Getting on with neighbours can be tricky, especially if your spirited cocker spaniel decides to dig up next-door’s lawn or your youngest child has just started learning the violin.
But while there are hundreds of ways residents can be unneighbourly, the ‘offence’ that has provoked a fierce reaction online is one that most people have probably never considered.
A UK ‘mumfluencer’ boasting more than 27,000 followers on TikTok posted a video in which she complained that her neighbour’s fence was ‘the wrong way round’ and argued that ‘technically we should have the good side of the fence’.
By ‘the good side of the fence’, the influencer, Samantha (@samanthaproudmama), means the smooth side – as opposed to the side with the extra posts that support the structure.
Viewed more than 900,000 times, the minute-long clip entitled ‘Are we about to fall out with our neighbours?’ sees Samantha tour her garden and point out the troublesome fence before asking viewers to share their opinions on whether she should ask next-door to ‘turn the fence round’.
UK ‘mumfluencer’ Samantha (pictured) posted a video on TikTok in which she complained that her neighbour’s fence was ‘the wrong way round’
In the clip, Samantha tours her garden and points out that her family gave their neighbours the ‘good’ side of the fence
In the caption, Samantha claims there are ‘rules’ in her area which state: ‘If you own the fence you have to give the neighbour the “good” side of the fence’
Explaining first that the fence she shares with the neighbours in question is too small, denying her family privacy, she adds that they had already agreed to ‘put some trellis up’ to extend it.
She then gets to the heart of the matter, telling viewers: ‘Now you will notice that the fence is actually the wrong way around – technically we should have the good side of the fence.
‘They’re about to put the trellis up but do we say anything? Should we be asking them to turn the fence around so that we get the nice side?’
In the caption, she even claims there are ‘rules’ in her area which state: ‘If you own the fence you have to give the neighbour the “good” side of the fence!’
Yet Samantha’s clip, which amassed almost 4,000 comments, appeared to backfire, with some TikTokers asking ‘who is the nightmare neighbour?’ and others assuming the influencer’s fuss over the fence was ‘a joke’.
One person wrote: ‘Glad I’m not your neighbour. Jeeeez’.
Another commented: ‘Here’s me wondering who is the nightmare neighbour.’
A third TikTok user asked: ‘This has to be a joke?’
TikTokers who viewed Samantha’s clip were generally not sympathetic
A fourth was equally critical, calling Samantha ‘petty’. They wrote: ‘I’m with you on the height of the fence for privacy but you lost me when it came to which side you get.
Another person mocked: ‘Ask them to turn the fence!? Ahahahaha – if my neighbour asked me to do that, there would only be one response; a massive LOL and door closed!’
Someone else added: ‘Personally think it’s well cheeky to expect neighbours to give you the nice side of THEIR fence’.
But not everyone was critical – some TikTok users were simply bemused while others volunteered potential solutions to the problem.
One person was baffled by Samantha’s predicament and wrote: ‘Who knew there was a good and bad side of a fence’.
While another bemused TikToker commented: ‘Life is too short to stress about fences’.
In a bid to be helpful, someone else suggested: ‘Just put your own fence in front of it – literally back to back’.
Yet supportive responses like this one were few and far between, with the majority of commenters failing to see the matter from Samantha’s point of view.
After such an online response to her first video, Samantha felt the need to post another clip the following day to clarify her stance
In fact, so vehement was the online response that Samantha felt the need to post another video the following day to clarify her stance.
In the second clip, she backtracks, claiming the original video was ‘a slight dramatisation for video purposes’ while assuring viewers that her family were ‘not falling out with our neighbours’ over the fence.
Entitled ‘The Fence Debate continued’, the clip sees Samantha explain: ‘Don’t worry, we’re not falling out with our neighbours.
‘We love our neighbours, they’re lovely, we adore them – it was a slight dramatisation for video purposes’.
Yet, Samantha insists that ‘the fence debate is a real one’ and points out that there ‘is a kind of unofficial rule’.
She says: ‘To be kind of like polite and courteous so that everyone ends up with their fences in a fair way, the fence that you own you give your neighbour the good side and they do the courtesy to you.
‘So effectively everyone ends up with a good side and a bad side of the fence rather than some people ending up with all good sides and other people ending up with all bad sides.’
And while some agreed it’s ‘just common etiquette’ to position fences in the way Samantha described, many more held the opposing view.
One person commented: ‘My fence, I’m having the good side. My neighbour did say shouldn’t he get the good side, I simply said “No”.’
Some TikTokers agreed that it’s ‘just common etiquette’ to position fences in the way Samantha described – though many more held the opposing view
One person sought advice about the positioning of fences on Reddit over a decade ago
Another insisted: ‘Honestly, the person who pays gets the good side’.
While ‘the fence debate’, as Samantha put it, appeared overblown to many TikTokers, it would seem neighbours have been mulling the issue for a number of years.
Posting on Reddit over a decade ago, one person asked ‘does the nice side [of the fence] face my yard or the neighbors?’.
So eager was the poster to do the right thing, that they even asked Reddit users to advise on which ‘government department’ to call for clarification.