Show and Tell, with Official Stick Reviews
The magic of an everybody's internet
The What
Let’s pretend for a minute that the internet is, actually, a series of tubes. Some people saw that series of tubes and figured out that if they built some of those bank drive-through pneumatic tube capsule launchers, people could roll through and stuff their own things up on to the internet. As I’ve written before about the supercontributors of IMDb and stewards of Wikipedia, some of our favorite parts of the internet are built this way. While somewhat open, those kinds of websites did require you to go to that “bank” and start an account in order to deposit your content. Social media, and particularly social media on smartphones, later gave everyone their own personal capsule launcher – it’s just that most of the stuff just got blasted through the tubes and into the void of space. Curated and crowdsourced social media accounts, however, have created places for all those tubes to lead. Users don’t have to create any special profiles or leave their feed. Participation in the multidirectional production of knowledge and entertainment — that thing that distinguishes the internet from all prior media — is now exceedingly accessible.
And nothing, it turns out, is more accessible than finding a stick.
Official Stick Reviews (2.6 million followers on Instagram; 655,000 on TikTok) is a community dedicated to the wonders of the stick, a crowdsourced and curated account that posts short videos from contributors about themselves and the sticks they have found. While some members of “Stick Nation” vary from the script, or simply share a photo, these videos generally follows a tight format: “[Greeting] Stick Nation, this is [name] from/here in [place] and this is my stick. This stick is [description of stick].” But within that format, is wild diversity.
I would list all of the places people have found sticks, but it would basically be “all places.” A non-exhaustive list of all the things that a stick can look like, however, would include: ray gun, wand, cannon, sword, the letter L, an emu, the number 7, fishing hook for a giant, wishbone, glasses, a leg, a bird, a bow, like your heart in pain, the Olympic torch, Wolverine claws, stairs for fairies, pants, a pipe for a gnome, or simultaneously horns, a chair, a star, a slingshot, something that goes on your shoulders, and also a boomerang. Of course sticks can be used for walking and combat, but their other uses may include, to name just a few: backscratching, leaning, roasting day old pastries, throwing snowballs, stirring coffee, holding flowers, pick-axing and picking up hats, as a pillow, as a clothing rack, or just playing around.
Just as there are plenty of websites that depend on user contributions, there are also plenty of social media accounts that crowdsource content from daily life (see: Hot Dudes Reading, Fashion Dads, or Texts From Your Ex). There’s also now a robust tradition of show-and-tell on the web, from “get ready with me” to “unboxing.”
Official Stick Reviews draws from both, but is uniquely personal and uniquely accessible. Unlike sites that use avatars or social media accounts that use anonymous contributions, Official Stick Reviews is intensely personal. If only for a minute, and if over a stick, you are being introduced to someone, their place in the world, and how they think. Unlike crowdsourced accounts that aggregate fancy looks or feats of strength, unlike videos of purchases, absolutely anyone can be an official stick reviewer. People all over the world find sticks, whether while backpacking in a foreign land or sitting in their own backyard; 7 month-olds and 70 year-olds find sticks, as do dogs and birds. For this show-and-tell, to send your content up the tube and have it sent out to millions of people, you just need some imagination. And a stick.
The Chat
To lean more about how this community emerged, how it operates, and why childlike imagination might make popular content, I got in touch with the guys behind Official Stick Reviews. Here’s our conversation over Instagram DM, edited for length & clarity:
Hello Stick Nation…or should I say, Stick Presidents? By way of a proper introduction, it’d be great to find out who I’m talking to and what the closest stick is to you right now.
This is Logan – my friend Boone and I run this account together – and I actually don't have any sticks near me right now, which is a shame.
Official Stick Reviews started with content from the account I’d describe as “electric guitar baddy stick hunter” – guys out in the wild, (jokingly) appraising sticks that look like guns. But in September of last year, you accepted your first user review. The rest, as they say, is history (sticktory? histickry?). Tell me about the original idea for this account and what made you shift your approach.
