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Steady Stream of Petition Signatures

I subscribe to the OpenCS comments feed and I’m pleasantly surprised by the slow by steady stream of new supporters on the petition. Today Jonas Riise Hamre added their support. So the list continues to grow.

Can CouchSurfing International Inc ignore this movement forever?

After Jay Wellingdon Couch invented the couch in the year 1895

't Must be said, one couch to burn is better than surfing

~ Oscar Wilde on CouchSurfing

After Jay Wellingdon Couch invented the couch in the year 1895 people have come up with many uses for this remarkable device. Couchsurfing is one of these: the act of taking a couch and jumping off a big cliff, usually they run after the visionary couch lemming. This is called “the mission”. For this reason Couchsurfers are not known for their old age. They usually tend to flock with other would-be couchsurfers in small congregations. Bigger congregations are also known to take place sometimes, which can have detrimental effects on the couch populations in some areas, especially in places where there is sea and lots of couches to steal. Anyone critical of the mission is usually thrown of the cliff anyway.

Some people just can't get enough

Some people just can’t get enough

There is even an organization and a website dedicated to this act of surfing couches, but most people on this website only watch other people surf with their couch. This is usually called interspecial understanding, though only few people really understand the deeper act of understanding other species.

Because not everyone owns a house next to the sea it is also allowed to burn yourself on other people’s couches. Couchsurfers frown upon financial transaction and judge each other on the “size” of their “couch”. Because of this, it is not a dating site.

Some couchsurfers are only just fakers and prefer Burning stuff. The Leadership Team of the organization are known for their yearly gathering at this festival. Sometimes they also practice the act of burning dog. During these events they often honour Host, the Greek god of hostility. The relationship between the visionary couch lemming and the leadership team is not quite clear, as the existence of them belongs more to realm of mythology – besides these, rare sightings of popes and cardinals carrying yellow flags and chanting hymns of the long-lost holy couch have been reported.

“Participate in creating a better burn, one couch at a time” – quote by visionary couch lemming, circa 2007 (unknown origin)

Tom Cruise showing Oprah how to properly use a couch.

Tom Cruise showing Oprah how to properly use a couch.

In 2007 a splinter group of unhappy couch surfers, led by Tom Cruise, started OpenCouchSurfing, a terrorist organization entering people’s homes to slice open couches and hide themselves for unexpecting old ladies. They made the news in many places, especially in Nelson, a picturesque little town also known as the Florida of New Zealand, where many old ladies where found dead – with their couches slit wide open. The crazed couch surfers become especially violent when they hear the phrases “No worries” and “You rock!” – or the now infamous “Big hugs” – a phrase bringing along a series of gory massacres across the globe after its introduction to couchsurfer lingo.

Other related notorious organizations are Hostility Club, BeHorny and CrashAtMines (aka CrashAMime), all of which serve the noble mission of hostility ie the act of worshiping Host.

From Uncyclopedia, available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike NonCommercial license

A final goodbye

I have received a “thank you” letter from Chris Burley that effectively closes the NDA discussion and other related matters for me. To be honest I’m quite grateful for it.

It is much better to know that the Couchsurfing admins really don’t want to discuss our issues than to be left with a false glimmer of hope. CouchSurfing has – for good or for bad – decided to show itself as a top-down run community and while I don’t agree with that decision, it is at least clear and final.

There are a few small corrections I would like to make (read the letter first):

  1. OpenCouchSurfing was primarily about a Free and Open CouchSurfing organisation. While OSS (Open Source Software) would certainly have helped in getting there, it was hardly the only proposal that has been made. For me personally, an Open Organisation was a much more important issue for instance.
  2. “We value group consensus above individual ideology” seems a bit weird to me. We had over 90 people signing the petition, including two admins, so its hardly an individual ideology. There were many people that really would have like to see some of our proposals come true, but unfortunately we don’t have the keys to the castle.
  3. As has happened before, Chris makes it sound like it was more about style than about content (“constructive criticism”). I think most people will agree that there has been ample opportunity to engage in friendly debate for the admins, which was never taken up. Most critical (but friendly/constructive) questions have simply been ignored over several months. It should be of no suprise that this angers people in many ways and it is therefor quite unreasonable to expect friendly banter all the time. “We’re working on it” or “we’ll publish something… soon” can hardly be considered constructive debate either.

In conclusion I would like to personally thank everyone who has tried to help us make a positive change within CouchSurfing towards a more Open and Free organisation. I do not feel that this was a wasted effort as getting the admins to make up their minds is an added value by itself. Amongst the relatively few cases of outright hostility, there were plenty of comments that helped us to continue this extremely difficult effort. Thank you for that support.