The answer the host received was nearly useless: essentially that influencers had a few more followers, or something, and therefore a slightly elevated status of, uhhh, influence. I dunno, it obviously sounded like the viewpoint of someone who thinks about “social” solely through the lens of how it is used to sell things—which, for me, is very much the corrupted version of social.

But I won’t get into all that here. This post is just about the difference, as I see it, between being a content creator and an influencer. I’m not sure how widely held these definitions are, but they’re the ones that seemed to emerge early in my circles of the so-called “creator economy.”

In my mind, content creators and influencers are quite different things. People can choose—and often do—to play both roles, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Both roles produce “content” to generate an audience, but for entirely different reasons.

Creators:

• Produce their own products, whether that’s a paid newsletter, training course, onlyfans videos, comics, etc
• Value is in the quality of the product: does it solve a customer’s needs? Does it entertain them in a way that they’ll pay for?
• The “customer” of a creator is the audience that directly consumes the content
• Use platforms like: Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans, MightyNetworks, Gumroad, Buy Me a Coffee

Influencers

• Create an audience for advertisers to sell things to
• Value is in delivering eyeballs, clicks, and sales for other companies
• The “customer” of an influencer is the companies that they advertise for
• Use platforms like: Instagram, Amazon Associates, Youtube, podcasts, affiliate marketing platforms like Rakuten, Google AdSense, etc.

To me, this is a substantial difference—not just in scale of followers, but also in purpose, activities, and incentives.

The post Content creators vs influencers appeared first on rscottjones.

Here are three more categories of forums that I didn’t see listed in that post.

I’ve been a member of three automotive forums: SubaruOutback.org (200.5k registered members), SubaruForester.org (197.5k members), and SiennaChat.org (100.3k members). That’s just three vehicle models that account for half a million users. Half a million! If you have a problem with a vehicle, go find the forum for your make and model. I bet someone there has some good advice for you. I joined the Sienna one last year when I was designing a microcamper layout for a hybrid Sienna; it was incredibly helpful (especially on obscure details even the dealership couldn’t tell me), even though we did not pull the trigger on the purchase and conversion.

Similarly, I’ve been a paid member of Sun Devil Source (or its predecessors) for well over 20 years. Nearly every major university has an active 247 Sports or Rivals forum community, accounting for hundreds of thousands (millions?) of additional users, many of whom spend a lot of time paying attention to the minutia of the team. Did I mention that these folks shell out $100 or more a year just to read and post on these forums?

Finally, I’ve been a member of the National Park Travelers Club and its forum since I first learned about the club while touring John Muir’s house in 2007. The Club maintains what is essentially the official list of people who have visited all the national park units, as well as the location of every national park passport stamp. And there’s also no better place to track soon-to-be-designated national park units than via the sleuths in its forums. Of course, this is just one example of the types of travel-related forums that are out there.

Each of these types of forums are still alive and prospering—even in the age of mega corporate “social” media networks that dominate most conversation about social media. In the end, the technological platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as the people each community attracts.

The post Forums are still alive appeared first on rscottjones.

And that feature is the ability to post solely to your own instance. Meaning, the message stays on the instance server and isn’t federated anywhere else, but is viewable on the local feed^1.

This would really help make those instances feel more like actual communities. Instances would really matter; or, rather, they really could matter. Not just in terms of moderation, which is essentially the primary way they do right now, but in a far more important way.

They could foster real communities—ones with their own posting rules, conversational norms, traditions, inside jokes, and, importantly, their own trust/safety and vetting measures—that just don’t seem to exist en mass on Mastodon instances today. After all, small, topic-focused communities make the very best online communities. Mastodon could power soooo many of these!!

I don’t want one single huge social network, nor one big firehose feed from which to consume everything—from updates about our friends’ latest trip to viral cat videos to local severe weather alerts to national election news. We’ve tried that, first with Facebook, and then with Twitter, and it all ended up being a total fucking disaster, as far as I’m concerned.

