guilty of doing this, but that does not make it okay. We should all always be open to other ideas, but we rarely are, and Gloucester 411 isn't helping, whatsoever.

My penultimate problem with Gloucester 411 is something that I addressed in the beginning of this piece, and it is that people still seem to believe that Gloucester is a small town. In most cases, a small town is considered to have a population of around 1,000 to 20,000. Well, Gloucester has a population of 37,292 as of 2017, this well exceeds what is considered small. In fact, the community on Gloucester 411 is almost out of the range of being a small town, with around 13,000 people joined to the group, or 35 percent of Gloucester's population.

The people of Gloucester 411 do not want to admit that Gloucester is undergoing rapid growth and that the small town feel it once had is going away and will never come back. If you look in areas such as Gloucester Point of the Courthouse area, you would be likely to think that you were in a small city, and that is what Gloucester is most likely going to become in the next 20 years.

And with a rapid incline in urbanization, industrialization as well as population, there will be a rise in crime, which has led to the countless comments that "Gloucester is becoming unsafe.", and that we are "turning into Newport News." But this is just not so. Gloucester has a violent crime rate of 10.7, whilst the U.S. average is 22.7. And our property crime rate is 27.8, whilst the national average is 35.4. Gloucester doesn't have the lowest crime rate, but we are certainly not heading in the direction of Newport News, who's crime rates are above the national average.

If we can come to terms with the fact that Gloucester is growing and that the small town feel is gone, then I believe that the toxicity of Gloucester 411 can be reduced.

I do not believe that Gloucester 411 is all bad. It provides information about community events and advice on certain problems that can be useful. But when it comes to the common themes that you see on the page, of anger, vitriol, and division, I truly believe that it is doing nothing but hurting us.