Help, how do I silence my noisy neighbor without going to jail?

Originally released in February 2021

La Daronne is the queen of not-so-stupid advice covered in a large dose of more or less subtle humor. Here she is back to rescue a reader!

The question for Daronne

Dear Daronne,

After confinement, my upstairs neighbor has decided to live as if tomorrow doesn’t exist and screams non-stop from 4pm to 6am while streaming video games on Twitch.

He’s giving my cat seizures.

Is there a legal way to kick his ass with impunity?

You kiss

Daronne’s answer

My little paupiette,

Community life isn’t easy, especially when you live with a forced roommate. Yeah, I know, your neighbor doesn’t literally live in your apartment, but thanks to walls that are the size of a sheet of top prize PQ, it’s just like.

Since I can’t suggest you completely redo your one bedroom kitchen insulation, I can only give you tips on how to sneak around so this bastard realizes that living in a community isn’t all about perspective .

Here is a whole list of little ideas that will make him want to scream like a skunk every night. Warning, the following advice is far from benevolent and politically correct, but at the same time I’m your Daronne, not Mother Teresa:

• Rather than putting a peach on the doormat, which is a pretty technical move, you can gently toss the poor traumatized cat’s litter box out his door. So yeah okay, the neighbor won’t necessarily know where he’s from or why, but he’ll know he’s frankly not the most loved person in the building, and maybe think twice before yelling like a pig being slaughtered (poor pig).
• You can try to find the circuit breaker in the building and turn it on as soon as the volume is higher than you can tolerate or as soon as your cat is in PLS. Not having access to the Internet for a few minutes, several times a night if there are relapses, should calm the male who lacks social recognition.
• You can remind him that “tomorrow exists” by playing Johnny Hallyday on your loudspeakers at maximum volume, the latter having previously been directed towards your ceiling, and this, from 7 in the morning. What’s better than “Lighting the fire” to gently awaken the fruit of your indignation?
• You can try to find his Twitch channel and report him to the platform so many times that he might end up getting banned. You never know, in case of misunderstanding, it can work.
• If your neighbor spends his nights playing and cackling, maybe it’s because he feels lonely, poor thing. You can therefore kindly enroll him in religious groups so that they come and ring his bell at 8 in the morning in order to bring him some semblance of social life, but also order him pineapple pizzas, so, in addition to being disturbed in his parts, he will not be able to not even feed on edible things.

Sure, you can also talk to him directly, or even leave him a note in his mailbox if you’re not a fan of face-to-face meetings, but that would be too conventional, and I don’t like conventions drive me crazy.

In the “true advice” genre.“, you can also, if the villain is a tenant, contact the trustee of the co-ownership, who can alert his owner of the nuisances of the private.

In case he owns his house (everything is possible), there are not thousands of options, you have to find allies among the other inhabitants of the building and form a coalition to rebel.

Not riot with pitchforks and flaming torches like a raging village, eh, but something more legal and less likely to set the building on fire.

Good luck my little noggin, and invest in earplugs for you and your cat in the meantime (good luck getting them on the animal, I hope you’ll send me a video of the scene).

I kiss you, and I’ll hit my broom on the ceiling,

Your Daronne

Photo credit image of one: Getty Images