Small communities are where it’s at. Even on the big corporate platforms, you naturally seek out those smaller communities: perhaps around one’s geography, or hobby, or fandom, or identity.

We don’t all need to be shoved into one behemoth for-profit-at-all-costs platform to participate in those smaller communities. I personally want the separation between various parts of my life. I don’t want it all mixed together, all the time. And it’s incredibly easy to swap between instance accounts on most modern apps.

And, importantly, followers don’t need to be bombarded with frequent posts about a single topic, either.

But I also think that interoperability is a useful feature. Interoperability allows us to all seek out the experience we want to have, while maintaining a broader collection of friends and followers. Adjacent communities can still easily connect with each other, even when some of the messages remain private within one community or another. Each participant can choose whether to broadcast their post to just members of their primary community, or to just their own followers, or to the broader public at large.

A few examples:

• An LGBTQ-only instance that provides a safe place for conversations you might not want to have in more public settings.
• A football fan club, where supporters can have intense, in-game conversations without spamming their other followers with a bevy of posts.
• An instance for Mastodon admins, where they can have technical and moderation discussions that might not be appropriate for public posting.

I know a few forks have something similar to this, but I’d love for it to be included in the main Mastodon code. The key here is for lots of new, topically-focused instances to emerge. And for that to happen, they’ll likely need other make use of turn-key Mastodon hosting companies, like masto.host, which stick to just the official Mastodon releases to keep things easy.

Anyway, that’s the vision I’d like to see come true—small, niche-focused Mastodon communities that can share “privately” amongst themselves, but still effortlessly connect to the broader Activity Pub fediverse.

The post The one feature I really wish Mastodon had appeared first on rscottjones.

On the one hand, you have mega platforms, like Instagram, X, and TikTok—those that are now focused on viral entertainment. On the other, you have personal blogging, the fediverse, and small niche communities—those that are focused on personal community.

Here’s how I think they line up:

Viral entertainment

• Happens primarily on large, centralized platforms
• Feed is algorithmically generated
• “Being social” mostly means commenting on current events or participating in popular trends
• Success is defined by views and follower count
• Must constantly feed the content beast to remain “relevant” in the eyes of the algorithm
• Constant concern on how to satisfy the algorithm to increase views
• Virality is an admired trait
• Platform success is focused on capturing user attention and usage
• Views matter more than comments
• Sharing opinions and memes
• Competes with watching TV
• Is free because they monetize your participation to sell ads
• Discovery is easy because its done for you, whether you want it or not
• Feels like Times Square, with its loud and frenetic hustle and bustle
• By design, far more users are consumers rather than creators
• Brands, not people
• A focus on followers, not friends
• Online relationships are wide, but not deep
• Provides a strong dose of ads and shopping

Personal community

• Decentralized, happens primarily on smaller networks
• “Being social” mostly means having authentic conversations and developing trusted relationships
• Success is better defined by the network of relationships you create rather than follower/views count
• Vulnerability is an admired trait
• Constant concern over how to increase community engagement
• Sharing personal stories
• Comments matter more than views
• Competes with spending time with your friends in person
• Costs money because no one is monetizing your participation
• Discovery is harder because it’s all left up to you
• Feels like the English countryside, a quiet stroll to the small neighborhood pub
• By necessity, nearly everyone is a creator
• People, not brands
• A focus on friends, not followers
• Online relationships are deep, but not wide
• Provides a strong dose of diy tech jargon around building your own stuff

Choose your future

I think both models are here to stay.

One model leverages the lottery ticket promise of virality to capture user-generated content to entertain the masses. It claims the zeitgeist of online culture, insomuch as one can exist in an algorithmically-personalized feed.

The other model requires personal sharing and discovery to build what resembles “local” communities, but ones connected by wifi instead of geography. It claims true friendships, insomuch as those can exist solely via posts and comments.

