Outskirts Overland Podcast

Education Over Humiliation: Building a Better Outdoor Community

• Charlie Racinowski

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Charlie discusses the importance of education over criticism in the outdoor community after witnessing harsh public shaming at a recent camping event. He emphasizes that truly treading lightly means treating fellow outdoor enthusiasts with respect while teaching proper outdoor ethics.

• Confronting a situation where campers were publicly shamed for improper ash disposal instead of being educated on proper techniques
• Explaining how public criticism without education doesn't improve community knowledge or behavior
• Recommending TreadLightly.org as a free resource with courses on proper outdoor ethics and principles
• Challenging the outdoor community to be more welcoming by helping rather than condemning newcomers
• Emphasizing that public lands belong to everyone, including those still learning proper etiquette
• Encouraging community members to reach out for guidance rather than avoiding outdoor spaces due to fear of judgment

If you made a mistake at the Polar Bear Camping Club event, reach out to me. I'd be happy to help you learn the proper techniques without judgment. Our community grows stronger through education, not exclusion.


Speaker 1:

The hey guys. This is charlie, with outskirts overland. I am on this morning. I am I'm actually recording with benji tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure that I tried to get on this morning. The topic of conversation today is tread lightly. I was actually just at a polar bear camping club event and there was a situation where, um, some ash was left out and a couple of burnt logs were left out and it was made and nobody really knows who did it, but it was. It was.

Speaker 1:

There was essentially a post made that was like hey, you're all, you're all jacked up. If you did this, and why I say tread lightly is I'm going to take a little bit of a of a multifaceted approach to say, hey, like, like, tread lightly is with you know, obviously we're all trying to tread lightly, but like, how many people are telling people they're all wrong and not telling them how to be right? You know what I mean. Instead of being like, oh, you're all jacked up, you know, don't look at somebody and be, like your shirts on wrong, how dumb are you? Be like, hey, here's how you tuck in your shirt, here's how you tie your tie, not just, hey, publicly, you're all screwed up. That's so stupid. Why'd you do that? You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't come here. You need to leave Instead of being like hey, here's how you tie a tie. You know, help a brother out. So tread lightly is super important, but we have a lot of people that are saying the term tread lightly and we have a lot of people that are insinuating they know what that means, but then it comes off to me as ignorance when they're not even educating anybody.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's a huge miss and I posted on the group and was blocked on the group actually for being like hey, like as a community, we need to be able to come together, like we need to be able to help people learn, but instead it just turned into bashing me too and I'm like I just don't even understand guys. So, hey, take a step back while you're at work today and think about in a number of situations that I'll explain. Like I said, if you go to a fancy restaurant underdressed, do you want to be educated on the dress code? Do you want to just be made fun of, or do you want somebody to open your eyes to the appropriate type of equipment? Do you want to go off-roading with street tires and only be ridiculed for doing it and how stupid you are. Or do you want somebody to show you options of things you could be doing in tires you could be buying like I hope hopefully this is landing. Like, instead of being like you suck, be like hey, man, here's an opportunity for me experienced person to educate you. An experienced person and then maybe said inexperienced person will pass that information along. And now we're passing along a good, a good pathway of information to each, each other.

Speaker 1:

Instead of hey, you're all jacked up publicly. The optics are visible to everyone. So then, because it's not a single person, I understand you can't take somebody to the side and say, hey, man, like, get this better. But what you could do is post a picture of what existed and say, hey guys, here's a learning opportunity, here's the tread lightly principles, here's how we could have handled it. Like, here's how you could have handled it. Like, here's how you could have cleaned that up better, here's how you could have approached that better. But instead there was just you're all jacked up. You should be ashamed of yourself, you suck, essentially. And then the comments that followed. So I'm again.

Speaker 1:

I made a post yesterday kind of just like this. They took it down and they blocked me. I have a decently large platform here in the overland space, so I they can't tell me what I can and can't say on here. So, hey guys, as far as Tread Lightly goes, you don't know what Tread Lightly is. Tread Lightlyorg is a nonprofit. They have online courses. You can go to TreadLightlyorg. You can take a course on a number of different things, from just TreadLightly principles to TreadLightly with a snowmobile, a side-by-side ATV, going with your kids opinion and I don't want to throw shade at anybody, but in my opinion, the reason that education wasn't passed on in that post and it was only you're terrible is probably the people that were saying everybody was terrible probably don't know the principles.

