So I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't know Couchsurfing or what the big deal is. Couchsurfing has been one of the most important things in my life, so I'll do my best to explain why it's so special.
The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in advance and give arrival times to the minute, while others send a message at 9pm the same night asking if you're free. Some people ask to stay one night, some three, some far more; some bring bags of delicious food and artwork of their culture and some bring nothing.
I mostly host, and I've had all of the above - and then some. You have an incredibly diverse group of people. I've met artists, musicians, dancers - everyone from a Syrian man who lived under ISIS for years to an evangelical Christian woman who wanted to try shrooms.
The beautiful thing is that it's anything you want it to be. People have profiles that are often filled out with a good amount of detail (I usually skip the skimpy profiles) so you can pick out whoever or whatever you want. You want a pastry chef? You want a violinist? You want an architect? You want someone tidy and on-time or a hitchhiking hippie? Simply search for one to host or stay with.
The friendships and relationships I've made through Couchsurfing have been some of the best and most interesting I could have asked for. And the best part - you can do it all from home, traveling the world from the comfort of your couch.
Anyway, that's the beauty of it. I really hope that the network of people can be saved. Long term, I think it can, with something like BeWelcome, but of course it's a network effect problem - no hosts=no guests.
If anyone is curious about Couchsurfing (or wants to couchsurf my boat in the Netherlands - seriously, anyone is welcome, please come!) then feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile.)
Every woman I've met on couch surfing has been a victim of some kind of sexual harassment or violence due to someone they meet on couchsurfing. Basically they stay with a guy and he has expectations and is vocal if not forceful about it. Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them, didn't expect them to sleep with me, didn't ask them for sex, etc. I hosted for two years living in Berlin.
That being said I also had some amazing experiences through couchsurfing.
I used to be very involved with couchsurfing in the late 2000s and early 2010s I had a high number of women couchsurfers, which came about from having positive feedback from other female couchsurfers, because like you they had their own bed and I wasn't trying to have sex with them.
It started being a concern because I began to think that people looking at my profile would assume that I was just looking to host women which wasn't the case at all. But from speaking to my guests, they said they chose me to host them because of the positive feedback from other female couchsurfers.
I do miss couchsurfing, I met some great and interesting people and have been thinking about getting back into it but have concerns about the direction couchsurfing has gone. I now live on a narrowboat on the canals in the UK and I think it'd make an interesting place for couchsurfers to stay.
I hosted a lot of people in summer of 2008. All of my housemates were into couchsurfing too (mixed gender house: two guys and three girls, that probably helped), so there was a period where we always hosted at least one person. One weekend, for a couchsurfing event in my city, we hosted 12 people at once! We eventually stopped hosting because people got busy and priorities changed, but our experience as hosts was very positive and I still attended local couchsurfing meetups for the next year or so. I made many friends and contacts through it.
We never received any negative feedback and were in high demand. Aside from that one super busy weekend, where things did get a bit cramped (but people knew in advance that it would be), nobody shared any beds or couches and couchsurfers had rooms separate from the hosts. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sharing beds with the host is... creepy (unless the person was given their own bed/couch and they mutually decided they wanted to share a bed, of course).
I miss couchsurfing too. I stopped being part of it around the time it got a sense for being a bit commercial. My circle of couchsurfing friends did it for the cultural exchange and at some point it drifted from that to just free accommodation and drinking parties. At least that’s the sense I got.
You certainly do hear creepy stories about hosts surprising guests by only having one bed. And more than that. Of course, if everything is mutually agreed then that's fine.
I was actually pretty surprised when I was speaking to another couchsurfing host how many women he'd hosted that he'd slept with. Perhaps I'm (or was) naive but it never occurred to me that people would use it for hooking up.
I also know someone, a very handsome dude in his mid 20s who had a bit of a wanderlust for a year after a brief stint in the military, who also got plenty of harassment from dudes he was staying with. As in, two of his hosts in Italy cooked and ate naked with him ("no strings attached"), and one really creepy dude tried to touch him while he was sleeping (in a separate location)... which obviously didn't end well for the host as this dude was fresh out of the military.
I know women who get harassed pretty frequently walking down the street, there would be very few things they could do if they avoided all places they have been harassed more than twice.
Wow! I've hosted a good bit and that's completely different from my experience.
> Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them
It sounds like you were taking a lot of the desperate people on the site that aren't mostly in it for the cultural exchange but to save $5. Because here's the thing - everyone's profile has a section detailing what kind of room/bed the Couchsurfer will get. A "shared bed" is a red flag the size of Russia.