It’s up to you to choose the platform that matches how you want to engage with others online.

The post The two futures of social media appeared first on rscottjones.

Back then, these new platforms were exciting. You could connect—for free!—with others from across the world who shared your interests. You’d follow their posts, like and/or comment, perhaps even re-share the post, all while deepening that friendship.

As smartphones proliferated, so too did the amount of time we spent on those platforms, updating everyone on what we were up to. Increasingly, we used it as a primary tool for keeping track of our friends’ lives.

But those platforms began to rot. Slowly at first, then the pace increasingly quickened, devolving in a process aptly described as enshittification.

And today?

They’re completely enshittified. While we all still foolishly call them social media platforms, their owners have fully transitioned them into entertainment and shopping platforms. Algorithms now decide what which friend updates you see and which you don’t, and how much other unrequested junk is shoved into your “social” feed.

How much junk are we talking about? The exact number changes as the social media companies twiddle their algorithmic knobs to maximize profit; but in my counting, the number hovers around 30%, give or take.

You’d never watch a television show that had a one minute commercial interspersed in every three minute scene. You’d turn off the football game if they went to commercial after every couple plays. How exhausting would it be to visit with a friend if every third sentence was a pitch for you to buy something? It’d be intolerable.

But for reason, that’s what we live with on so-called “social” these days.

It’s a 30% tax on our friendships.

Platform owners can do this because many people are now so thoroughly entrenched; they just can’t seem to leave. Complain as they do, users won’t start posting on their own website or use alternatives like Mastodon or PixelFed, or any other number of social web alternatives. They continue to hold their own friends hostage to the very enshittified platforms they themselves no longer enjoy.

So I continue to pay the 30% tax for our continued friendship…

The post The 30% tax on our friendship appeared first on rscottjones.

It worked for awhile, but became increasingly tenuous as everyone and everything moved onto those same platforms, bloating an ever-expanding firehose that simply drowned out any one stream, simply given the explosion in overall volume. And once the platforms turned to algorithms and began their descent into inevitable enshittification—well, we could all see where this was headed.

And while those dominant social platforms overshadowed other social communities, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist. Or thrive, even. Yes, you need a critical mass of participants to establish and maintain an online community, but that number is rather small. A few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand—all of these are entirely sufficient numbers, depending on the community.

I was reminded of that this morning while reading a post by Maria Langer, who is currently captaining her private boat through the waters around New York City (scroll down to “The Photo Shoot” for the relevant section). She mentions wanting to get a photo of her boat in front of the Statue of Liberty as she passes by. Which, you know, is hard to do by oneself.

So she pulls up an app called Nebo, which I’ve never heard of, but is apparently a niche boating app that also has its own community of users. She finds another Nebo user in the area that will be passing by soon and asks for some help. Like tourists at the Grand Canyon, they agree to take each other’s photos. How great is that?

Of course, there are countless such micro-communities out there, you just don’t know about them unless you’re involved in them. I never would have guessed that there was a boating app that could be used to arrange a watery photo shoot—because, why would I?

The world is inherently social. We’ve never needed one-social-app-to-rule-them-all, in spite of what the billionaires might want. We don’t even need interoperability and federation, for that matter. We just need to recognize that we can build vibrant and useful communities anywhere. They don’t have to be big, and they don’t have to include every single person we already know.

There was a time that we collectively believed that it was important to connect the world in a vast mega-network. That Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the big boys were doing important and exciting work on our behalf, changing the world by giving us a way to connect directly, across whatever distances lie between us. It was The Future.

But we had already done that—that was the free and open web. You know, the World Wide Web. It wasn’t a newfangled private walled garden, as the big social media platforms—whose goal is not (and can never be) to connect us together, but to figure out how to profit off our drive to connect with each other—like to pretend they were inventing. We were already connected through our own websites, emails, and other protocols.

