Hi Guys, I'm a director for the French Television Network of Ontario and I was looking on your website and others to find a place to shoot an interview. I discovered your community and I realized how passionnate you are about abandoned places.

I would like to invite any interested members to participate in an interview to talk about your hobby of exploring abandoned places and visit some of your favorites. The end segment would only be 5 minutes in length.

I know that you might not be super willing to talk about it in front of a camera but we don't have to show your face or to give addresses.

I need at least one person that can talk French, doesn't have to be perfect. But if you are interested and you don't speak French, please let me know because we could need you as well.

I'm in the Ottawa region, but we can go where you are in Ontario.

You can reach me at :

[email protected]

Hope to have news from you so we can shoot in the next month. Come on it will be fun! I promise!... I find this subject very intriguing!

Out of the question

Most of the time when an explorer talks in an interview about our hobby, it results in a lot of backlash. It is still illegal, and viewed as negative. Most news pieces cover us as hooligans, vandals, criminals, etc.

Our hobby depends on remaining low-key and hush hush in order to survive. The more attention it gets from the media, the more property owners push to demolish their properties and seal up locations. The more city officials and law enforcement become aware of us (and not in a positive light).

An example of this happened after the London Free Press did a piece on a well known location that had been explored freely for YEARS. Only weeks after the news piece went live, the location was suddenly demolished out of nowhere.

There's plenty of people on this site who will jump on the chance to exploit our hobby in exchange for some Instagram followers or some "likes" on Facebook, so I'm sure you'll have no problem finding someone, but just try to be respectful.

Oh, and you're asking people to break the law for/with you in front of a camera for a news piece. How does this not strike you as a bad idea? Unless you're specifically going to get permission from the property owner(s), this has red flags all over it.

No explorer can be 100% sure you're not going to exploit the hobby, give out location information freely, draw a negative crowd, or be sure you're going to be respectful of both the hobby and the locations as a whole.

Just, no... Hard pass.

My only question is: what are you (they) going to do or say that is groundbreaking? Is the five-minute segment going to be more insightful (or beautiful) than, say, Vice' 'abandoned'? Because that nailed a lot of it. Unless this is adding to the conversation (is there one?) about intriguing ways of mapping cities, and using 'unused' space, then why bother?

To the original poster: look, you'll probably get someone (you likely have already). They will not represent the community, as none of us do. I just hope that the vision they describe, the adventure that you go on, is interesting in and of itself. Because you know that you already have a half-written piece. Are you really open to information that you don't already know, or suspect? It's said that no one trusts the news, and part of the genesis of this is that people in your position didn't trust it in the first place. I totally get that you have a job that you have to perform. I even get that this might be better (for you) than covering real events (for which people have moved to podcasts to get genuine and entertaining opinions) -- but the generic formula of taking instances, and turning them into phenomena, serves no one.

J->

Our hobby doesn't need more attention, it needs much less or it will die.

Jono couldn't have said it better

Ok I get it. I knew in fact it would be hard to convince you to trust me but I thought it worthwhile to try, because it's unusual and it's what we do. I'm not doing news. We are a web platform for people that are not main stream. We tell stories about different communities. I understand that you don't want the spotlight, but like I said we could do it without revealing any names or addresses.

Posted by Carine Ok I get it. I knew in fact it would be hard to convince you to trust me but I thought it worthwhile to try, because it's unusual and it's what we do. I'm not doing news. We are a web platform for people that are not main stream. We tell stories about different communities. I understand that you don't want the spotlight, but like I said we could do it without revealing any names or addresses.

I'm not at all interested in taking part in this, but I am curious to see some of your other work in presenting non-mainstream stories.

Anything you can share??

https://www.tfo.or...taxidermie-de-rats

https://www.tfo.or...rincesses-modernes

https://www.tfo.or...chasser-les-demons

https://www.tfo.or...397334/ufo-hunters

https://www.youtub...atch?v=nBYLWup3aLI