Comment on Finding interesting communities

Fri, 31 May 2013 14:04:46 GMT

How about having a hobby of doing something useful, but unpaid?

For example, I found people doing nature-protecting activities to be a nice company. Specifically, there is a place in Slovakia with some unique flowers, which require some work to do so they survive. Originally the flowers adapted to side-effects of some agricultural activities, but those are not longer done; so the volunteers simulate the activities. It is a work that can be done by dozen people in two or three days, so if we make it a week, we have a time reserve for case of rain, and we have some free time to talk.

To me this seemed like a great filter -- it filtered for having free time, willingness to do a volunteer activity, willingness to go away from the computer... and also the people who started this were great, and then it attracted similar people.

I am aware that from sufficiently abstract point of view it demonstrates having time and money (so we can do volunteer work instead of working to survive). But it still seems that signalling by doing something useful attracts different kind of people than e.g. signalling by buying expensive consumer goods.

Protecting nature was just a specific example; perhaps a good one because it requires no special skills. But any kind of volunteer work could have a similar effect.

Discuss