Couchsurfing

One of the best decisions I've made over the last decade is to participate in Couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is generically letting travelers stay in your home for free, just for the experience of meeting people.  Couchsurfing is also specifically the corporation that runs the couchsurfing.com website and its associated app.  There are other websites that facilitate traveler hosting, such as Warm Showers.

Key to the couchsurfing.com implementation of the idea is a rating/reviewing system and the idea of preserving one's reputation.  The backpackers comment on the places they've stayed.  The hosts comment on the people that have stayed with them.  A reputation is built up, and, hopefully, safety and civility for hosts and guests is ensured by the online reputation system.  To be honest, it all works quite well.  I've had only one bad experience out of the three dozen groups that have stayed with me.

But there absolutely have been tragic events associated with couchsurfing: theft, sexual assault, and a couple of murders have occurred, as well as a not insignificant amount of douchebaggery that surrounds creepy guys interacting with single women.  But for experienced guests and hosts, I would wager that the safety and security is much greater than other interactions that one has with strangers.

Thinking about all of the current discussions that swirl about about power dynamics, sexual assault, the gig economy, toxic masculinity, and tech, I have put some thought into why couchsurfing.com hasn't degenerated into a complete nightmare like most online communities tend to do.  My conclusion is that power dynamics are weak.  I, as a host, don't particularly fear couchsurfing.com the website.  If they are rude to me, I'll just quit.  If putting up people in my home became inconvenient, I would just quit.  The people that stay with me, if they didn't like me, there are tens of thousands of hotel rooms in the city they could go to.  There is so little gain or loss to be had by participating.  The idea requires, at least on the part of the host, a sense of altruism.

But then again, participating in free software and open source also requires a sense of altruism on the part of the volunteers, yet it doesn't always achieve the same community spirit.

One thing I like about backpacker communities vs free software communities is that there is greater freedom of religion in backpacker communities.  When I head off to mass on Sunday, my guests never ridicule me.  They are there for intercultural exchange, so when someone does something out of the world urban normal, it is odd and interesting.  I have never confessed to be a church-goer in a free software context.  I fear the consequences.

(On couchsurfing.com, they claim there are 70,000 hosts in Los Angeles.  This is a lie.  There are about 300 active hosts and they are hammered with requests daily.)