Wednesday, October 28, 2009

HOW TO FIND YOUR FELLOW SCANNERS

Scanners write me or tweet me and ask where they can find other Scanners to talk to. People have started Scanner 'Tribes' and you can find them by that name on Twitter.

My Big Bulletin Board at www.barbarasher.com/boards is a good place to start. It's been up since 1999 and has been very active ever since. It also has great, kind, smart people on it (we toss out the rude, the stupid, the obnoxious, the mean-spirited ) and it has a forum for Scanners: scroll way down and you'll find it under 'Refuse to Choose.'

And, not to confuse the issue (much) a year ago I opened to everyone a site I had originally created for the grads of Scanner Retreats: www.scannersrefusetochoose.com You can't get into the private forums, but everything else is open.

If you need a face-to-face with a living, breathing Scanner on short notice, go to a bookstore. Anyone who works in a bookstore loves books. Anyone who loves books is a Scanner. (Specialists love engineering or art or religion or philosophy, not 'books.') Walk up to anyone who looks like they'll probably never try to become rich and ask, "Can you recommend a book? I'm out of ideas."

This person will ask what you're interested in. Prepare a list in advance and just hand it to him/her. If they smile and try to read the whole list, they're Scanners. If they look distressed and tell you to make up your mind, they're not Scanners (and I'd like to know what they're doing working in a bookstore!)

1 comment:

  1. I write a blog about thrifting and it also a hobby that is a magnet for scanners. I try to write about scanners every chance I get. Each time I mention you or the term scanners I get someone writing to me saying they have always felt so alone until that moment they realize that we (scanners) are everywhere.

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