But however we connected globally, we always turned back to smaller communities. The niche ones, with their own unique culture, and vocabulary, and norms, and personalities. Small enough that you encountered enough of the same people often enough to establish some sort of relationship. Even when we used those mega platforms, it was often simply to congregate and participate in small sub-communities, an infinitesimal sliver of the larger whole. The rest of the vast userbase was effectively useless and invisible to us.

Why? Because small, theme-based communities are just better communities¹. They’ve always been better.

1. I usually use the word topic-based for this point, but really it’s broader than that, as identity-based communities obviously demonstrate. Not sure if “theme” is right way to word it, but I’m open to better suggestions. ︎

The post Small social networks are everywhere (still) appeared first on rscottjones.

I want to focus on using social media solely to connect with actual people—not to consume so-called breaking news or procrastinate over memes or fight social battles or dunk on the political villain of the moment. It’s become clear that none of those things is helping me, or seems to be helping society, either. At least when it happens solely on social media.

I’ve mostly boycotted Facebook for a few years now—it’s among the most destructive companies I can think of—but I’m trying a new experiment to see if I can reclaim enough value before I dump the whole thing. 

That process involves unfollowing every brand page, leaving most groups while muting the rest, and tightening up my list of friends. I’ll write more on all this in the coming months.

But that’s not what this post is about.

Friends for memories sake

I’m also keenly aware these days of preserving memories. And I noticed something yesterday. I’m Facebook friends with some people not because I consider them an actual friend—at least not now—but because I like the idea of maintaining a connection to a time when we were friends. Put another way, I’m only pretending to be friends with someone because we shared some good memories at one point in my life. (This is basically the only reason Classmates.com exists, right?)

So when I ran across a post from the random dude we befriended in a dive bar not far from the California-Mexico border, and noticed who he seems to have turned into these days, I decided he wouldn’t make the cut. His social media posts won’t benefit my life, so there’s no reason to consume them in the future.

To be fair, I’ve enjoyed all of the times we’ve interacted with each other. And I fondly regard our first meeting as an excellent example of why I enjoy travel and patronizing obscure dive bars. And he has an interesting story, one that I’ve referenced to other friends numerous times.

In short, he sold all of his possessions (including his business), then started walking from Phoenix to the start of the Pacific Crest Trail, with the notion that he’d thru-hike it to Canada, in a bid to change his life. How would it do that? He wasn’t sure. From gear to knowledge to physical fitness, he was totally unprepared, but went anyway. Pretty wild, right?

And, true to his life-changing stroll, his life has indeed…changed. I like the person I met in that bar; I like the person he seems to be now far less. It’s a bummer, but these things happen.

The rub

But, I want to keep my memories of meeting him, his story, and how that all came to be. I want to remember how I felt about what he did, what parts of it were inspiring to me, and what parts were not. I want to keep the insights I gained from it, and I want to preserve the story of it all for myself. It’s a story I cherish.

And hence, the conflict. Either abandon the Facebook friendship, or maintain the connection to those memories. That was my unspoken default thinking in how I approached many social media friendships. We were once friends—or just work colleagues, or simply sat next to each other in chemistry class, or were both regulars at the local bar, or just randomly met while traveling and friended each other. And because we shared those moments, and had agreed to be “friends” on social media, we should always be friends. If we weren’t Facebook friends, they’d vanish from my life—and so would the memories.

But, of course, very few life choices are truly binary.

Preserving the memory

So I employed a new strategy: I journaled about everything I wanted to remember (adding it to my personal memories vault).

I wrote about how we met, what we talked about, and how I felt about the encounter. I relived getting together with him for a beer several months later, while he was still on his journey (sorta). I added the photos we had taken together, as well as the blog post someone wrote about what he was doing on that long walk. I added a photo of him on the trail, and the contact info I still have in my phone. I wrote about how he had changed and what his life seemed to be like now. It was a brain dump which took me a solid hour, perhaps even more.

