Let’s Talk About “ASS”.

Hello ASSes! Current ASSes… Future ASSes…. Anti-ASSes…

Welcome to the wonderful world of Anarchy Scuba. This site has been a long time coming and I’m excited to finally have some time to get it off the ground. I’m going to start off by sharing the origin of Anarchy Scuba and the Anarchy Scuba Spot Facebook group. I should probably put some sort of disclaimer for the site in here about language and mild adult content, but if you got past the title of this blog, you likely get the gist…. or you’re just dense and I’ll probably read about your disapproval in the comments section. I look forward to hearing from the Karens and Cheryls of the interwebs.

Alright. So Anarchy Scuba origin. Story time.

Once upon a time, back in the year 2019 (January 2019 to be exact) I was on the phone with my dear friend Marbry. (That’s right, Mar, you’re basically getting blamed for sparking this internet dumpster fire.) I mentioned to him that in the better-part-of-the-decade that I had been scuba diving, I had yet to sell a single piece of gear that I was no longer using. This accumulated to a small mountain of unused kit consisting of multiple canister lights, dive computers, regulators, etc. – all things I had replaced with new and shiny gear. Marbry convinced me that I should post all of the crap I had laying around on Facebook gear swap groups to make room and funds for even more stuff that I don’t need 🙂

I poured a glass of bourbon and began my sentimental journey down memory lane and started snapping photos of gear from dives past. As I sat down and began writing my sale descriptions, I made the conscious decision to add a little bit of personality into them. As we all know, gear swap groups are exceedingly rigid and boring. I listed some regulators, wings, pockets and one iconic set of fins. These fins were purchased at the beginning of my tech diving adventure – a pair of Hollis F-1 “Bat fins”. They were sleek and black and I was sure I was going to love them. I thought it would be funny to paint “KIC” & “KME” on either fin in large white letters, and they were forever more referred to as my “kick me fins”. Unfortunately the love affair didn’t last long as these fins proved to be heavy and the foot pockets pinched.

I thought it would be appropriate and safe to post my honest opinion of the fins, as they are widely liked and accepted by many divers. They may not have fit my personal preference, but I knew other people liked them and I wanted to make sure whoever bought them was already familiar with the fin as not to cause any further disappointment for someone else.

Within the first 30 minutes of posting, the listings (approximately 5) had reached close to 100 reactions and just as many comments/purchase inquiries, which was the intended outcome. Within an hour, commenting had been turned off on all of my posts and the fins post was removed entirely by one of the group moderators. I sent a message to one of the admins, confused as to why my post was removed and she responded back to me a few hours later. She told me the group was not intended to be a “discussion group”, and that my posts had elicited such. She said the fin post had been removed because I was “brand bashing”. I challenged her on that, as I didn’t mention anything negative about Hollis, only this particular product. There is not a single dive manufacture that hung the moon for me, and I’m allowed to have and voice my opinion. I was promptly removed from the group due to my questioning her. I found this censorship to quite annoying, especially since it was over relevant content.

Driving home from my dive later that day, I called my friend Vanwah and verbally took my frustration out on him. I told him I was going to” just start my own swap group”. I wasn’t heavily into public Facebooking at the time and kept mostly to myself because #theinternetisforever, so I doubt he even took me seriously. I declared I would name it “Anarchists’ Scuba Swap”, “just to be an ass”. The group was started with the objective of “less rules”… Humor, discussion, transparency and gear swapping were all allowed, accepted and encouraged.

I “appointed” (many of them against their will) seven fair and just individuals across a wide range of diving abilities, industry presence and personal backgrounds as moderators for the group.

The group grew fairly quickly in the next few months and we changed the name to the current Anarchy Scuba Swap. There were quite a few suggestions and requests for an additional group focusing purely on discussion, but I wasn’t willing to spend any more of my life watching over a hobby internet forum. However as time passed and close friendships formed with people I would have never otherwise met, I eventually gave in and started the Anarchy Scuba Facebook page which was used to form the group Anarchy Scuba Spot. (Riveting, I know.)

And here we are today. At current writing, the group has surpassed five thousand members and continues to grow daily. We have members from 99 countries and see over 25,000 posts,comments and reactions (combined) a month. The group requires little maintenance on my part, as the members mostly are able to moderate themselves accordingly to avoid any Facebook Community Standards violations and are generally open and respectful of each other.

I will talk more about the underlying purpose and culture of the group in further posts. Stay tuned for more 🙂

Thanks for reading.

Tracy

#anarchyscuba #anarchyAF #divemore