Why Joe Works on CS

The statements and opinions on this page are solely those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CouchSurfing International.

CouchSurfing is a way for people to rejoin the web of life.

People these days think you can't get love for free. They think that everyone is out for themselves. It's not at all true, but people don't realize it. They don't realize that life is a gift, not a contract. They don't realize that the world is a party, that it's free to attend, and that we're all invited. They don't realize that almost everybody out there is ready and wanting to help in every way they can.

Instead, people spend hours and days and years clicking around the internet, looking for love and freedom and adventure but only finding web pages. My hope is that they find CouchSurfing and give up on the web. My hope is that they leave the web of "content" and rejoin the web of life.

Finally, there are forces at work to take away our gifts and make everything into purchases. To separate people so that they will pay for access to parties which aren't the free one, which aren't the one to which everyone is invited. To make everyone fearful of everyone else. It comes down to marketing realities: will you buy into the reality where everyone is out for themselves, or the reality where everyone is trying to help you? We've got a lot of people paid good salaries on Madison Avenue who are trying to convince us we're not invited to the party. That we need to buy tickets, or something. It's about time we had our own marketing agency that tells us the wonderful truth.

- Joe Edelman

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