Medium Musings & Meta Moans

I know you all read this for the hot, sweet geocaching action, but something tangential has been on my mind for a bit. And that tangent regards the medium from which you’re getting the action. I also realize that a little of my ego will be showing. I don’t mean to sound egotistical, and if you can disabuse me of any of my notions, be my guest. If I had a dollar for every time I was wrong about something, I would have at least twenty-three bucks.

I am an expert in a dying field. Obviously, I don’t mean geocaching; that’s chugging along just fine. I mean writing about geocaching. As far as I can tell, there are no other blogs out there that are especially active, and certainly none that have posted as much or as often as I have. After 500,000 words in 1,350 entries over 6 years, I can authoritatively assert that I have written more about geocaching than any other source besides the Geocaching Blog. And it’s possible (unlikely, but possible) that I have written more words than HQ. There are old blogs out there, but they’ve all gone moribund, if not just dead. Do a search for “geocaching blogs,” and you’ll find a lot of them that at one time were updated once a week, once a month, or once a quarter, and haven’t had a new entry in years. But nobody new is doing the same. Nobody is taking to Tumblr or WordPress to talk about what they’re doing, which makes me sad. I had always hoped that someone might start Geocaching While Hispanic or Geocaching While Inuit, or even Geocaching While Turkish, and I could follow someone else’s experience. But the written word isn’t exactly the new hotness.

People are talking about caching, though. And I mean that quite literally. The podcasts and YouTube channels are all over the place. We’ve all seen or heard the big ones like Geocache Talk and PodCacher. Who doesn’t know of the Geocaching Vlogger? And there are lots of others out there who are doing find or how-to videos. I can see how it might be easy for someone new to break into it with just a phone, a selfie stick, and a hankering for adventure. Add in some film editing and a little music, and anyone can have a chance to show the world their experiences in the field. As with all things, the highest quality offerings will float to the top, but I like the idea that anyone can contribute their voice. I’m hesitant to admit it, but I have a pretty big blind spot when it comes to TikTok. I don’t want to say it’s because it’s more of a younger person’s medium, and I’m a grognard (even if it’s probably true), but I’ve also avoided it for work-related reasons. And, of course, Bluesky and the site formerly known as Twitter are also options for other people’s activities, though they tend to be much more visual and shorter form (and, in the case of Bluesky, mostly in German). That’s not even mentioning Instagram or (as I call it) BookFace.

I guess my point here (and I do have one) is that everyone has their choice of options to get caching info and the vicarious thrill of seeing the accomplishments of others, but I still yearn for the written word. Perhaps that makes me an analog man in a digital world. Of course, that hardly makes me some kind of neo-Luddite (though that might, more correctly, be a neo-neo-Luddite). GPS and I are pretty tight. The Internet and I are in a long-term situationship of sorts. But the options are many and myriad. Write your thoughts. Film your actions. Broadcast your voice. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Only that you do it.

I just prefer it in black and white. That’s all.