> if a company offered a 20$/mo service that brings subscribers to the endpoint, carried in a luxury litter by robotized carriers, I would feel that my hobby has been devoided of sense.
As someone else who hikes: why? I do not understand. Do you not enjoy the hobby of hiking for the sake of hiking?
The views will be just as beautiful, the air just as fresh, and the feeling of moving my legs just as energizing, regardless of how others may decide to get to the destination themselves. Why would the experience of others have any impact on my own experience of a trail?
Might be stretching the analogy too far, but look what happens to remote places that become easily accessible. They become commodified, crowded, and polluted.
There is something about a place requiring effort to visit that makes it special, and it loses that quality when it can be trivially accessed. The air isn’t quite as fresh when there’s a parking lot there.
yes, gatekeeping has much more merit than given credit for. ive seen many communities, ideas, companies, online and off that have been ruined by their growth past a certain point. ive wondered if it's a "when everyone's special no one is" thing but maybe it's just a primal human community thing. idk
I think this is spot on. It's the journey, but its also the destination.
There is indeed something special about getting to the top of a mountain and knowing that anyone you encounter there went through the same thing you did to get there.
"I hope things will stay the same when other people come in but I'm acknowledging they will not"
Rather its the impact of others on, not their experience of, a space that would impact my own experience, for better or worse.