Let him stay for a day.

March 12, 2001 1:25 PM

Let him stay for a day. Dutch student and weblogger Ramon Stoppelenburg plans to hitchhike around the world... from one submitted place-to-stay to the next on a no-budget basis. We can vouch for his sanity and wish him safe trip. Why not offer him your sofa for a night?
posted by prolific (14 comments total)

Gee -- if I was about 20 years younger, I'd like to do something like this myself! What a great idea!
posted by paddbear at 2:04 PM on March 12, 2001

dan pirarro, creater of the Bizarro comic strip did this a few years ago and had quite an experience...


posted by th3ph17 at 6:25 PM on March 12, 2001

He did indeed. He wrote an entertaining book about it, too, called Bizarro Among The Savages.
posted by webmutant at 10:04 PM on March 12, 2001

I don't think I am capable of trusting virtual strangers enough to ever try something like this. I just hope Stoppelenburg doesn't end up as severed parts in someone's freezer.
posted by kindall at 10:37 PM on March 12, 2001

Kindall prettty much sums up the reasoning behind
why more heterosexual females don't try this: It's not
the risks -- though there are some -- it's answering
all the damned questions from people about why you're
sleepingunder the same roof with someone you don't know.

I've couch surfed with weblogger strangers before,
and hosted more than a few myself, but each time I've
had to endure way too much interrogation and worry from well-meaning but paranoid friends.

posted by jessamyn at 10:52 PM on March 12, 2001

So, you're saying women don't do this sort of thing not because they're actually worried themselves about being disassembled, but because their friends get so worked up about it? That is an angle I'd never considered before.
posted by kindall at 10:56 PM on March 12, 2001

Well, there's a sense in which sometimes folks don't do potentially harmful things because even though they'd
accept the risks themselves, the downside of having made a bad choice is more of a big deal in their lives.

[like you get a ticket for drunk driving BUT you can never borrow the car again b/c Mom thinks you have bad judgment -- no one got hurt but your reputation as a smart driver is ruined forever]

I take in a lot of stray folks from time to time and get a lot of lectures. If one stranger turned out to be a wingnut, in many people's eyes that would prove I never should have trusted any of them. I disagree, but I still talk to these people all the time.

And hitchhiking? I still won't hitchhike.
posted by jessamyn at 11:21 PM on March 12, 2001

I guess I have a hard time thinking of someone whose respect matters enough to me to stop me from doing something.
posted by kindall at 11:28 PM on March 12, 2001

I guess living in a relatively "safe" country, where axe murderers are rare, makes us Dutch a little too trusting sometimes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Ramon.
posted by prolific at 12:15 AM on March 13, 2001

Eh, the U.S. is pretty safe. Actually, it depends where in the US you are, we're a bit bigger than the Netherlands. Just paranoid. Whenever I've met people in "real life" that I first met online, people have been like "What are you doing? Don't you know everyone online is a pedophile?" "No, not everyone, just Jordan." "Still, you're meeting a 44-year-old guy." "So?" But it was ok. You know. We sat around in Borders and discussed Ionesco.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:53 AM on March 13, 2001

Hell, I drove to Indiana to meet up with someone I met online and had a pretty good time as a result. I met a bunch of wonderful people.

If Internet attackers were as common as some media sources make them out to be, I don't think SXSW Interactive would be a terribly popular event.

Besides, I imagine most of the people Ramon will be staying with are bloggers, and while we're not all sane, there aren't many of us willing to invest the time and effort into creating a blog history (so he can learn about us) just to take an ax to him.
posted by cCranium at 10:37 AM on March 13, 2001

Yeah, I drove across the fricken country to meet someone in person I first met online. Everyone thought I was nuts. What I actually was, of course, was a 21-year-old virgin.
posted by kindall at 8:25 PM on March 13, 2001

kindall: Indiana's in a different country for me, but pretty much the same impetous. :-)
posted by cCranium at 5:26 AM on March 14, 2001