That's the other thing: I like to read the CS profiles of the guys accused of being creepy. 95% of the time, it's VERY obvious who they are. Guys will have "sex" in their interests, only have a shared tiny bed, or pictures of them shirtless, or 100% references from young women, etc., etc. That's the beauty of Couchsurfing - if you see a profile that you're not 100% confident in, then just move on; there are fifteen million people.
The real problem on Couchsurfing stems from people not reading each others' profiles. People get greedy, see a way to save on hotels, then send out copy-paste message spam that's not unique to your profile. I only host people who send me a message personalized to my profile, and even then that's after a lot of reading their profile, references, etc. I simply ignore the copy-pasted messages - if you don't care who you end up with, then you're not Couchsurfing for the interesting experience, you're doing it to save a few bucks.
If you don't read profiles and carefully select, then you're basically rolling the dice. This is the #1 cause of bad Couchsurfing experiences.
TL;DR: if you choose a host without reading, Couchsurfing just becomes Omegle IRL.
(If you're a woman reading this and want to Couchsurf 100% safely, you can do things like only surf families, other women, places where you'll get your own room, etc etc.)
Couchsurfing was founded after Casey Fenton had a plane ticket to Iceland but no money for a hotel. So, he spammed the University of Reykjavik's e-mail directory asking to stay on someone's couch. Aiming to save money on accommodation has ALWAYS been a thing on CS. Yes, it is great when cultural exchange and friendship arise on top of the exchange of free accommodation, but it doesn't happen with every guest or with every host.
Also, as a 2005 signup, I can attest that copy/paste requests have always been a thing. In fact, initially they were the norm. Back when travelers used internet cafes and were paying for every minute, it was understandable that they needed to send out a wave of requests quickly without being able to personalize them. Even now, I prefer copy/paste as a host because I can sympathize with travelers and don’t want them to jump through silly hoops.
Yeah, I know how the site started :) But Couchsurfing is a lot different from the CS of nearly two decades ago. It's several orders of magnitude bigger, and it's got many, many travelers who never host, only surf, with an ungrateful attitude who see you as a free hotel. I saw downthread you said you switched to other platforms (which is great, they need to grow!) but they are a lot different from 2020 Couchsurfing, where I get a constant flood of messages and regularly get messages from people essentially demanding a free hotel and food, occasionally for the most ridiculous of reasons (like that they're here for a conference and want to pocket the reimbursement.)
And I have no problem with people that want to save money, but if that's the - only - thing they're using CS for, with no interest in ever talking to me, then I'm just not going to host them.
It's admirable to take in anyone, but it's pretty rare. The vast majority of hosts I know (and have surfed) will only take people in who have read their profiles.
Like I mentioned, there's a safety component to this (for men as well!) but also a practical side - many people live a good bit outside the city they're listed in, some people go to bed early or late, some people play music all night, some people are nudists, some people have a shorter sleeping spot (couch/bed/etc)... If you don't read profiles you're just rolling the dice - even if you just want a free bed!
By the way, I think I'll try to be more active on BW/Trustroots (hosting mostly.) Any advice for how to get my profile seen? On CS I get absolutely flooded with messages (and often get great, well written messages) - on BW and Trustroots I've gotten nothing.
Again, as a member for many years, I constantly heard year after year "CS is different than it used to be. There are so many freeloaders now!" But when I signed up in 2005, two of the demographics sending me requests were academics coming to town for a conference, or e.g. guys whose girlfriend kicked them out and they needed a place to crash. I didn't see this change significantly in the years before I bailed in 2016, and I always found it easy to ignore them and host backpackers.
Really, for me the negative change in CS over the years was the explosion in hosts who were sedentary. If you don't do shoestring travel as a lifestyle yourself, you won't be able to sympathize with your potential guest's needs. For a site that, in Europe, spread initially through the hitchhiking community, I was appalled to see so many CS hosts by 2008 who looked down on free travel, and threw around words like "freeloader".
I also can't agree with people complaining about guests who need their hosts to feed them. If they are ordinary backpackers who just budgeted poorly, that is one thing, but if they are intentionally trying to live on no money, that is another thing entirely. Among the freespirited alternative traveler community who founded CS, there have always been people traveling by providence, and they have been among my best and most memorable guests. Their stories and positive attitudes far outpaid the pasta and salad I made for them.
