The Couch Surfing Project, which came up in discussion several classes ago, makes The New York Times in an article today. Couchsurfing is a web community, like Facebook for travelers, where participants offer their couches to community members currently on the road. Says The Times:
The group’s philosophy is also its method, which might be summed up this way: I will offer you my couch free, along with the company of my friends and a tour of my favorite spots in my city. In return, you will give of yourself, and not just slink into my home at 3 a.m. after you’ve done your own tour of my city. In this way, we will be friends, if only for a day or two.
Or, as its mission statement proclaims: “Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time.”
Interestingly for class purposes, participants frame the project largely as a search for "authenticity," something that is increasingly elusive in the traveler's quest:
In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where nearly every corner of the earth, from Bulgaria to Bhutan, is open for tourism, the home is the final frontier, the last authentic experience. Instead of being in some sanitized hotel in Hanoi, said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine, “if I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa.” He added: “I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”
With regard to “the whole MySpace thing,” he added: “This is a generation that’s all about talking to strangers. And why stop there? Why not crash at their place?”
Academic interest aside, I agree. I love this idea. Here, for example, is a lovely expat my wife and I ate dinner with in Beijing. We met her at a restaurant, she helped us around the menu, and she gave us some insights into why she loved Beijing, a city I was having trouble liking. We have hosted several people, including this woman from Finland. It's always been good; I will almost certainly Couch Surf next time I travel.
A thought: Does this thoroughly obliterate the "front stage"/"back stage" distinction? Does this take us beyond the "borderzone?" If so, does it also assume a certain level of globalized sameness? All the participants, after all, are on the Internet. I guess what I'm wondering is this: Has Couch Surfing implicitly made a statement about what sorts of cultural experience tourists/travelers can experience as authentic (beers with other relatively technology savvy people, not Maasai dances, etc.)?
(And, as we seem to be Times-centric around here, I should point out that The Washington Post and lots of others beat them to it, and with a witty headline: Divan Intervention)
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