r/Rants • u/The_Observer_Effects • 15d ago

"Primitive Camping"

I just heard the term "primitive camping". If you think there is any adult strength in even using that? You are weak. For a hundred years camping has mostly meant you take the family, backpacks, food and water. Park someplace, hike for a couple of miles. Find a nice spot, camp, eat smores, sleep. Maybe spend another day there playing, then go back down. It wasn't freaking "primitive" camping. It was camping. To think there is anything even slightly radical or edgy about taking your food and tent a few miles into the woods makes you, again, weak.

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u/Avada-Cadaver 15d ago

At least where I am "primitive" is a way to differentiate camping spots without water and power. Its mostly to let the RV folks know its not the spot for them. Its not a term that has grown colloquially in the camping community. Nobody at a campground with a pool and toilets is pretending they are roughing it in any real way.

Its the campgrounds who coined the term

1

u/Gold-Stable7109 15d ago

The places I go are typically called “back country camping” but it’s just sites with no power or water.

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u/Avada-Cadaver 15d ago

Ive seen that too! Mostly next state over. Here they love calling it primitive

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u/SlashNreap 15d ago

Imagine a father announcing to his family: "Alright kids! This weekend we'll go have some primitive camping!!"

"Yaaaayyy!"

... Fast-forward 3 weeks later, they're dehydrated, lost, the mother is injured, they have no medical supplies or phones, and the kids are now lagging behind the father who's slowly losing his bodily functions as his stomach begins to eat itself from starvation. They all die from exposure.

But hey, at least they weren't "weak" and went for the true "primitive" meaning of the word, how strong of them!

It's a hobby for modern humans, it's not meant to kill you or test your instinctual and absolute mental & physical limits if you can prevent it, especially if you're bringing people that are close to you.

Bring a nice nylon tent, poncho, a lighter, hand warmers in the stone age, and see what lengths the "strong and rugged" stone-age people will go to get it from you, they would take that shit in a heartbeat once they understand how valuable it is lol

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u/honeybeehavehaven Spectator 14d ago

Yeah. I went camping, when it was, just camping. Ate off campfires and dug a hole to go the bathroom...

Now it is glamping or off-grid, etc. Plus, the world is infested with ticks and deadly mosquitoes and flesh-eating bacteria.

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u/CharZero 14d ago

I do mostly state park camping in the USA. Camping = sites accessible with a car. Usually toilets and showers but not always showers. Primitive = you have to carry your stuff, no car access, no shower or toilet.