Finally, you can't assume that guests who write a non-copy/paste request actually read your profile. Sure, they may have quickly scanned your profile for things they can mention in a request, but that doesn't mean they care about the details. For years I could only offer a mattress on the floor and clearly said so in my profile, and yet so many of the guests who wrote ostensibly personalized requests either didn't catch that, or when they accepted my invitation and arrived at my home they complained about it. Again, writers of copy/paste are just as likely to be appreciative or not.
As for getting requests on BW or Trustroots, either live in a place where many travelers want to go to, or become a superhost whose house is open to all travelers and word of the good vibe there attracts people to your region even if initially they don't know what to do there. Those are your only options, really. However, this looks to be the biggest wave of CS refugees ever, so you may start getting more requests regardless.
This isn't even the case though. I heard from many people and stayed with some people where you would get there and they would be like "yeah i dont have that anymore". couch surfing also became super obnoxious in some places. Like in Berlin I would host anybody, but in Tokyo basically nobody would host you unless you could demonstrate your awesomeness some how either by cooking a 10 course meal, being super model hot, etc.
I don't think you are wrong, sometimes it is obvious you are walking into a bad situation, but wtf is the point of couchsurfing if its not to save money? lol.
TBH I think the real problem with couchsurfing is that it was more of a passing fad, cultural phenomenon rather than something that will stay forever. My guess is someone will come up with a more clever solution and the generation that used couchsurfing will keep using it and a new generation of travelers will use the new thing.
It's very frustrating to spend a lot of actual energy and time on trying to reduce sexual assault on platforms like this - only to get sniped for supposed "victim blaming" by an anonymous person on the internet because I didn't virtue signal hard enough.
You want a virtue signal? Here you go: sexual assault is the fault of the assaulter, not the assaulted.
Unlike most people passing by this thread, I have actual experience with this topic. I'm close to several women who have Couchsurfed solo, and I have hosted countless young women (men as well, of course.)
If a discussion about American gun deaths came up, it would not be victim blaming to explain the context and the source of most of these deaths.
My comment had several purposes. One was to explain the most common reason for sexual assault on the platform. Another was to help people getting into Couchsurfing. There will undoubtedly be a number of HN users joining Couchsurfing as part of this thread, and I wanted to pass along valuable safety information to any women among them.
Couchsurfing has had an incredibly positive impact on my life as well. I've made a lot of lifelong friends and learned a lot about the world and different cultures through the people I've met. The app is atrocious and barely usable, but the community is terrific.
More than anything, Couchsurfing taught me wonderful things can happen when you embrace serendipity. Couchsurfing is an important antidote to a world that seems increasingly fearful of strangers.
Yeah, that's the really wonderful thing about Couchsurfing. It's a whole web of beautiful trust. People in the first world are scared of strangers by default: Couchsurfing flips that on its head. Although I still try to stay safe, I now generally trust strangers and it's made my life so much richer.
Paradoxically, trusting strangers has also made my life safer.
In Armenia, I met an old woman who then helped me get through a dangerous area and told me not to worry - she'd protect me like her own grandson :) In another country, I made friends with an army officer who watched over me, and somewhere else a truck driver helped me through a tough border crossing.
People also seem to be scared of that one crazy person who'll stab or rob them. Here's one thing I realized: even the "bad" members of society are not bad to everyone. A mugger doesn't mug his friends and many murderers have been loving parents. Getting to know someone - aside from being interesting - means they'll see you as another human being, not some target. (Most of the time. Of course, always use your judgment, and if something feels off, just leave.)
I hope CS gets reborn. Who knows, it might happen - maybe they'll run out of cash, put the site up for sale, and someone will rebuild it as it should be. Or maybe the current leadership will do a 180 (unlikely, but who knows!)
The community is already coming together to rebuild. The CS meetup in Auckland is rebranding as BeWelcome. Kaohsiung is discussing it.
I'm sad that all those good memories will be tinged with pain by this betrayal, but it's given me a good reason to get back in touch with old friends, and invite them to BW. I wholeheartedly agree with your descriptions of CS and trusting strangers; you've had some great stories!
Oddly enough, your experience with CouchSurfing very much matches my initial experience with AirBnb, back in the days when they were still small.
My experience with CouchSurfing, on the other hand, was weird. When me and my roommates (3 guys, 2 girls) signed up our shared house (in waking distance of a touristic city center), we were expecting to see lots of backpackers and tourists our age. Instead, most of our guest requests were middle-aged women with a strong urge to point out how adventurous they were feeling. I believe we not once had a guest request from a guy.
That is indeed very unusual, I've never heard of an experience like that! I wonder what happened, maybe they were all part of a group or something?