We went on a camping trip with some friends last year down in Moab, Utah and found some sticks on one of the hikes we did. I picked one up and it looked and felt just like a gun. It was a serendipitous moment. We may or may not have had a some beverages before we went on this hike, which I think put me in a good headspace to truly appreciate a stick. We all kinda commented on how the stick looked just like a gun, what made it a good stick, the qualities that made it a good one. This led to us talking about how nice it is to find a good stick when you're out in nature – just recalling times as kids finding sticks and how cool it is when they're shaped like swords, spears, hammers, etc. There's something very human about it that we all related to. I thought it would be funny to make an Instagram account dedicated to the sticks we found.
We made the account that weekend as an inside joke mainly between us, but soon enough people from all over the world found the account and stick nation was born. We shifted our approach after we started to get so many submissions from all over the world: from Iraq, Brazil, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Indonesia, India, the list goes on and on. We knew it was a funny idea but we definitely underestimated how universal finding a good stick really is.
Finding a good stick definitely seems to be a widely shared experience. But I recall, at least in my own childhood, that adults tended to not exactly see or care so much about the particular coolness of a stick. The popularity of this account either suggests that’s really changed or something else is going on. What do you think?
The hope with our page is to facilitate some way for people to tap back into that childlike thing that's inside of all of us. There is a certain internet-ness of the whole thing and part of it is definitely a bit, but in another way it really is sick when you are out hiking and find a stick that is shaped like a sword and feels good to swing, haha. It's an undeniable thing.
How do you manage all the incoming submissions and what do you look for in a really good Official Stick Review?
We get so many DMs every single day, it's really out of control. We just try our best to stay on top of it. We're really trying to keep it pure and respond to everyone that wants to be a part of stick nation. But now that we have like millions of people following us it has been a bit more challenging. We just do our best tho to respond.
We have people in our DMs all the time asking us to rate a stick they found. I always respond to them with a question, which is: "What do you think about the stick? What do you feel in your heart about the stick?" Which is funny but also is in essence what the page is all about. It's all about you and your own imagination.
But we look for sticks with aura. That's the best way to put it. Aura isn't something you can explain with words. More something that is felt in the heart ♥️
That seems like an incredible amount of work. How much time do you two currently spend reviewing submissions? And running the account overall?
We spend a lot of time haha. I won't say how much time, but a significant amount of time. We also both work full time jobs. People sometimes have this impression that we are making a ton of money from this account, but that isn't true.
Besides looking at thousands of sticks, how has running this account changed your life?
This account has changed my life only for the better. It's a lot of time we dedicate to it, but to see the genuine joy it's brought people, even just for a moment, is really cool. We also have had the opportunity to work with amazing people on different projects. For example we're working with Penguin Random House on a book about Stick Nation right now, which has been surreal. We also worked with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer which was awesome. So it's just been cool and a lot of fun.
What kind of values or lessons do you think “Stick Nation” stands for?
Stick Nation is all about finding the magic. Magic is all around us, stick nation is about tapping into it wherever you might be.
Lastly, we believe at IRL that the internet is real life — and we know there are different kinds of real life. What’s one specific thing on the internet and one specific thing *not* on the internet that you want to recommend to people this month?
On the internet, man it feels like everything is on the internet so it's hard to say. I guess watch the movie Magnolia if you haven't seen it yet, it's a masterpiece.
Outside of the internet I will recommend everyone go to Sedona Arizona, I went there recently and it was amazing. Such cool hikes and just a really nice place to be.
Hey, thanks for reading. I hope you’ll go check out some sticks at Official Stick Reviews. If you’re new to IRL, you can read about the series and collective subscription model here and check out the IRL interviews with Eggs Tyrone and Weird Medieval Guys. Have an account or genre you’d like to hear more about? Get in touch in the comments.