Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ding dong ditch — add “dead”.

New York Times (gift article):

Boy Shot During ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ Prank in Texas Has Died

The police in Houston detained a person after an 11-year-old boy was shot on Saturday night, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/us/houston-boy-shot-ding-dong-ditch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik8.vc3u.EWImB_6vBcYp&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Note that it happened just before 11pm, not the middle of the day like in more innocent times. Not saying that any 11 yo deserves to be shot, simply that this is an unreasonable hour for an innocent prank. 11 is way too young to be out at night with a pack of unsupervised kids. Parenting failure.

He will be charged with murder so I would say it’s the home owner’s failure. You don’t shoot a kid in the back no matter what he did. But knocking on a door?

Gun control please

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe how many posters are saying they did this as kids. I never did this or anything like this as a kid. The most we ever did was prank calls. I don’t think I knew anyone that did it. I was a teen in the 80s. I just never heard of this as a thing.

I did this in the seventies, when we were all feral. But we only rang people's doorbells during daylight.

Same. And we only did it to people we knew, and we’d only hit their house once.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not the ringing of the doorbell, it is the pounding and kicking of the door that is the problem. My elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was severely injured trying to get the front door after a group of teens pounded and kicked his door. He thought there was an emergency and someone needed help. Not cool.

This. On my Next Door there is footage of kids throwing people's trash cans at their doors, kicking the doors, and setting off fireworks on the doorsteps. It's not just ringing the doorbells and running off.

But yet we are talking about Ding Dong Ditch and you are taking it up a notch. Justtt a tad. LOL

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe how many posters are saying they did this as kids. I never did this or anything like this as a kid. The most we ever did was prank calls. I don’t think I knew anyone that did it. I was a teen in the 80s. I just never heard of this as a thing.

I did this in the seventies, when we were all feral. But we only rang people's doorbells during daylight.

Anonymous wrote:Ding dong ditch — add “dead”.

New York Times (gift article):

Boy Shot During ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ Prank in Texas Has Died

The police in Houston detained a person after an 11-year-old boy was shot on Saturday night, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/us/houston-boy-shot-ding-dong-ditch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik8.vc3u.EWImB_6vBcYp&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Note that it happened just before 11pm, not the middle of the day like in more innocent times. Not saying that any 11 yo deserves to be shot, simply that this is an unreasonable hour for an innocent prank. 11 is way too young to be out at night with a pack of unsupervised kids. Parenting failure.

Ding dong ditch — add “dead”.

New York Times (gift article):

Boy Shot During ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ Prank in Texas Has Died

The police in Houston detained a person after an 11-year-old boy was shot on Saturday night, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/us/houston-boy-shot-ding-dong-ditch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik8.vc3u.EWImB_6vBcYp&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not the ringing of the doorbell, it is the pounding and kicking of the door that is the problem. My elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was severely injured trying to get the front door after a group of teens pounded and kicked his door. He thought there was an emergency and someone needed help. Not cool.

Now this is someone who needs a ring, a sprinkler and more human connection. For everyone who talks about not having a village, there’s someone who doesn’t know how to live in one.

A hole alert. We all know who you are and we all hate your kids.

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe how many posters are saying they did this as kids. I never did this or anything like this as a kid. The most we ever did was prank calls. I don’t think I knew anyone that did it. I was a teen in the 80s. I just never heard of this as a thing.

We never even did prank calls. Most of my friends parents were active military and my dad worked with the military. Our parents would KILL us for doing any of this. KILL. Also you never heard of kids touching their dad's weapons. Ever.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not the ringing of the doorbell, it is the pounding and kicking of the door that is the problem. My elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was severely injured trying to get the front door after a group of teens pounded and kicked his door. He thought there was an emergency and someone needed help. Not cool.

Now this is someone who needs a ring, a sprinkler and more human connection. For everyone who talks about not having a village, there’s someone who doesn’t know how to live in one.

You're a f'd up a-hole.

Where I live this has taken on a new awful dimension with spoiled brats targeting immigrant families. They also don't just ring the doorbell. The goal now is to destroy the door so kids have been kicking and ramming and breaking doors. There isn't anything funny or cute about your spoiled brats doing this. It terrifies people in their homes. You are vile and sick if you excuse this.

One grandpa got so fed up with his family being abused every night that he caught one of the kids by the arm and marched him home and the parents called the cops on the grandpa and are suing him. This is complete bs. For some families this has gone on for over a year.

Anyone defending this is a sociopath.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And ringing doorbells and running repeatedly, weekend after weekend, please know they are repeatedly being caught on ring cameras and video by all your neighbors and this will not end well for them.

(Also, this cannot possibly be fun.)

Ding dong ditch was always fun!

+1

There has got to be a troll on this thread. It’s not that deep

There is a spectrum of behavior. One ring in at 3 pm, harmless. Kicking a door at 3 am, likely to get shot in some places. It's not that deep. Teach your kids situational awareness.

Anonymous wrote:A proportional response to this is telling the kid's parents, putting the video online, or spraying them. Obviously not actually shooting the kid. But since they could get shot, that's reason enough to keep your kid from doing it.

If kids bang and kick on a door in the middle of the night, you don't know what will happen.

There is a difference between ding dong ditch when I was a kid, at like 4 PM, when it was light out and people were awake. You didn’t go to the houses with babies or people we knew were sick. Today, neighbors are reporting kids pounding on doors at 3 AM, waking people up and scaring them.

I played ding dong ditch as a kid but it was pretty harmless. The stuff happening today, all to video tape and put on tik toc, is harassment. We have had the police called with ring footage handed over to them. No one has been arrested but there should not be a need to call the police because a group of tik toc junkies thinks it is fun to scare the crap out of people in the middle of the night.

And yes, kids are getting shot while doing this.

We had a band of tweens playing old school ding, dong, ditch in our neighborhood for a week. The only reason it was annoying was because we had an elderly dog that struggled to stand up that would try and jump up to bark at them. I called the parents of the kids, we knew who they were, and asked them to tell their kids to take us off their rotation because of the dog. It stopped at our house. Otherwise, I would have rolled my eyes at the game. And yes, I had a neighbor call my parents when I played the game. I got a stern talking to.

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe how many posters are saying they did this as kids. I never did this or anything like this as a kid. The most we ever did was prank calls. I don’t think I knew anyone that did it. I was a teen in the 80s. I just never heard of this as a thing.

I grew up in a different country and we definitely did it. But we were young 10-12 years old. And we did it in the day time.

I can’t believe how many posters are saying they did this as kids. I never did this or anything like this as a kid. The most we ever did was prank calls. I don’t think I knew anyone that did it. I was a teen in the 80s. I just never heard of this as a thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not the ringing of the doorbell, it is the pounding and kicking of the door that is the problem. My elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was severely injured trying to get the front door after a group of teens pounded and kicked his door. He thought there was an emergency and someone needed help. Not cool.

This. On my Next Door there is footage of kids throwing people's trash cans at their doors, kicking the doors, and setting off fireworks on the doorsteps. It's not just ringing the doorbells and running off.

That's vandalism and is a chargeable offense.