you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.
> To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a implied requirement.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other people who have similar interests on whichever terms they like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form of commonly understood communication is present.
Likewise the people who do want to establish certain requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part of either culture or community unless a specific club within those forms around publication.
I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
The birdwatching community is similar to a collecting community insofar as seeing a bird is like having it in your collection and going out to birdwatch is like hunting items to add to your collection.
Lists and records fill the role a physical collection plays in collecting hobbies.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me
Usually that simply means a community is not for you and the birdwatching hobby is not for me either…though I have driven a few hundred miles out of my way to see the California Condors at Vermillion Cliffs (I didn’t write it down).
On the other hand, not-for-me just means not for me to me. I can see why people do it and it is pleasant to ask them what they are looking at and congratulate them if they tell me it’s a lifer…
Anyway, birds fascinate me and I am blessed to live along the Pacific Flyway in a location with abundant wildlife and natural areas outside my door (it’s why I sometimes chat with birders). But it only took me one look at what the birdwatching community values to know it was not for me (same as most religions, political movements, ideologies, etc.).
That all sounds fantastic, I'm sure I'd find that pretty engaging and I enjoy making small collections of hobbyist interests and going on adventures in-pursuit of niche experiences as well.
I wasn't so much curious about the mechanics of the hobby, although it is interesting, rather what defines it as a "community". Like what qualifies or doesn't qualify as being in or out of the "community"? If I make a list of birds I've seen, and don't share it with anyone, am in a community? If I share a photo on Instagram and mention it in passing to my close friend, am I in a community then? Do I need to be on some common platform, communicating at all about other bird lists? My grandfather kind of has a similar hobby with planes, but I'm sure he doesn't think of himself as part of a global community of plane enthusiasts, yet his local wood carving community is a place he goes and talks to people he knows by name and has spent years around, evidently a community with the requirement that you're into wood carving
But my point is that air soft has norms and if video is among them, then that’s just how it is.
And for what it is worth your theoretical exercise of keeping private lists of birds is fine by me. But if it is just you, it is not a community because that’s not how we use the word community.
Likewise, the community of birdwatchers typically uses the word birdwatching to include the kind of activities I mentioned.
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.