‘This isn’t even about being petty’: Rude neighbor incites a war when woman next door plans to build a fence, but it massively backfires

If you’ve never had a problem with your neighbors, then lucky you, as bad neighbors are almost as universal as death and taxes. That said, there are bad neighbors and then there are bad neighbors, and this following story concerns the latter. Bu at least this particular curmudgeon with no community spirit got their comeuppance.

TikTok user Juniper aka @my_socalled_life (extra points for the ’90s nostalgia username) took to the app to get everyone’s thoughts on whether she was just being petty with an ongoing dispute with her neighbor or if she was in the right. Things kicked off when Juniper wanted to get a fence installed in her backyard. Juniper already knew that her neighbor was shaving a few feet off her land by the way he was cutting his lawn, but instead of simply going ahead and putting up the fence where she knew her land began she spoke to her neighbor to let him know about it first.

If she was hoping to live a hassle-free existence, this turned out to be a bad move on Juniper’s part. Clearly under the false impression that his lot was bigger than it was, the neighbor demanded that Juniper get a surveyor out to prove her claims. Because she’s a nice neighbor, Juniper complied with his wishes and paid for a surveor to come out — but Mr. Anti-Ned Flanders next door probably wishes that she hadn’t.

As Juniper reveals, the surveyor came and determined that Juniper has “multiple more feet” on her plot than she realized — with photos of the surveyors’ markers proving that her land actually stretches almost all the way to her neighbor’s driveway. How did the neighbor react when he found this out? He yanked the marker sticks out of the ground. Juniper’s dilemma now is, should she go ahead and build her fence, which would mean removing her neighbor’s tree that we now know is on her land? Or should she try to be kind and maybe build her fence at an angle and go around the tree?

“If this is the kind of temper tantrum he’s throwing over just the sticks being put in the ground then what’s he going to do with an actual fence?” is the very pertinent question Juniper poses.

Fencegate, if you will, has proven to be such a hot-button issue that it’s gone viral on X, too. Although Juniper is worried about coming across as petty if she simply builds her fence as she wants, it seems the vast majority are well and truly on her side. As one X user accurately summarized, “I’m sorry this isn’t even about being petty. She paid for her house and she’s entitled to the property that she paid for.”

Typically, laws state that a fence must be built at least 2 to 8 inches away from the neighboring property line, unless you’re intending it to be a joint responsibility, and in her video Juniper makes clear that this is exactly what she is planning to do. Her neighbor really has no legal ground to stand on, then — and just not a lot of ground to stand on, in general, thanks to these new boundaries. He might’ve started the boundary battle, but he’s lost the lawn war.