Middle aged women make up a very small percentage of Couchsurfing, and when I see them they're usually hosts only. I get a ton of requests, and I think it'd be more likely for me to get a message from an astronaut than two middle aged women.
I just checked my references and my friends' references and didn't find one woman over 40. I really wonder what happened in your case!
Did you ever actually meet an astronaut through couchsurfing?
The weirdest stay-over that I ever had was a Korean religious pilgrimage who mistook me for a monk because apparently one had lived in my apartment before I moved in.
Not an astronaut but a couple who had been working on the Antarctic (he was a driver, she was working in the kitchens/cafe/bar) during the summer season.
They had loads of really interesting stories and it sounded fascinating. They'd talked about how those who had done the winter season (24 hours of pitch blackness for 4 months) were all a little bit on edge and twitchy.
I'm so glad this comment is getting so much attention because Couchsurfing really is one of the best things to ever happen to me - not only with all the incredible experiences but also because it made me a kinder, more trusting and better person.
Really, Couchsurfing changed my life. Ignore the fact that the app is a dumpster fire and just give it a shot - or better, try BeWelcome or Trustroots.
And again, if anyone has any questions about Couchsurfing or wants to start but is confused (or wants to couchsurf my boat!) please send me an email (it's in my profile.)
I had some really good experiences on couchsurfing (hosting and surfing) about 10 years ago, then I moved to a very touristic part of the world, and started getting 90% of requests from couples who were basically looking to get free accommodation for their holidays. I accepted the first 3 times, and each time they would arrive in the evening, unpack, drive to a restaurant they had already booked, come back to sleep and then leave first thing in the morning.
A key technique to avoid those situations was the "poisoned pill": buried in your profile there is some keyword they must include in their request.
With that (which I copied once I was reading a full descriptive profile) you get a great filter. I have done a good share of CS, both as host and guest, over the last ~10 years, having either good or amazing experiences.
It's a way to check if someone read your entire profile, so you can filter out people who are just looking for a free place to stay. For example, you could hide the word "pineapple" two paragraphs in and ask that people mention it in their first message to you.
All my experiences with couchsurfing were on the weird side, as a friend, friendly but serious kind of guy who is a weirdo magnet published the home we were renting together.
We had an artist which might had a mental issue or maybe just acting as he constantly confused who we were and told the same histories again and again. Some guy who in his own words, was trying to start his own religious cult. And some guy who brought a lot of peyote and blow the kitchen trying to destilate the mescaline.
Those were pretty interesting times, I definitely appreciate the experiences I had, but I also don't think I host anybody now (or at least not until my son is older).
Couchsurfing was such a magical experience for me. I was a bit lonely in a new city and went along to a party hosted by another CouchSurfing host. I made two lifelong friends and got to know another wonderful group of creative & kind people.
I probably hosted 10 times and stayed with people about the same. Each time it was such a wonderful experience - by far the best way of traveling when I was in my 20s. Truly an amazing exercise in trust, as well as building experience of the kindness of strangers (with memorable adventures).
Aw, that's so great! It really warms my heart to hear about all the magical Couchsurfing experiences everyone's had. The kindness of strangers is such an amazing thing, isn't it?
Couchsurfing is so interesting. Its success relies on it never becoming mainstream.
It's like those word-of-mouth-only parties that are so great but if enough people hear about them, they are no longer any good.
I had a similar experience with drum circles in Toronto, Canada. They were this hippie heaven of people coming together in a park and playing drums once a week in the summertime. Other people would come by and picnic, sit around, dance, hula hoop, whatever.
Once it got popular enough, the park would be littered by the end of the day, so local residents complained and got drum circles banned, so we don't have drum circles anymore, because they were too good and a complete non-profit :)
Is that really the case? I couch surfed years ago. From memory I think couchsurfing.com has a reputation system where if people stay at your house, you gain points that give you priority when staying with someone else. so it's kinda like a system for bypassing money in exchanging accommodation. Ideally, if many people start swarming the system looking for free places to stay, it will just mean they won't get chosen, and things keep operating as normal.
I hear you. Maybe I'm just weary of people, having lived in a city my entire adult life and yet forming few lasting bonds, that I have to wonder about the reward/cost ratio of couch surfing.
What are the chances of hosting somebody you don't like? What are the chances of showing up to someone's couch and feeling yikes?
I imagine the odds are reduced if the people using the service are largely of a similar ilk. Similar ilk works well if the service is carefully grown over time via careful word of mouth. People tend to behave much better if you know each other through a mutual friend or acquaintance. If the service grows big enough, that invisible bond of a small community will be gone and I imagine that invisible bond is what the original poster was so fond of.