I essentially wrote a mini biography, from my own perspective and filled with all the little tidbits and details I was privy to. I told all the stories I might want to remember to my “Future Self.”

And then I clicked the unfriend button, satisfied to keep only what I wanted while discarding the rest.

This was originally posted on Hey World.

The post Friends for the sake of memories appeared first on rscottjones.

But there’s often no substitute for experiencing a new place with friends. Unfortunately, not everyone has a go-to travel partner, or an available crew to camp with. If you’re looking to expand the number of friends you get outside with, you’ve found the right post.

Your existing group of friends

The first step is to check with the friends you already have. Maybe one of them has been dying to get outside, and just needs someone to suggest a destination. Or maybe you never quite realized that someone loves to hike or camp, but similarly doesn’t have someone to go with. It’s funny how often I see someone post a photo of a hike they did, or a new tent they just bought, and thought to myself, “wow, I didn’t know they enjoyed that sort of thing.” So, ask your friends. Post a few messages on facebook, then mention it at your next happy hour get together. Start here first.

Your existing irl social networks

After you’ve checked with your circle of friends, expand a bit to the other social networks you belong to. Check with your co-workers—the ones you can stand, at least. Check with the folks at your _____________ club, whatever that might be. Work, school, hobbies, parents of your kids’ friends, neighbors, regulars at your gym class…we’re all connected to various groups of people we already somewhat know, each of which may yield some new hiking partners. But only if you ask.

Meetup groups

Meetup has been an absolute treasure trove of outdoor clubs for me. I regularly kayak with three groups, day hike with another two, and occasionally jump on backpacking trips led by couple others. But it wasn’t always that way.

A few years ago, I decided that I didn’t have enough backpacking in my life. While several of my friends routinely said they wanted to go, I could never quite pin them down for a trip. So I headed over to Meetup.com and searched for some groups. I found half a dozen that were backpacking-focused and seemed pretty promising, joined each, and took a look at their trip calendars. There was one trip coming up to one of my favorite destinations, Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness, which requires permits that the trip leader had already secured. They had a spot open, so I RSVP’d yes. A few days later, I was sleeping under cottonwoods gazing at the stars with five people I had just met. They weren’t all going to be future friends, but one of them is. And best of all, I got a fun overnight trip out of it.

A week later, I went with another meetup group that was heading to Havasupai, one of the jewels of the Southwest. I hadn’t been there before, and the permits can be hard to get. It was only four days long, but I made a ton of friends on that trip—many of which are among my most cherished friends today.

Within a week, I was organizing unofficial trips for my new friends and have helped lead trips (and happy hours for connecting with new members) ever since. That group basically became my primary “outdoor adventure” crew, the ones I spent most weekends with. I’m not guaranteeing you a similar outcome, but it’s a common meetup experience I’ve seen so frequently that I’m confident you’ll make some outdoorsy friends if you give it a sustained shot.

“But I’m too shy for that”

Meeting new people and doing a trip with them isn’t necessarily easy or fun for everyone to do. I understand, I do. I generally felt the same way. I’m not an outgoing guy. I’m rarely the popular one in groups. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I was worried that there’d be some creep or asshole on the trip that drove me nuts. I was worried that someone might be totally unprepared and we’d have to help him along the whole trip. I was worried I’d be the outcast on the trip, that I just wouldn’t fit in. There were a thousand other worries I had, too. And yet, none of those things happened. Not one. That’s the thing with most fears—your imagination is far worse than what’s likely to actually happen.

