I know that my college friend Rashed in Toronto had coffee this morning at his favorite café. I know his daughter started violin lessons. I know he’s worried about his mother’s health and excited about a promotion at work. I see photos of his life daily, comment on his thoughts, feel connected to his struggles and joys.
I don’t know my next-door neighbor’s name.
I’ve lived in this apartment for three years. My neighbor and I share a wall. I hear his television at night, his morning routine, occasionally his phone conversations. We pass each other in the hallway, nod politely, say nothing. I know more about Rashed’s daily life in Toronto than about the man who lives three meters away from me.
This should feel strange. It doesn’t. This is normal now.
My wife points this out sometimes. “The family downstairs has a new baby,” she’ll mention. “I hear it crying at night.” I didn’t know they had a baby. But I know that Nasrin in London just got a new cat. I’ve seen photos, know its name, watched videos of it playing. The baby next door remains abstract while the cat across the ocean feels real.
My friend Karim is the same. He’s part of an online group that discusses classic cinema—people from six different countries, meeting virtually every week. He knows their viewing habits, their film theories, their personal philosophies about art. But when his actual neighbor’s apartment caught fire last month, he didn’t know until the fire trucks arrived. He’d never spoken to that neighbor, never learned their name, never knew they existed beyond footsteps overhead.
“Why would I?” he asked when I mentioned this. “We have nothing in common. Online, I can find people who share my interests exactly. Why invest time in neighbors who probably watch cricket and soap operas?”
He has a point. Geography used to determine community by default. You knew your neighbors because they were there, unavoidable, part of daily life. But now geography is optional. I can choose my community based on interests, values, communication style, regardless of location. The neighbors assigned by housing market feel random and irrelevant when online communities offer perfect matching.
My sister Rima has close friends in five countries. She video calls them weekly, shares details of her life, receives emotional support during difficult times. But she doesn’t know anyone in her building. When she needed help during a medical emergency last year, she called a friend three time zones away who could only offer sympathy. The neighbors who could have actually helped never knew she needed anything.
This disconnect creates strange situations. Last month, my online friend Imran in Australia helped me think through a career decision. We spent two hours on video call, talking through options, considering consequences. It was genuinely helpful. But that same week, I needed someone to receive a delivery while I was at work. I didn’t know anyone in my building to ask. I had to reschedule the delivery. Virtual intimacy, practical isolation.
My nephew Fahim is twenty-two and has no concept of neighborhood community. All his friendships exist online or were formed at university. The idea of knowing neighbors, borrowing sugar, helping with household tasks—he finds this quaint and outdated. “Why would you rely on random people who happen to live near you?” he asks. To him, physical proximity is the least relevant factor in choosing connections.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m being nostalgic for community structures that don’t serve contemporary needs. But something feels missing. My online communities provide intellectual stimulation and emotional support. They don’t provide meals during illness, emergency childcare, or physical presence during crisis. The friend in Tokyo cannot help when I’m locked out of my apartment at midnight. The discussion group in London cannot notice if I haven’t left my house in three days.
My mother’s generation didn’t have this choice. They knew neighbors because that’s what people did. Community was local by necessity. She still lives in the neighborhood where she’s spent forty years. She knows every family on her street, their children’s names, their struggles, their celebrations. When my father died, those neighbors showed up with food, company, practical help. Virtual friends couldn’t do that.
But my mother also couldn’t choose her community. She was stuck with whoever lived nearby, regardless of compatibility. Some neighbors became genuine friends. Others were obligations she fulfilled out of duty. The local community contained people she genuinely liked and people she could barely tolerate. No filtering, no self-selection, just geographic accident.
I have the opposite situation. Perfect filtering, complete self-selection, and no one to help me carry furniture up the stairs.
My colleague Taslima tries to balance both. She’s active in online communities but also makes effort to know neighbors. She organizes building events, introduces people, creates WhatsApp groups for practical coordination. “Both matter,” she says. “Online for intellectual connection, local for practical support.” This makes sense theoretically. In practice, I can’t motivate myself to invest energy in local relationships when global networks already meet most needs.
The civic implications concern me more than the personal ones. I vote in local elections without understanding local issues because I’m more engaged with national and international politics. I don’t attend school board meetings but participate in online discussions about education policy in other countries. I have opinions about my neighborhood’s development without knowing my neighbors’ concerns. My democratic participation happens at scales too large or too small—global awareness, individual voting—while the local level where I actually live remains invisible to me.
My wife and I talk about this sometimes. Should we make more effort with neighbors? Host a building dinner? Introduce ourselves properly? We always conclude yes, we should, and then never do it. The intention remains theoretical. The global connections are easier, more immediately rewarding, better matched to our interests and communication style.
Last week, something shifted slightly. The family downstairs—the one with the baby I didn’t know existed—left a note asking if we’d received a package by mistake. I went down to return it. We talked for ten minutes. They’re from Chittagong, here for work, struggling with the baby’s sleep schedule, missing family support. Simple conversation, but it revealed humans living parallel lives meters away from mine.
The baby’s name is Ayesha. This feels important somehow. Not knowing your neighbor exists is one thing. Knowing they exist but not knowing their name is different. And knowing the baby’s name—Ayesha—makes them real in a way my hundreds of online connections aren’t quite real despite daily interaction.
I still check Rashed’s posts multiple times daily. Still comment on Nasrin’s cat photos. Still participate in international discussion groups. But now when I hear Ayesha crying through the wall at night, I know who she is. It’s a small shift. Maybe it matters. Maybe it doesn’t.
Tonight I’m thinking about community differently. Not choosing between local and global, but recognizing what each provides. The global networks offer intellectual stimulation, shared interests, chosen belonging. The local connections offer practical reciprocity, physical presence, unavoidable diversity. I need both. I’ve been pretending I only need one.
Tomorrow I might introduce myself to another neighbor. Or I might not. The global communities remain easier, more comfortable, better aligned with how I prefer to connect. But Ayesha crying through the wall reminds me: community isn’t just about preference and comfort. Sometimes it’s about proximity and presence. Sometimes the people who matter most are the ones closest by, even if we share nothing except walls and circumstance.