It's like that house party example - if enough people show up, that delicate balance of meeting new people by being introduced through a mutual friend and having the time to make a connection with a stranger is broken and you end up 'networking' instead of connecting, as is the case with most tech meet-ups I've attended :)
From what I understand, couchsurfing in the beginning was mostly western college students trying to travel. As such, the chance of meeting someone similar to yourself was very high. By now, not so much.
Like the poster you're responding to, I haven't used couchsurfing in a few years - left due to life changes, and being annoyed by earlier stages of the commercialization that the article talks about. But, prior to that I semi-regularly hosted and used it in my own travels a couple times, over maybe 8 or 9 years and a few countries.
It worked very much as described in that post, and didn't seem to have the problems listed in yours. The biggest problem I remember with CS, was people trying to inappropriately use it to get laid.
I want to add my own anecdotal experience to confirm yours - it worked out well, even when I was a novice (& when hosting novices). It was also easy to not be a novice anymore - just host! There was always demand for hosts.
The real problem is the same that has been plaguing the web in general - there seems to be no more room for just doing good stuff while trying to break-even or even making a modest profit. Everything has to be a "startup" with the possibility of making its founders millionaires (or more).
I got on the internet in the early/mid 90s when the web was new & for a few years it was mostly non-commercial and ran by enthusiasts and hobbyists acting according to the hacker ethos of sharing, openness, decentralization & world improvement. You could see these principles for years even behind decidedly commercial sites such as craigslist.
It didn't last for long but that's the kind of ideology couch surfing originally started in & it's sad but unsurprising to see where it ended up in.
you are right, i am describing a hypothetical situation where couchsurfing becomes mainstream. it works now, but will it still work when there are 10 or 100 times as many couchsurfers?
not everyone has the ability to host. especially young people who live in student housing, or in a shared apartment, or even still with their parents, may not be able to host, but those are the ones most likely to travel and look for a couch.
> I had a similar experience with drum circles in Toronto, Canada. They were this hippie heaven of people coming together in a park and playing drums once a week in the summertime. Other people would come by and picnic, sit around, dance, hula hoop, whatever.
My brother lived near a big ole drum circle in Santa Cruz, CA and had the same experience. Originally it was a small crew and they weren't a problem. They hung out, didn't get too loud, and were respectful of the properties nearby. Definitely some LSD and other substances floating around, but nothing out of control.
Couple years later it's essentially a quasi-homeless community and lots of problems with litter, noise, and, eventually, overdoses.
In China and Vietnam, I found that the locals use the site only to meet foreigners. For example an teacher in Vietnam asked me to be a guest during an English class.
I traveled by bicycle. This meant I could use also the Warm Showers website. This worked extremely well in Europe and the US. I had wonderful hosts in New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Bavaria, Zurich, Washington DC, Berlin, Czech Republic, Dallas, Houston, Baton Rouge.
And in the Netherlands I used Vrienden Op De Fiets, which is more expensive, but also very nice.
Hah! I had the same experience in Vietnam. It was in Hanoi and I had such a blast. The students of the class took me around and showed me places for the rest of the week.
I had a similar experience with the couchsurfing community 6 or 7 years ago. Beyond the basic hosting concept, there was also a large group of people who would meet up regularly in my city, which made it really easy to find activities for the guests you had in town. I really hope they find a way to keep going.
Have there been any cases where something bad has happened to either a host or a guest? (Such are the thoughts that consume my middle aged mind, I think I was more trusting when younger but never to the extent that you are). BTW, I think your attitude is great.
Yes, of course - Couchsurfing has fifteen million members and has been around nearly two decades IIRC.
Nothing has happened to me or anyone I know (or anyone I know knows.) And I don't think anyone should be afraid of things like murder, kidnapping, etc. While pretty much every high profile app/website these days has a big tragedy happen, Couchsurfing only had one - I actually think that's very low for the number of times people have Couchsurfed. (If you're thinking of Airbnb as the safe alternative, it's had far more gruesome and tragic events.)
But the thing to be careful with using Couchsurfing isn't a microscopic chance of murder, it's creepy hosts. There are always hosts that are clearly using Couchsurfing as a dating site. The way around this is just to read profiles and references.
Of course, everyone sets their own comfort level. Maybe a woman would only want to stay with other women; or maybe only with families, or with gay men. Maybe you'll only want to stay with someone if you'll get your own private room (you can filter for only those if you want.) Or only by verified profiles with 20+ references. Then there are red flags - Does a man have only references from women? That's a red flag.