If the idea of this simply terrifies you, and you’re unwilling to force yourself to try it just once or twice—no matter how uncomfortable it might seem—then don’t. It’s that simple. Stop reading and focus extra energy on the first two steps, instead. But if you’re intrigued, even just a bit, but still pretty anxious about the idea? Well, I say go for it. Talk a friend into going with you. Start with a group that does a social activity so you can meet the regulars first. You’ll feel less anxiety if you know you can bail during one of these event more easily than an outing in the wilderness. Don’t see any outdoor recreation groups that offer one? Email the organizer and suggest it. Likewise, if you’re a woman and worry about spending a weekend with a bunch of strange, possibly horny, men who might constantly hit on you? Well, email the group organizer and suggest a girls-only trip. There are often ways to mitigate the fears or hesitations you might have. Start slow and work up to an actual outing if you need to. Or do what I did and just thrust yourself into it——like jumping into a cold lake instead of trying to ease your way in. Either way, give it a shot.

But what about small towns?

I should note that I live in Phoenix, a large metro area with great weather, abundant public lands, and plenty of people who enjoy getting outside. You may not live in such a place. You may live in a small town, far from a population center large enough for a single outdoor rec meetup group, let alone the dozens I can choose from. Bummer.

But all is not lost. Try searching for specific destinations instead. In the search box, type the place you want to go (it works best if it’s a somewhat coveted destination). Change the “distance from” your location to “any distance” and select “all meetups” from the options on the right, then look through the results. You may find groups from across the state, or even from across the country, leading trips to that destination. It’s not uncommon for people to join trips being led by groups far from own city.

Facebook groups

Check facebook for various hiking or outdoor-related public groups in your area. Often, individuals from these groups will lead hikes or other outings, sometimes formally and sometimes informally. If you don’t see events being mentioned, ask if anyone might want to join you. Even if you don’t have a lot of luck here, you’ll probably enjoy conversing with them anyway. In addition, these facebook groups often offer the side benefit of providing some great ideas on future destinations to explore.

I couldn’t find a kayaking trip scheduled for this Sunday in my normal meetup groups, so I jumped into a new facebook group I recently joined for kayaking the lower Salt River outside of Phoenix. One post and one day later, I have a small group of paddlers joining me on Sunday morning. It turns out that there are often people who would love to join a trip; they just need the suggestion to go. I see this regularly in other hiking facebook groups I belong to. Don’t see an outdoorsy facebook group for your area? Create your own and see what happens.

Other clubs & organizations

You’re probably already familiar with a number of national outdoor/conservation/recreation groups, many of which have a local chapter or partner that’s active in your state. For instance, the Sierra Club in Arizona has a pretty regular calendar of member led-hikes and activities where you’d undoubtedly find others who enjoy the outdoors. Groups like IMBA have lists of local mountain biking clubs you could get involved in. American Hiking Society has a similar list of hiking groups. Hike it Baby has a network of local branches offering outings for families. There are obvious too many to list here, but a quick search will likely uncover plenty of local groups to investigate.

There are a number of new female-focused hiking groups springing up recently, such as Hike Like A Woman. Some of these are set up as national networks with local chapters—often with one or more local ambassadors—that organize hikes and other events.

There are also a number of  local or regional outdoors groups, too—and even some outdoor retailers that offer women-focused events. REI’s Force of Nature program also hosts a number of classes and events geared specifically for women. Other organizations, such as Outdoor Afro, Latino Outdoors, OutVentures, and Unlikely Hikers host events for communities often underrepresented out on the trail. I’ve listed just a small sample of the groups out there, so spend some time googling in your local area.

An often overlooked place for finding outdoor clubs is community colleges. Student orgs can be pretty hit-or-miss and don’t always persist thru the summer, but it’s worth checking your local community colleges for any active groups. The community college crowd usually has a much wider age distribution than four-year universities. So while you’ll likely find many twenty-somethings in these clubs, you won’t seem totally out of place even if you’re 40-something.

Guided hikes & volunteer projects

In the suggestions below, the goal is to connect with others who enjoy the outdoors and who also live in your area. Since these things can vary greatly depending on where you live, you’ll need to do a bit of digging to see what’s available in your own area.

