This is a real smear campaign.
Long Island City’s storied troubles with pooping pooches have reached new heights — as fed-up residents are posting pictures of pet owners who refuse to pick up after their dogs on social media to pressure them into doing the right thing.
“More people need to be called out for this!!!” one user wrote in a Reddit thread calling out a negligent dog owner.
“Shame shame shame until they learn a lesson. No one else is going to hold them accountable,” wrote another.
The campaign sprouted primarily on Reddit earlier this summer, and consisted of frustrated residents snapping and sharing pictures of pet owners who refuse to scoop.
“It just started to get to a point where it’s like, ‘Oh, I have to move this way, and I have to move this way, and I have to move this way [to avoid the waste-littered sidewalk]. It’s a disruptive obstacle to the day,” one shame campaigner, Molly Block, told The Post.
“We all share this neighborhood. We are neighbors with one another. Why are we behaving in this way that is disrupting the community that you share with your neighbors?”
Block took to social media this month after fruitlessly confronting a man who watched “his little Pomeranian poop and proceed not to pick it up.” He said he “just didn’t feel like it.”
“He starts turning it on me and like calling me names and yelling at me. And then of course, my aggression came out, it was like, ‘no, f–k you!’ And then I was like, you know what? I’m going to take this to Reddit,” Block explained.
She had seen other neighbors do the same, including some posts that included pictures of the perpetrators and their pooches caught in the act — which moderators eventually ripped down for privacy concerns.
The move felt petty, but Block felt desperate for a change that wasn’t being addressed otherwise.
“What can we as a community do to stop this? It’s not the dog’s fault, you know?” she said.
The online shame campaign has been a hit among dog owners and non-owners alike.
Long Island City has long had a pup poo problem, with Community Board letters begging for the city to intervene dating back more than a decade.
Some of the waterfront nabe’s parks are plentiful with doggie bags, and nearly every block is littered with curb-your-dog signs, but it’s not enough to stop naughty neighbors — some of whom put the waste in plastic baggies that they leave on the street.
But the issue has seemingly only grown worse in recent years as its population surges, with one angry resident dubbing the nabe the “dog s–t capital of New York.”
“It’s more like Dog Island City. It’s a s–thole,” a dog owner, who declined to share his name, said as he walked his pooch through the streets
“Everyone has a dog here, but no one wants to clean up after themselves.”
Another man who works near Queens Plaza claims to see waste on the street every day, with the comparatively more considerate neighbors kicking dirt over poop piles to hide the evidence.
“Every day. It’s disgusting. If you can’t pick up their crap then you shouldn’t be able to have a dog,” the worker said.
City Councilmember Julie Won told The Post that in addition to investing in trash bins and pick-up bags to curb the issue, providing dog owners with green space to relieve themselves could help end the poop problem.
Her office pointed to Queensbridge as a particular hotspot, and called on the city Department of Transportation to return the area under the bridge to the public to add a seventh dog run to Long Island City.
“Investing in designated dog relief areas such as dog parks decreases dog waste on public streets. That’s why I invested $1.2M for Murray Dog park renovations, went into construction for the Dutch Kills Baseline Dog Park, and reclaiming Queensbridge Baby Park Dog Run,” Won said.
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