That's the beauty of it: it's a completely choose-your-own-adventure kinda thing. If you want to stay with a family with kids in the mountains you can do that; if you want to join a clearly wild local on their quest to do illegal activities that will leave you with a hell of a story to tell, then that's also possible.
I would encourage anyone to still think about it no matter how old they may be - some of my best hosts got into CS late in life. It's possible to Couchsurf in a "paranoid" manner (for example only staying with families) it just takes a bit more effort and planning :)
Sure, this does happen, but it's very rare. Anecdotally the most common issue is non-violent sexual assault - e.g. guys hitting on girls. That's largely a risk for solo female travelers unfortunately. If you travel as a couple, for example, the risk is far less. On the other hand the vast majority of solo travelers, male and female, don't have any issues.
There are some safety nets in place, like you can get verified by couchsurfing for a small fee. It's a trust system, people are encouraged to vouch for each other. If you're worried, then only visit/host people who have a lot of good reviews, or who can be vouched for by someone else in the community. If you were asking from the perspective of a prospective traveler I would suggest going to local couchsurfing meetups rather than randomly finding people to stay with. Often you can get recommendations directly and gut feel is very valuable.
It's about the power dynamic. You're talking about someone who isn't from the area, who doesn't know anyone nearby, and who is supposed to sleep at your place. If you are aggressively flirting with them, they may be forced into the impression that either they sleep with you or they sleep on the street. And that would definitely be assault
They are women who have chosen to stay at a male stranger's house. Do you think women are completely naïve about how the world works? I've known two women who couch surf and it was de rigueur to have sex with their hosts.
> They are women who have chosen to stay at a male stranger's house
They are people who have chosen to stay at a stranger's house
> Do you think women are completely naïve about how the world works
No, but I don't think they want to have to take every decision based on probability of getting raped
> I've known two women who couch surf and it was de rigueur to have sex with their hosts
And I know male hosts who had sex with their male visitors. Does that mean that if I couchsurf at a man's flat I should be expecting intercourse for my bed?
You seem to be confused between what you think should be true versus what actually is true.
If you think women can afford to take the same risks as men when travelling then I just really don't know what to say to you. That's just hopelessly naïve. Attractive girls learn very early on that every man wants to have sex with them. It's just part of life for them.
> Does that mean that if I couchsurf at a man's flat I should be expecting intercourse for my bed?
No, but if I were you I would at least consider that there might be a "misunderstanding" leading to you having to find alternative accommodation.
> No, but if I were you I would at least consider that there might be a "misunderstanding" leading to you having to find alternative accommodation.
Why, on a site like couchsurfing, would there be any implied sex, or opportunity for misunderstanding around 'sex for surfing'? It's blatantly outside the standards and norms of the community.
I think he's arguing (and I would agree) that it is blatantly WITHIN the standards and norms for some dudes to complete ignore community mores and bend/break every rule imaginable to get laid. The risk is non-zero. At the individual level, everyone should acknowledge the risk, assess it, and implement control measures to reduce its potential impacts on you, personally. To fail to account for it is simply dangerously naive.
I don't think I've used Couchsurfer since....2012? Roughly the same time I discovered Tinder. I absolutely treated CS as a dating site where you had to be extremely discrete/low-key in your approach. I rarely offered my couch but did offer local tour guide-like services to cute women which was essentially a first date. I would never consider staying at a male host's place; even as a Marine I would assume the rape/murder risk too high. Maybe I'm just a misanthropic cynic but I don't trust anyone to behave themselves. I also have never seen the appeal of the "broke backpacker" travel methodology, perhaps colored by experiences living out of a backpack in the military, which usually sucks. If I have the money to fly halfway around the world, I should have the money to afford comfortable private accommodations. If I'm going to mingle, I'd prefer to mingle with the locals rather than other foreigners on a shoestring budget (or rich people PRETENDING to be on a shoestring budget).
Yes, dudes are going to be creepy. The earth is round. Some will work outside the spirit of couchsurfing. Yourself included, to a degree. Ok.
But he also was arguing, IIUC, that the sex for stay is implied for women. I get that people will use it that way, but implying that it is any sort of norm is a very perverted view of couchsurfing. One that I never experienced, or found to be normal from many people i've talked to along the way.
>>>But he also was arguing, IIUC, that the sex for stay is implied for women.
Ok, I see the distinction you are making but....I think all women should operate under the assumption that if a man invites you into a private residence, for ANY reason, sex is on the menu. At least that way one is never (negatively) surprised. If I have daughters I think this is an important thing to drill into their heads. A guy says he wants to show you his collection of Warhammer 40,000 figures, at 1pm? You still won't be taken aback when he's suddenly pantsless.