Speaker 1:

I don't know very many people outside of myself that have actually taken those courses and it's important that we as a community come together and help each other out. You know, I would never think to be somewhere and not help somebody, whether it's learning, educating, providing help with things I may have or experiences I may have, whether it's principles, off-roading tents. You know I'm never going to look at somebody that comes out without any tent stakes in their tent and be like you know what it's windy. You're an idiot. I'm going to be like, hey, man, let me see if we can find you some tent stakes or let's go cut some branches and get this tent secured. I'm never going to take the approach Outskirts, overland is never going to take the approach of you're dumb, you're an idiot. You shouldn't do that. You're terrible. We should ban you. Guys, fucking newsflash, it's public dude. You can't ban anybody from going outside.

Speaker 1:

Like get out of here, guys, be decent people. Tread lightly with people's. You know, tread lightly with people. Like tread lightly with how you talk to people and how you approach things. Like if we want this community to continue to exist, we can't be so, so negative to each other. We've got to make sure that we're taking the time to help the community be better. It's not helping the community be better by just bashing people and again, I get it Everybody's like they got to be held accountable. But the problem is we don't know who needs to be held accountable. So what it looks like is you can't make a mistake. You know what I mean and I get it. I get it. I get that methodology. But, like everybody in the world knows, you get further with sugar than vinegar. You know what I mean, like use it as an opportunity to educate.

Speaker 1:

This happened, great opportunity for us to show you what not to do and how to remedy it. That is not what happened. There was no remedy. It was just pictures of you're messed up and a whole lot of you're messed up. Not a single person was like hey, here's how you could have handled that, here's how we should handle that. So I want to come here to say tread lightlyorg is out there. It's free. Online classes are free. Your time isn't free, but if you've got time to shitpost people on Facebook, you have time to take the Treadlightly online courses. I would encourage everyone to do that and everyone to think about it today and think about if all everybody did was talk shit on you because you didn't know everything, would that be a welcoming thing, or would you be like you know what? Maybe not.

Speaker 1:

A comment was made like the side-by-side community. Well, I can tell you right now. You know it's a big thing with the overlanding community and the side-by-side community. They're this and they're that. They're a different type of people than we are. But hey, why are we shit-talking them too, instead of being like hey guys, let's be better? Is it because confrontation is a problem in real life and we can just talk crap on the internet. Like guys, be better.

Speaker 1:

These public lands aren't just for people in vehicles, they are for people on side-by-sides too. Like you don't have a bigger right to these lands than they do. Let's try and make it better. Let's be better. Okay, guys, that's all I got today. Just stick with me, guys. I'm never going to be the guy that's like. You're all jacked up. Give people a chance. Teach them. Teach them three times. Help them out. Be a decent person. We're trying to be decent to the land. Be decent to the other people trying to enjoy the land, to the land. Be decent to the other people trying to enjoy the land, even if they don't know how to do it appropriately. Teach them, help them, give them resources, give them instruction, encourage them to seek that instruction out. Try and do it in a way that seems welcoming and not condemning. Okay, guys, I'll talk to y'all later.

Speaker 1:

I'm recording with Benji tomorrow. I didn't want to go on this rant on his, his slash, our podcast tomorrow. But, like guys, come on, man, we gotta be better. And again, I I don't want to throw shade at anybody, but I don't know that. Everybody knows the Tread Lightly principles. Actually, I think they know the statement Treadlightlyorg.

Speaker 1:

Go over there there, take an online class. I think it takes like 30 to 45 minutes if you're slow. Go through it all. Write some stuff down, teach other people, pass that along. It's free. I'll catch you guys another time. I love you all. Keep trying to get out there. Keep going about it.

Speaker 1:

If you are anybody that that at that polar bear candy club was the one that made that mistake, reach out to me. I will be more than happy to say hey, yeah, that's not how we do that. That's not how we should do that. It's unfortunate that happened. But here's what we can do, here's what we should do, you know, without being like you suck. Okay, that's not going to bring anybody into our community. That's not going to make our community better. That's not going to bring anybody into our community. That's not going to make our community better. That's not going to make our public lands treated better. That's going to make people just go. I'm not going to that anymore. I don't want to be around those people anymore. Maybe I should do something different. Nobody walks into it knowing everything and again, you might know everything about fire and nothing about wheeling. Like we got it. It's a multifaceted thing here. Guys, come together, help each other out. Like it's not hard. Okay, I'll talk to you guys later. Have a very good Tuesday.