Culture
The 20 Characters You'll Meet on Every Neighborhood Email List
The longtime resident, the dog-poop vigilante and 18 other archetypes.
It’s a uniquely engaged citizen who turns up at a neighborhood meeting scheduled at the same time as the Mad Men season premiere to debate a recent spate of car break-ins on Main Street. Much less engagement is required, naturally, to fire off an angry email on the same subject.
This is the beauty of the neighborhood email list, that odd 21st century form of civic participation via what in any other circumstance would be considered spam. Ever since the first Yahoo! group wormed its way into America’s inboxes, people who have never previously been involved in their communities have found a way to do so without having to leave home, or put on pants.