>>>implying that it is any sort of norm is a very perverted view of couchsurfing. One that I never experienced, or found to be normal from many people i've talked to along the way.
I think my experience is just the opposite, but about 95% of my social circle is manwhores, the other 5% are males who aren't manwhores, but wish they were (a mix of younger, inexperienced officers or civilian IT/engineer guys). But this is why I'm on HN, to step outside of my bubble and exchange experiences with people with radically different backgrounds and perspectives.
LOL @ warhammer. I understand the sentiment, and the reason one might prepare one's daughter. I think that is healthy, in preparing them to deal life. But that doesn't mean it should be accepted, tacitly or otherwise.
>I think my experience is just the opposite, but about 95% of my social circle is manwhores
I get ya. Been there. I just feel we need to move from is implied consent. Couchsurfing and implying consent means the women either puts up with it (leveraged consent is ugly) or ends up on the streets. That is not good, and can be avoided if people are just more forward, even tactfully so. I suspect that this leverage is exactly why they choose the couchsurfing, and that mixed without transparency is ... eeesh, imo.
I'm not apart of the "tinder" generation per se, but I think the (at times gross) honesty is largely positive. People who scoff at the screen shots of people openly discussing sex are being prudish and don't understand that merely being transparent is a net positive.
I didn't mean it was sex for stay, just that for many people the whole experience was very much sexual. I mean, for crying out loud, it's a young, attractive woman going to stay at some dude's bachelor pad. Some people here must think women are so stupid. They know exactly what's going on.
Sorry I kinda jumped subjects mid-post from Couchsurfing to backpacking, after reading some comments of how many CS guests are just trying to get a dirt-cheap roof over their head and don't interact much with their host. I don't recall many "local single woman hosting single guy" posts back in 2011-12 when I used CS anyway, not for places I was considering (Eastern Europe and SE Asia).
No. But if you host on CS in order to make advances towards women, that is creepy behavior and not what the site is intended for. If you want to get laid, use Tinder etc. instead.
A girl I met on Tinder used CS to find interesting people and have sex with them. It seems like something men and women have been denying but engaging in for centuries.
I couchsurfed throughout my 20s and it wasn't uncommon to hook up with the host/guest if they were cool. Any app that's geared toward meeting people is going to be like that, regardless of one's puritan views. That's exactly part of the human connection that the site is intended for, like it or not.
It's no less of a potential hookup app for women as it is for men. You don't think women want to me interesting guys to fuck? Else women wouldn't even stay with men. They already avoid the guys with bad reviews.
The moral flaw "the crowd" made was that it was men attempting to coerce sex from other men. Lot wanted to solve the problem by throwing his virgin daughters into the crowd.. which was apparently a perfectly righteous thing to do.
And anyways, that's why you shouldn't get your morality from an ancient book from a very different culture. Please don't throw any of your family members into crowds of rapists, it's not polite.
There is a similar story in Judges 19–21, the story about The Levite's Concubine[0]. The main difference is the lack of supernatural elements in this story. Instead the outcome is civil war among the Israelites.
You're making a common mistake seen in these discussions by creating a tautology by defining "hitting on" as always a gross violation of hospitality. Or something that obviously makes someone uncomfortable.
Let's not forget that hitting on someone is a continuum that ranges from flirtatious banter that you can enjoy with anyone to one's twisted idea of what hitting on someone entails that makes all their guests uncomfortable. Like asking "wanna fuck?"
Yes, hitting on someone in a way that makes them uncomfortable does make them uncomfortable and makes you a bad host. But I worry that you have an unhealthy understanding of flirting if you don't think it's something you or anyone can do without making someone else uncomfortable.
In some contexts, yes it can be. If that involves, for example, unwanted physical contact. A broader term is harassment, but either is bad. IANAL, and the legal definition may vary by location and situation.
I have to wonder how much of this thread is just stereotypically sheltered programmers not realizing that you can have consensual sex without any rigmarole, and that many women are actually looking for it if you're a cool guy that they like, even if they pick you as the house they want to sleep in while traveling, which in my experience often involves some beers with the host.
One clue is that it's just focused on men flirting with women that's inappropriate here.
All I can gather is that some HNers need to find a new way to low-key flirt with people that doesn't make them(self) think "oh, this must be sexual harassment, this is bad".
I think people are just pointing out there’s a distinction between:
1) hosting someone with no expectations, hitting it off and consensually getting together
2) hosting someone with the uncommunicated expectation they will sleep with you and pressuring someone alone in your house in a strange country until they consent.