Some outdoor outfitters, like REI, offer various outings and outdoor ed classes. If you’re anything like me, these are your people. It shouldn’t be hard to get a conversation going about various trails or destinations, which provides a perfect segue into a “sounds great, so when do you want to go?” comment. Climbing gyms are also great places to make some new friends, though not everyone who climbs indoors enjoys outdoor activities.

Volunteer service projects on our public lands, such as trail maintenance or trash cleanups, can also be a great way to meet people who enjoy the outdoors. Not only might you make some new hiking friends, but you’ll be giving back to the outdoor community. Check in with your local land manager for opportunities near you. You might also want to contact local outdoor outfitters, conservation groups, and “friends of” groups, which often sponsor or organize volunteer service projects, too.

If you have a county or regional park system, you might want to see if they do any guided or interpretative outings. You’ll want to focus on places where locals routinely go, not the more touristy destinations that might attract out-of-towners. For instance, most visitors to metro Phoenix probably don’t even know about the Maricopa County Regional Park system, so they’re unlikely to attend their events. That might not be the case for nearby Lost Dutchman State Park, which sees its fair share of tourists given its popular RV campground and proximity to the famed Superstition Mountains Wilderness.

Some cities and counties also run their own outdoor programs through their respective recreation departments. Many times these are focused on general exercise and fitness, but plenty of them also include outdoor recreation activities—especially in places with urban mountain preserves and other outdoor rec opportunities.

Other social media networks

If you’re a regular user of social media, especially open networks like instagram and twitter, then you probably “know” quite a few people. That is, you follow them, they follow you, and you at least occasionally have some sort of conversation with them. Well, maybe it’s time to meet in person for a hike!

Sure, distance is often an issue for these sorts of relationships; these networks are worldwide, after all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put a little energy into following more people in your own area. It’s particularly easy to do this on instagram. Simply search by some local hashtags and you’re bound to find others who enjoy the outdoors. It might take some time to develop an online relationship with the people you find, but it’s a quick and easy way to find fellow hikers. Like facebook groups, you’re also sure to learn about some outdoor gems in your area. Oh, and feel free to give me a follow on twitter or instagram while you’re at it.

An important note on “meeting people from the internet”

Nope, this isn’t a cautionary disclaimer. It’s the opposite, actually. Sure, you should be safe when it comes to people you don’t know. That’s true whether they’re people you meet at the grocery store, on the internet, or at your local church.

But, here’s the thing. Most people are just fine. Sure, some can be socially awkward. Some are weird. Some are even creepy. And anytime your spidey sense alarm goes off, it’s best to pay attention. But the vast, vast majority of people are perfectly safe to spend time with, especially in a larger group setting—whether or not you’ve met them on the internet.

Fifty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to make friends at the bowling alley, back when being in a bowling league was far more common. But let’s face it, it really wasn’t much different than meeting someone from the internet. They were a complete stranger, you got connected because of a shared interest, and here you are doing stuff together in real life. It’s basically the same thing as what happens with meetup, except that now you can actually stalk their profile a bit before you ever show up. And that’s just one of many precautions not available to previous eras.

The internet is a fabulous tool for finding people with similar interests as you. For finding your tribe.

The bottom line

If you want to make outdoorsy friends, you live in the very best era to do so. Go on, make it happen!

Photo credits

Jessica Schultz took the featured image, as well as the one of our group at Havasupai. She’s currently adventuring around the West in her Airstream full-time. Follow her on instagram or at CampfireHappy. You’ll be happy you did.

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The post How to make more hiking or camping friends appeared first on rscottjones.

A little bit of background

I’ve been hovering around the edges of a few social media communities for awhile now. Over the last few months, I’ve been following and occasionally interacting with the Phoenix twitter crowd. The absence of a sense of community has always been one of my disappointments with the Phoenix metro area, so I was amazed and impressed with the community-building events they’ve been hosting.

I decided that I should get more involved.

So when Twitter launched its lists feature, I thought it was a great way to chart out progress in turning those “I follow online” relationships into “we’ve actually met” ones. The result were two incomplete lists of Phoenix-area folks that I hadn’t met yet and ones I had.

