A man was baffled after his neighbour approached him to claim that his WiFi was damaging her houseplants – and her suggestion for how to fix the issue left him outraged
It’s always nice to be courteous to your neighbours, but that doesn’t mean you should bend to their every whim. If your neighbour asked to borrow a screwdriver or politely asked you once in a while to turn your music down, most of us wouldn’t hesitate to oblige for the sake of keeping the peace and being neighbourly.
But one man has had enough with his neighbour’s demands, as she’s not asking for things he can reasonably control and is instead making “outrageous” suggestions. In a post on Reddit, the man said his neighbour has frustrated him in the past by telling him his “aura is too digital” and claiming to have a “telepathic connection with crystals”.
However, none of that really impacted his own life, so he was happy to ignore it and allow her to do her own thing. That was until recently, when the woman knocked on his door to “talk about” his WiFi router.
The man claimed his neighbour turned up at his doorstep holding a small potted plant and a “diagram of a WiFi signal”, and made the outlandish claim that his WiFi was “disrupting the vibrational energy of her succulents”.
He wrote: “Last week she knocked on my door holding a small potted plant in one hand and a printout of what looked like a hand-drawn diagram of a WiFi signal in the other. She told me we needed to talk about my router.
“I was confused. She then explained that my WiFi was disrupting the vibrational energy of her succulents. She pointed to the drawing, which honestly looked like a sad jellyfish, and said the signal beamed directly through our shared wall and bombarded her plants nonstop.
“According to her, the plants were spiritually wilting because they thought the WiFi was sunlight, but it wasn’t. The best part? Her plants were in a dark hallway with no natural light.”
She argued the plants had been fine until the man got a new modem, and then hit him with an outrageous demand – that he share his WiFi with her so that she could position his router in the right location in her own home.
He added: “She gave me two options: either turn off my WiFi every night between 10pm and 6am (apparently the plants’ rest hours) or let her share my WiFi and move the router into her unit so she could regulate the signal properly.
“I laughed because I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. She stormed off as I was laughing at her. I’m still currently waiting to see what comes out of this.”
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that a WiFi signal can impact a plant’s growth, as the signal is non-ionising and low-energy, meaning it doesn’t have enough power to cause cellular damage to plants or humans. However, a plant placed too close to a router might end up with some scorched leaves or wilting due to the excessive heat that a router can produce.
Commenters on the man’s post were quick to suggest that the woman could have been using her plants as an excuse to try and get access to his WiFi to use it herself, while others came up with solutions he could use to keep her happy without actually switching off his router or letting her share it.
One person said: “Log into your router and change your SS ID to not displayed. Your devices will still connect and tell her the WiFi is off. Much simpler.”
Another added: “So she doesn’t want you to use wifi unless she can ALSO use your wifi. And maybe take possession of your router. It’s not about the plants. She’s a scammer.”
