🥸n Trusting Strangers

Trust and cooperation are vital to healthy resilient communities and societies. Saying and believing that to be true is incredibly different from actually living it out though…

To say that I have trust issues would be an understatement.

Partially because most everything is not as it seems on the internet or media

As I contemplated and interrogated the role of tech in my day to day life I decided that I wanted to engage with it only as a way to connect me to real life people in more real life ways

enter: Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace

(and believe me I am JUST as horrified that I am back on Fbook although it is a new account not hooked up to anything I’m obvi not posting or engaging and literally only there for Fbook Marketplace bc that is where the fiber folks are as well as writing groups. I truly hate it but this is not the battle I want to fight atm)

In creepy news despite having set up Fbook with all new shit - the initial “People You May Know” went from all strangers to slowly surfacing real acquaintances I do know from high school era. UGH.

Craigslist is and has been a staple of my web browsing for the sheer humanity of it - I love love love a romantic or spicy Missed Connection, roll my eyes at the ridiculous Political rant post titles, and scroll through the For Sale > Arts and Crafts section almost on the daily.

Craigslist falls into that “i love this site bc the keep the ui stable and simple” category Pinboard is in. I will put away my “stop changing UIs for the love of god and only have 1-2 menu bars jfc” soapbox for another day.

Anyways from those 2 sites have blossomed several fiber friendships, gotten me working with my hands and body in an apprenticeship, and soon a used-but-practically-new spinning wheel (because buying new shouldn’t be a default!!).

I have met people from the internet in real life and it worked out! *

*I have also met people from the internet in the past where it didn’t work out (ex: that one tinder date where I was a dodo and let him pick me up for a hike (I KNOWWW) and then his GPS took us through a very empty industrial sort of alley way and I was like “omg this is it. I never accomplished anything. They’ll never make a Lifetime movie of my story”

and yeah I get that going to meet up with a knitter or a spinner or a fleece farmer is a bit different than meeting up to buy bike parts online but for me it has made all the difference.

Back to the first sentence - in order for me to be a healthy participating member of my town/city/state/industry I need to be able to trust, rely, and depend on others and pop the bubble of “self-sufficiency at all costs” that goes against the grain of how humans thrive best.

As I embark on figuring out some sort of co-op or alternative organization set up for my own mill and ModCat and whatever else I don’t plan on going it alone, and that’s big!

paigerduty