Sociopath Community

I saw this before while browsing Stumbleupon. There's also some places that have regular people double as a taxi service with the help of an app.

I like the idea, I'm sure it'll lead to some inglorious stories akin to why people hitchhike less often now.

Hitchhiking is completely random.  With couchsurfing, you can elect to only stay with (or allow into your home) people with numerous recommendations from other couchsurfers.  If you go to stay with someone who hasn't been confirmed by anyone else, or who has negative reviews, it's on your head.  As with most things, a small amount of caution and reason goes a long way.

Would you imagine it being difficult to couchsurf without any former record from just having joined?

i'd imagine not for an america, we are exotic and trendy in asia 

Looks like Couchsurfing has it's own hater site:

http://couchsurfingsucks.com/

The reviews page is pretty fail for building a case against it. 

Edit: Looking at it further it seems to be more of a warning site. The front page is a little more aggressive than the rest of it. Googling in general for horror stories brings up mostly isolated squeaky wheel cases (and a few rape stories), but more cases of success than failure seems to be the case.

The surfers tend to be much more discriminating than the hosts.  I'd say that without any recommendations, you wouldn't get many, if any, surfing requests.  But as a traveler, I don't imagine it would be too difficult.  I never had a problem.  But then I'm a woman, so that might have helped.

You can also get recommendations from friends.  They don't carry as much weight as recommendations from surfers or hosts, but it's something.  If you're thinking about joining, I'd be happy to write you one.  (Oddly enough, I trust you with the amount of personal information that's on my CS profile.  Whether or not you'd trust me with yours, is another matter. XD )

I'll keep that in mind, but I don't see myself taking that opportunity right now.

At the very least I just don't feel ready for that sort of large change with risks I can't account for in advance.

pffft  It's just couchsurfing, TC.  Lighten up, hombre.  You're not gonna die. XD

It's "surviving" something horrible that I'm more afraid of really, but in the case of Couchsurfing I think it'd just be too overwhelming for how I am now.