The programmers brain easily gets stuck on a thought loop similar to the _categorical imperative_; in which if something is true, it must be applicable in _all_ circumstances.
Human life however is not an infinite array of possibilities, but stay in very specific zones for most of the time.
Think about it; exponential behavior would propably be deemed bad for most things out there in code, but if you knew the iterations never peaked above 3, it doesen't apply. Much like in real life, you have concrete real values that never really change, unlike the abstract unknowable problems you're used to dealing with.
I've participated in couch surfing for years when I was younger (single/childless) & the worst that happened (I hosted a lot more than I surfed) was that some people are just not that nice/interesting. I had many more positive experiences.
Keep in mind I'm a pretty big, able-bodied guy & at the time I was in my 20s. If I was a small woman living alone I may have skipped hosting single men.
Great comment. I've used couchsurfing in 2008-2009 a bit, but never to stay - just to meet local people when I was traveling for work in foreign places.
The weird thing is, AirBnB came along, and I keep reading the sentence "nobody believed that hosting a stranger at home would work", which made me internally scream "but there's couchsurfing!!".
In fact, I think that Couchsurfing (the website/company) had a chance to become like AirBnB. They didn't. Maybe intentionally.
In some ways. In other ways, everything on a computer can and might be recorded so it’s prudent to stay away from borderline illegal or inappropriate things if it can come back to you.
I love reading about your enthusiasm for Couchsurfing and your philosophy that comes with it. You should write a book. I'd love reading real stories, along with some reflections. It sounds like a nice way to meet people as they are. Authenticity is scarce and we need it.
The number of sexual relationships that start off with the explicit intention of being sexual are vanishingly small. Grindr is an exception because it's aimed at gay men. Most other platforms provide at least a small amount of reasonable doubt. On Tinder you merely select which demographics you are "interested in". There is absolutely no mention of sex or sexual preferences on the app. And Tinder is considered one of the more obvious ones.
If Couchsurfing was truly about meeting people then the profiles wouldn't have gender and age on them. But they do.
Well said. The whole gambit of sex is that you have to suss it out from each other with tact and awareness without either person being explicit about it -- hell, even on a taxi ride to a motel to do the damn act.
That means that it's always potentially on the table any time you have human connection going on, couchsurfing included. Nothing about couchsurfing means this isn't happening or shouldn't be happening. It's just part of life and human connection.
After reading these comments, I do think that the miscommunication here is a lack of shared understanding of what flirting is.
I presume some people's imaginations immediately go to a host making guests uncomfortable by laying unwanted attention on thick, like the stereotype of the guy coming out in a short robe and hiking his leg up on the arm of the couch.
But I would like people who imagine that to know that most flirting lives in the banter area where both people are having a good time.
Not going to lie the idea that some people I interact with think sex is always going to be on the table wigs me out. There’s a wide variety of libidos and sexualities among humans, many of which don’t operate in the manner being expressed above. (Eg. Demisexuality.)
Sure there is. But the vast majority of people have a normal sex drive. Every single person on earth is the result of a man and woman having sex. It's one of the single most important things in life for most people.
I don't genuinely know if it is the vast majority of people consider having a sexual encounter at all times whenever they interact with another human being.
The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in advance and give arrival times to the minute, while others send a message at 9pm the same night asking if you're free. Some people ask to stay one night, some three, some far more; some bring bags of delicious food and artwork of their culture and some bring nothing.
I mostly host, and I've had all of the above - and then some. You have an incredibly diverse group of people. I've met artists, musicians, dancers - everyone from a Syrian man who lived under ISIS for years to an evangelical Christian woman who wanted to try shrooms.
The beautiful thing is that it's anything you want it to be. People have profiles that are often filled out with a good amount of detail (I usually skip the skimpy profiles) so you can pick out whoever or whatever you want. You want a pastry chef? You want a violinist? You want an architect? You want someone tidy and on-time or a hitchhiking hippie? Simply search for one to host or stay with.
The friendships and relationships I've made through Couchsurfing have been some of the best and most interesting I could have asked for. And the best part - you can do it all from home, traveling the world from the comfort of your couch.
Anyway, that's the beauty of it. I really hope that the network of people can be saved. Long term, I think it can, with something like BeWelcome, but of course it's a network effect problem - no hosts=no guests.
If anyone is curious about Couchsurfing (or wants to couchsurf my boat in the Netherlands - seriously, anyone is welcome, please come!) then feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile.)