To that end, I’ve stopped by an occasional tweetup or #pfn or #smunch. I’ve been truly amazed with some of the cool people I’ve briefly met already – and I know I’m only scratching the surface. So I’m not only interested in expanding that list, but deepening it as well.

This is an attempt to do just that. At its core, this challenge is about creating even more value from the investment I make every time I tweet, post a photo online, or add a reply to a forum post.

My #10N3 Challenge

So, here it is: I am challenging myself to convert 10 of my online-only relationships into offline “in-real-life” relationships in the next 3 months.

Because of the holidays and my own travel schedule, I’m not starting the clock until the New Year arrives. This is about adding value to my social media experience, so I’m planning on reporting back my progress on the days I get paid.

The rules

• Must be one-on-one conversations to count. It doesn’t count if we just talk in a crowd of people (unless the conversation is direct, personal, extended, etc). It’s best if these are organized with the specific purpose of meeting to chat, like inviting someone out for coffee or a hike.
• Half of them must be people I’ve never met in person, however briefly. The rest can be people with whom I’ve shaken hands or exchanged pleasantries, but didn’t get into a real conversation with.
• They can be from any social media platform (twitter, facebook, flickr, sports forums, etc), but they have to be people with whom I’ve already establish some sort of online relationship (friends on facebook, I follow them on twitter, foursquare fan, subscribe to their blog, etc). On platforms where reciprocation is not required (eg twitter), it’s enough that I follow them. It doesn’t count if I meet them at an event and then follow them on twitter or subscribe to their blog.
• We don’t have to become best buds in real life as a result of meeting in person. That’s not what this is about.
• While I have my own short list of people I’d like to meet during this challenge, I’m not publishing it or holding myself accountable to it.

Of course, this is my challenge and therefore my rules, so I may end up amending them as circumstances warrant. However, I see this as a real personal challenge and am treating it as such.

I’m going to be using the hashtag #10N3 on twitter if you’d like to follow my progress or adopt your own challenge. If you decide to join along with me in this goal, please let me know and I’ll post a link.

March 3 update

Earlier this year, I gave myself the challenge of converting 10 online relationships into offline, in-real-life relationships by the end of March. I called it my #10N3 Challenge. I’m nearly two-thirds through the challenge period and thought it was time to provide an update.

I’m right on track

So, how am I doing at it? Surprisingly, I’m right on track. Through March 3, I’ve made 9 connections—which means that I’m actually ahead of schedule. I also have #10 scheduled for later this week, so barring unforeseen circumstances, I should meet my goal. But I’m not planning on stopping there. I’d like to exceed my goal and hit at least 12 by the end of the challenge. We’ll see how it goes.

The surprise so far

I’m feeling pretty good about how I’ve done in meeting the challenge so far. It’s been great to connect in person with people I’ve grown to know over the last several months or, in some cases, years. It’s amazing how easy it is to connect with people after only simple and occasional online interactions.

But, to be honest, I’ve been just as pleased with the other relationships I’ve fostered during this time. While for one reason or another, they didn’t count towards the #10N3 Challenge, I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with them.

Final results

It’s April now, and the final results are in. I exceeded my goal by 1, converting 11 online relationships into IRL ones within my three month goal. I nearly added two additional ones, but both of those were postponed for later this month.

All in all, it’s been a worthy endeavor, and I anticipate that several of these IRL relationships will continue to deepen over time.

The post Online to offline relationships: My 10 in 3 challenge appeared first on rscottjones.

I know this is a random question, but I have a friend in Denver that has been looking everywhere for Dublin Dr. Pepper and I found a photo on your flickr stream of a Dublin Dr. Pepper on tap somewhere in Denver’s Central Business District from last year. Do you happen to remember where exactly you found this?

The post Finding a Dublin Dr Pepper in Denver appeared first on rscottjones.