The loudest voices aren’t the majority—and the healthiest response may be to simply walk away.
By Bear Howard and Associates —
Sedonoa,AZ –By almost any measure, Nextdoor has failed Sedona.
It was created to help neighbors connect, exchange useful information, and strengthen communities. Instead, during this election season, it has become, for many residents, a daily exercise in outrage, grievance, suspicion, and political warfare.
In a previous Bear Howard story, this overview was well captured in his Sedona.biz column, which called Nextdoor “Sedona’s Wailing Wall.“ It is an apt description. Rather than a town square where ideas are tested and neighbors learn from one another, it too often functions as a place where the discontented gather to vent, complain, and reassure one another that every problem is someone else’s fault.
The tragedy is not that people disagree. Healthy communities need disagreement.
The tragedy is that disagreement has increasingly been replaced by performance.
The loudest voices post the most. The most emotional comments receive the most attention. Complex public policy is reduced to slogans. Decades of planning are dismissed in a few angry sentences. Expertise is viewed with suspicion. Facts become optional. Outrage becomes entertainment.
Meanwhile, thousands of Sedona residents are nowhere to be found.
They are hiking our trails, volunteering at nonprofits, serving on boards, running businesses, attending concerts, spending time with their grandchildren, and quietly living productive lives. They are not spending hours every day refreshing Nextdoor, looking for the next argument.
Yet anyone reading the platform regularly could easily conclude that Sedona is collapsing, that the city government is hopelessly corrupt, that every public decision is a disaster, and that neighbors are permanently at war.
That is not the Sedona most of us experience.
It is the Sedona manufactured by an algorithm that rewards conflict.
As the July 21 primary approaches, another danger looms.
People begin confusing the loudest voices with the majority. They mistake repetition for truth. They begin to believe that, because they read the same complaints every day, the community must agree with them.
History suggests otherwise.
Most voters never post. Most never comment. Many don’t even read Nextdoor. They form their opinions by talking to friends, attending meetings, reading broadly, and judging candidates on their own merits rather than on who won yesterday’s online argument.
Which raises an interesting possibility.
Perhaps the most powerful political statement thoughtful citizens could make this election season is not posting one more rebuttal.
Perhaps it is deleting the app.
Not forever. Not because opposing viewpoints should be silenced. But because every platform depends on an audience. Every angry performance requires spectators. Every outrage machine depends on attention.
Imagine if hundreds—or even thousands—of Sedona residents simply stopped opening Nextdoor between now and Election Day.
The endless arguments would continue.
The complaints would continue.
The same familiar personalities would continue debating.
But they would increasingly be speaking into an empty room.
That may be the only feedback a platform truly understands.
If enough thoughtful people quietly leave, Nextdoor will discover that outrage is not community, volume is not wisdom, and anger is not leadership.
Sometimes the strongest statement does not win the argument.
Sometimes it refuses to give the argument another minute of your life.
On July 22, Sedona will still be here.
Your neighbors will still be your neighbors.
The red rocks will still glow at sunset.
The conversations that matter will still happen—face to face, where listening is possible, facts can be challenged respectfully, and disagreement doesn’t require an audience.
That is where communities are built.
Not on a digital Wailing Wall.
It’s time to sign out, sign off, maybe even delete the app, and embrace the calm that comes from ignoring negative people who think Next Door is a community forum for their rants that uninfected people will read and agree with.