Let’s figure out a better way to find outdoor gear
Finding the right outdoor gear is hard. You’ve probably typed something like ‘best hiking backpacks’ into Google and been inundated with results; far too many to wade through on your lunch break.
Maybe you’ll read the top 10 list from Outside Magazine to get the lay of the land and to figure out which are the top brands, but ultimately, if you’re like me, you’ll resort to asking your friends on Facebook what they recommend and going with whatever gets the most ‘likes.’
This isn’t a terrible strategy. Unlike the random reviews you find online you at least know that your Facebook friends have similar tastes and requirements as you and that you can trust their recommendations.
Or can you?
While your Facebook friends, and even online reviewers, might have the best of intentions, they can still only make recommendations based on their own personal experiences, and the majority of the time those only marginally match up with yours.
Allow me to demonstrate. Let’s say you’re a 6'4" male with an athletic build and you’re looking for a lightweight hiking day pack. Most of the recommendations you get, both from Google and from Facebook, probably aren’t from guys who are 6'4", and as a result, what’s comfortable and lightweight for them probably isn’t going to be the same for you. Similarly, if you’re a 5'0" female and on the slender side, ‘lightweight’ and ‘comfortable’ is going to have a whole different meaning for you, and the recommendations from your friends who are 5'6" are going to have to be taken with a grain of salt.
In the end what you really want is a recommendation from your doppelgänger — a clone of you living somewhere else in the world that is your same size, has your same gear preferences/requirements, and who has already pre-approved the gear you’re looking for.
So if you do happen to be a 6'4" dude with an athletic build, the perfect review for you is from another 6'4" dude with an athletic build. His review is one that you want.
So in order to make it easier to find the perfect gear, a good first step would be to start including more info about the reviewers with the reviews so that you can be matched with your gear doppelgänger.
No more having to do complex mental calculations averaging all of the reviews you’ve read and weighing the recommendations you’ve received. Now you’ll know that when you get a recommendation or read a review by Drew (your gear doppelgänger), the gear he recommends is the gear that’s perfect for you.
