A lot of my ideas for my videos and articles from the comment section of my YouTube channel, BigRobsVan. While a few people have asked for specific topics to be covered to products to be reviewed, many ideas for content have come from negative, mean, and downright hateful comments. If there’s something I’ve learned about YouTube over the past two years, it ain’t the place for people with thin skin.

(And, as many viewers continue to point out, I’m not that thin. That’s a topic for another day.)

In one of my most popular videos (“10 Foolproof Stealth Camping Spots: Where to Sleep Without Getting Caught!“) I got a ton of comments that can be boiled down into two general categories. The first is “stealth camping isn’t camping” and the second is a slightly larger umbrella that can be summarized as “what is the point of stealth camping?”.

While responses to both of those comments would probably make for good YouTube comment, I’m not sure I want to turn my entire channel into a fight with thousands of viewers, at least not today. Instead, I’ll address them here.

STEALTH CAMPING ISN’T CAMPIUNG

While most of the videos I’ve uploaded to YouTube receive a couple hundred views, the one I made about stealth camping went viral and racked up more than a quarter million views in a short period of time. YouTube’s algorithm is something nobody truly understands, but when a video starts getting views they will put it front of more people’s eyes creating a cycle that continues until the views die down. It’s a bit like the old days of MTV; the channel created one hit wonders by playing specific videos on their channel, which turned the songs into hits, which got them played even more heavily on MTV.

I don’t know why, but many commenters on my video about stealth camping seem to think (or at least act like) I was the person who (a) came up with the idea and (b) named it. Of course, I did neither. The term “stealth camping” came about in the 1990s from a group of cross-country bicyclists who, during their rides, began looking for free-but-questionably-legal places to camp. That’s what stealth camping means: camping in places that aren’t designated as places to camp.

Over the past six months at least a hundred people have commented “stealth camping isn’t camping!” on my videos. I explained this in one of my videos, but I’ll touch on it again here. Of course stealth camping isn’t camping. If it were camping, people would call it camping, not stealth camping. So, duh. You would not believe how vested people are in explaining to me that sleeping in my van while it’s parked outside a bar isn’t the same as sitting in the middle of the woods roasting marshmallows. Again I’ll say YouTube is not for the easily offended. The first time I felt the vitrol coming through those comments I was more confused than hurt. For a while those comments irritated me and now, and I am not kidding when I say this, I enjoy them so much. It literally makes me laugh to see adults getting so upset because I enjoy something they don’t. Every one I see makes me giggle.

As I mentioned in one of my videos, as someone who holds a master degree in professional writing, I always feel a bit responsible to explain to people how the English language both works and evolves. The short version is that for hundreds (thousands) of years, language evolved and during that time humans came up with concepts of things and words to represent those concepts. Sometimes they came up with new words — someone came up with the word “dog” to mean a dog and “house” to mean a house. Sometimes, as language evolves, people put words together to describe things instead of creating new words. So, the first time a guy nailed some boards together to create a shelter for his pet he could have called it a splitzelfrude, but “dog house” kind of conveyed the idea and so he went with that. Putting two words together to describe something new is called a compound word. I learned that from Sesame Street.

Now sometimes compound words don’t have a space in between the two words, like sunflower or cupcake, and sometimes they do, like ice cream and post office. The word “stealth camping” is not the same as camping because it’s not the same word. Yes, we all agree, stealth camping is not the same as camping. A toothbrush is not the same as a regular brush. A snowman is not a real man. Living rooms aren’t alive. Fire trucks are not on fire and are not pickup trucks.

I have to say at times I feel like I’ve become the ambassador of stealth camping. There are literally hundreds of channels on YouTube dedicated to stealth camping. Steve Wallis (host of the popular YouTube channel “Camping with Steve”) routinely stealth camps in campers he builds. Over the past year he’s disguised his truck camper as a trash truck, as a truck full of leaves, as a bear trap, and even a stack of pallets. Steve’s channel has 1.93 million subscribers. His pallet camper video currently has 6.8 million views and more than 22,000 comments and I can’t find a single one that says “stealth camping isn’t camping” in there. Why all those comments come to me and not everyone else, I’m not sure.

So I guess in summary to nobody in particular, if you think stealth camping isn’t the same as camping, we agree. Peanut butter is not the same as peanuts or butter.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF STEALTH CAMPING?

The other question I get quite often is “what is the point of stealth camping?” This question comes in many variants. Sometimes it’s phrased exactly that way while other times it’s implied (“why would you do that instead of getting a hotel room?”) and other times it’s hiding behind an insult (“that’s stupid”). Before I explain what the point of stealth camping is, I want to ask a question of my own and that is:

What is the point of fishing?

Now maybe you enjoy fishing and maybe you don’t, but we all know what fishing is. If you grew up in the Midwest like I did chances are you have a fishing pole or two out in the garage — and if you don’t, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you can find one this weekend at a garage sale.

But did you ever stop and ask yourself… why do people fish?

Excluding people who catch fish and sell them for a living, there are really two reasons why people fish. The first is to eat them and the second is for recreation. People sit outside for hours, catch fish, look at them, throw them back, and try to catch different fish.

Unless you’re a professional fisherman or are selling the fish you catch, there are really only two reasons to fish. One is to catch fish to eat. The other is to catch fish for fun.

