For UAE based climbers social media has been a tale of woe for a while now. Firstly the old UAEclimbing.com forum died a slow quiet death when its owner left the region. Then the UAE Rock Climbing facebook group turned into an badly moderated and spam ridden bitch fest. The only reason to continue membership of it seemed to be to watch with sick fascination as the community seemed to tear itself apart. For an outsider or newbie looking in it certainly didn’t paint the community in a positive light. For me it just made me angry and generated a strong desire to punch the screen in the way that the worst of reality TV does.
The reality is that the climbing community is actually very strong here in the UAE and I enjoy being party of it a lot.
Well maybe a new group that has been set up brings with it some hope at last. If your a climber based here in the region or are someone who wants to be a climber based here I suggest you join the Real UAE Rock Climbers Facebook Group and see if it can turn the situation around.
Here’s the blurb that outlines the ethos:
A Groucho Club for UAE climbers, a digital camp fire for genuine rock climbers with an interest in UAE climbing to meet without bringing their commercial spam and alternative agendas with them.
As per the Groucho Club, membership is by invite. Membership is predominately for rock climbers with an interest in UAE Rock Climbing. The group is Spam free.
There are no restrictions on subjects discussed but members will behave like mature adults. In the event of a member’s behavior degenerating to the point that other members are offended Das Scruitinizer will intervene. The reaction of members will determine what is acceptable in the circumstances and context that it occurs. The test of acceptable conduct is simply, how would reasonable, mature adults behave if they were sat round a camp fire with family, friends and fellow climbers.
There is no aspiration to build any “community” or club. This will be a place to share chat and experiences; make recommendations for areas, routes etc, swap beta (what ever that may be) so that people that want to get out climbing in the UAE have the opportunity to share information.
Who is running the show? Effectively the people on it and if they object to other people’s behavior then I will intervene with the remit that I will apply: what is reasonable? would you say this if you were standing next to the person? is this how mature adults would behave/interact?
Its a bit of a mystery at the moment who Das Scruitinizer is!! I do hope that who ever it is quickly puts together a sensible group of admins though to keep things in line on in the group to prevent the ridiculous malarky found elsewhere.
Enjoy
Ian
Ian Ganderton 
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