Tyler Cowen has the following quote posted at Marginal Revolution:
At Camp Social, creating chemistry is everything: campers are divided by age, which range from 20s to 60s, into bunks of eight to 10. Each is staffed with a trained counselor who serves as a camp concierge and bonding facilitator—they are even tasked with coming up with a bunk cheer. During the day, campers create their own schedules from a buffet of traditional activities including boating, archery, ropes course, bracelet making, waterfront, tie-dye and tennis. But there are adult embellishments too: paint-and-sip and a mixology class are on the schedule.
It's to an article in The Wall Street Journal, which is gated, so I couldn't read it. But it was easy enough to search on "Camp Social," so I did.
Here's three passages from a recent article by Amanda Breen in Entrepreneur:
Liv Schreiber, 28, was a recent college graduate working in New York City, building businesses and a social media following, when she noticed that a lot of content in her orbit centered on "keeping up with the Joneses" and summers spent with "slick-back buns" in the Hamptons. "I was like, You know, I really just wish I could jump in the lake and wear no makeup and go back to sleepaway camp," Schreiber tells Entrepreneur.[...]
Schreiber has just one rule for Camp Social's campers: Everyone comes solo and leaves as friends. "It's a lunch table where everyone is welcome to sit," she says. [...]
In an era when many Americans struggle to cultivate meaningful relationships more than ever before — 21% of U.S. adults feel lonely, and 73% attribute it to technology, according to a recent report from Harvard Graduate School of Education — in-person connection remains Schreiber's primary goal.
Here's what Ashleigh Carter said about it in Teen Vogue says:
The concept of Camp Social comes at a time when young people are searching for connections in a post-pandemic, social media-exhausted world. Single people are trading in dating apps for in-person meet-ups, joining run clubs, and picking up any hobby to avoid the endless swiping on their phones. And based on the popularity of this camp, it seems people who desire genuine friendship are in the same boat. Jaye Taylor, a 30-year-old Londoner living in California, told me she came to Camp Social to “live out” her “Parent Trap dreams.” [...]
As I walk through the camp and up to my cabin, the scenery does, in fact, look like Hallie’s camp in The Parent Trap — mixed with the fictional Kellerman’s Resort in Dirty Dancing. Almost every woman who walks past me smiles and says hello, and in the first hour of being there, I notice that nobody is on their phone.
On Friday, after a full afternoon of checking in and getting past awkward small talk with other hesitant campers on a tour of the grounds, the nervous energy shifts as soon as we get to cocktail hour. This is when I happened upon a group of women cracking jokes who I meshed with immediately. I soon found out that they had all met just a few hours before, some sharing a cabin, despite acting like they had years of friendship between them. They adopted me into their group without hesitation.[...]
“One thing that surprised me is that you can literally sit anywhere and people will be like, ‘Hey what’s your name? Where are you from? What cabin are you in?’” Becca Pineda-Sholl, a 29-year-old camper from Minnesota says. “Everyone is super friendly and we all come from different walks of life and everyone is just accepting.”[...]
Looking around at the hundreds of women at the camp, you’ll certainly find every walk of life. There are sporty women, musical theater women, introverted women, sober women, mothers, lawyers, former child stars, artists, influencers, and teachers.
“I feel like I didn’t expect to form such actual connections with people so fast,” Meghan Tuccitto, 28, from Minnesota, tells me. “Last night, it was like I’ve known these people for six hours and I’m like, ‘I love you, I’ll come visit you.’”[...]
I’ll admit, in the first few hours of being at camp, I was skeptical that anyone could form a true friendship in just over 48 hours. But when I left on Sunday, I found myself in a new group chat, had dozens of new Instagram followers, and an invite to a birthday getaway in Minnesota.
As someone who would consider herself more extroverted, I even drove up to Camp Social with some anxiety — my only airbag being that I was there first and foremost to write this story. Still, I was nervous about not finding a group, not finding anyone to joke around with, nervous that it would end up being a Fyre Festival situation. But there wasn’t one moment that I was ready to leave or spend time by myself.
Is there one of these for guys? Camp No Counselers offers four days at several locations (New York, California, and Texas) and seems to accommodate both men and women. Here's a search on "adult summer camps."
No comments:
Post a Comment