6. Online Community Games

A Playground for Trackers

Followly’s social media channels serve a few very specific functions. Contrary to the dominant logic of our time, visibility and notoriety are not our primary concern. What matters most to us is creating a simple space where curiosity and exchange can circulate.

Many people who begin practising tracking discover the same difficulty : workshops and training sessions are often inspiring and stimulating… but once back home, walking alone in familiar landscapes, motivation can fade. Without someone to exchange observations with, the uncertainty of interpreting traces can sometimes feel overwhelming.

Through our Instagram channel, Followly offers a simple and playful solution :

It is really simple and uses nothing more than Instagram’s basic features. How does it work?

1 — Pick a challenge

Open any post on our dedicated Instagram account. You’ll find a set of photographs shared by another player: a track, a sign, some context. Something happened here. But what?

2 — Don’t give the answer. Ask a question.

Whether you think you know the animal or have absolutely no idea, resist the urge to identify it. Instead, investigate by asking one question per comment, as many times as you like. Size? Shape? Number of toes? Substrate? Surrounding vegetation? Direction of movement? Or something completely different? You decide! The only rule is: never give the answer.

3 — Keep the investigation alive

The person who posted the challenge replies to the players’ questions whenever possible. And when they don’t know the information, they simply say so. Doubt is part of the game.

As comments accumulate, a collective investigation begins to take shape. Read what others have asked, notice what has been overlooked, and try to add another relevant question. Sometimes a very simple question can shift the whole investigation. By staying together in the realm of hypotheses, the questions will gradually become richer and more precise. Experienced trackers may notice a fundamental question everyone else has overlooked, or ask something more specific that gently guides the virtual tracking team. Beginners, meanwhile, may ask the most obvious questions but also the most unexpected ones, taking the inquiry in directions an expert might not have considered. Tracking thrives on curiosity, questioning and the beginner’s mind. Here, expertise is not about being the first to know, but about helping everyone learn to look more closely.

4 — And then?

After a while, Followly will turn each challenge and its singular cloud of questions into a visual recap. A cloud? Perhaps. But the collective ‘mind map’ might just as well look like a tree, a bush, a snake, a spiderweb, a mycelium or an octopus... Its form will emerge from each investigation. And that’s exactly what we are looking for. We will display these maps here on the website: traces of traces of traces :) Visualisation of how a group learned to look.

The game is free, open and always accessible!

Play every week or twice a year. Play alone, with friends or with your family. Spend five minutes investigating a footprint while sitting on the subway and exercise your tracking mindset !

And perhaps the most exciting part:

At any moment you can become the game master.

Don’t be shy ;) Inspired by CyberTracker pedagogy, the game deliberately blurs distinctions between beginners and experts: what matters is not how quickly you know, but how carefully you learn to question what you see. Did the game make you want to look differently at the beach, riverbank or forest near your home, or simply at the ground on your way to work? When you encounter a track or sign, photograph it. Ideally, take several images: details, scale and some of the surrounding context. Post them on Instagram, tag :

@followly_eu + the option “Invite Collaborator”.

Ultimately, this is also a place to meet other trackers.

A question about a footprint may lead to another tracker living nearby. A challenge posted hundreds of kilometres away may reveal an (un-)familiar landscape, species or way of reading signs. Little by little, these scattered observations and shared playful moments can become points of connection across Europe. Between beginners and experienced trackers, different generations, territories and traditions…

By sharing traces, questions and places, connections may simply happen. Some might stay online, others might lead to a walk, a workshop, a journey, or a friendship ? We don’t really know yet. That’s part of the idea ;-)