Stealth camping is a bit like that. There are millions of houseless people who live in their vehicles and sleep in them out of necessity, and there are people like me who simply enjoy the activity.

Let’s apply some of the comments I get regarding stealth camping to fishing. For example, I have been accused of “taking up parking spaces needed by other people.” I guess I would say people who fish are taking fish out of the ecosystem and away from other fish who eat them! Many people suggest that camping in a van makes no sense if I own a home. I guess fishing makes no sense if you have food at home in your refrigerator, either! I’d like to remind everyone who suggests I quit camping in my van and just pay for a hotel that there are restaurants that sell fish.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I hate fishing. I honestly cannot think of a more boring and tedious way to spend an afternoon. The idea of sitting in the sun for hours with a hook on a string waiting for a fish to bite it just so I can pull it out of the water, look at it, and throw it back in seems like the most miserable and monumental waste of time. If someone offered me a hundred bucks right now to spend the afternoon fishing with them right now, I would not go.

That being said… it does not bother me in the slightest if you enjoy fishing. Never in my life would I spend time watching fishing videos on YouTube only so I could leave negative comments about how boring I find fishing. Imagine wasting your time and energy driving around local lakes, rolling down your window, and shouting “that’s stupid!” at every person fishing. When I said I couldn’t think of a bigger waste of time than fishing, I was wrong. Telling people who enjoy fishing that I don’t is am even bigger waste of time.

And while is is certainly not the norm in today’s culture or society… if you like fishing, that makes me happy. It makes me happy to know that you’ve found something that makes you happy, and I would never waste an ounce of energy telling you to quit doing something that makes you happy. Not everyone is wired like me. There’s a difference between saying “I don’t like fishing” and “you are dumb for liking fishing.” A big, big difference.

To bring this weird rant back around to stealth camping, allow me to say this: I like it. I enjoy it. I enjoy everything about it. I like secretly sitting inside my vehicle and listening to the sounds of the city around me — car doors slamming by, people having conversations inches away from me on the other side of my van’s thin walls, and sitting by myself and unplugging for a bit.

The self-rightlessness expressed by many people who camp is downright laughable. I have been told so many times that sleeping in my van is nothing like “real” camping. The same people who cannot possibly understand why I enjoy sleeping in my vehicle instead of in my home are the same people who leave their homes to sleep in the woods. These people act like they’re creating fire by rubbing sticks together, eating wild berries, drinking water through a Life Straw and creating shelters out of fallen trees. They’re not. They’re cooking on propane stoves, chugging beer or soda from their coolers, and sleeping in a tent they bought from Walmart. Walking down a trail someone else beat down and setting up a tent on a patch of ground someone else cleared doesn’t make you some sort of pioneering explorer. Cooking hotdogs purchased from a grocery store on a coat hanger from your closet doesn’t make you better than me.

(Coat hangers aren’t really coats, by the way.)

In one of my earliest stealth camps, I drove to the parking lot where, just months before, my childhood movie theater stood. I got dropped off outside that theater when I was in grade school, went on dates there in high school, and even took my kids there a few times. The theater got sold a few times and briefly found a second life as a club for teens before it was shut down and abandoned. The theater sat abandoned but not empty for over a decade before the property was acquired by some out-of-state company. It took them a couple of months to obtain the permits but eventually bulldozers and a crane with a wrecking ball showed up to destroy it. The theater sat in the corner of a large parking lot and today it’s… well, a slightly larger parking lot.

For that video, I drove my van and parked it right on top of where the theater used to be. I spent the evening reminiscing about all the good times I’d had there, and (somewhat embarrassingly) got choked up while talking about it on camera. It was one of my earlier videos and if I were to remake it today I’d shoot different things and edit it into a faster, quicker video. One thing I didn’t film was in the middle of the night I left the van, walked over to a nearby wall, and stared alternately at the parking lot and the stars in the sky. It wasn’t winter yet but it was cold. Just me and my breath outside, thinking about life and the passage of time.

It was a night I’ll never forget. And frankly, I don’t care if you call it camping or not.

Now the reality is, I do lots of camping on the road. As I’ve previously mentioned I’ve visited all 50 states and slept inside a vehicle in about half of them. As a younger man I moved 1,800 miles away from home and made the drive back and forth a few times, sleeping in hotel and casino parking lots along the way. Not only do those times pre-date my YouTube channel, they pre-date YouTube! Stealth camping for me has always been about finding free spots to grab a night’s sleep while on the road.

Things got a little complicated with the introduction of vanlife and YouTube. A lot of my YouTube videos feature me sleeping in and around my own city because I have a full time job and a wife and two kids and can’t drive across the country every single weekend. I’ve also discovered that a 2007 Ford E250 cargo van isn’t as comfortable to drive across country as either of the cars my wife and I drive. I would love and plan to explore more of the Midwest in my van and have destinations planned to visit this fall in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas. I’ll be the first to admit that my back was shot for a week after driving it 2,000 miles to West Virginia and back. For all the things the van is, comfortable during long hauls isn’t one.

There are people who fish because they need to, people who fish because they like eating fish, and people who fish because they enjoy the act of fishing. Same goes for camping, and the same goes for sleeping in my van. I fall into categories two and three. I am not houseless and do not need to sleep in a van, but I sleep in my van while on road trips and I enjoy the act of sleeping in the van.

I am happy for the things you have found that make you happy. Be happy that I have found something that makes me happy.