Robot wars are raging in Meersbrook

They arrived in Meersbrook in the middle of last month, hungry for work. So far, they’ve found a bit, but seemingly not that much. Residents tell me they spend most of the day sitting in tight huddles in the local parks, before retreating to the camp they’ve set up outside the scout hut at night. Their cameras are always at the ready, although it’s not clear when they’re filming and when they’re not. “They’re waiting outside houses, just staring at them,” one mum tells me. “It genuinely feels icky.” 

An infographic with alarming claims quickly began circulating on local Facebook groups. “Do you know what’s happening on our streets?” it begins. “No one has formally approved this — it has simply been allowed to happen.” It warned that, though there might be only a few new arrivals at the moment, they will certainly become “more numerous” if the community doesn’t push back now. Residents should contact the council, the local press and encourage their neighbours to do the same. “The more voices, the better.”

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Of course, there was pushback to the pushback. This was scaremongering, this was backwards thinking, this was why Sheffield can’t have nice things. It was the Ofo bikes all over again. The people of Meersbrook — a supportive, tightknit community by all accounts — seemed to be turning on each other. “Never had you down for a capitalist hypocrite,” one seething comment reads. “It got a bit nasty,” one woman, who declined to give her name, tells me. “I’ve been called a loony, but I was just trying to make people aware of what’s going on.”