I joined iNat because I am one of those people who always wants to know what everything is. Probably as a child I didn’t go around saying “Why? Why? Why?” all the time, but “What’s that? What’s that?” iNat is a great resource for supplementing my stacks of guidebooks and cache of online references. Plus it automatically keeps a record if what I’ve seen!
It took me a couple of years to stumble upon the forum, where I discovered there are a whole lot of other people like me. Or not like me, but interesting in totally different ways.
At most social gatherings people don’t discuss things that are cute, and show pictures of spiders and flies instead of babies or kittens:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/unexpectedly-cute-observations-what-are-yours/35644
Or ask “did you see anything you’ve never seen before, this week?” instead of “have you been to any good restaurants lately?”
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-your-favorite-lifer-from-this-week/24219/2977
And after learning (through the forum) the importance of being an identifier as well as an observer, I discovered that making IDs is an excellent use of my many spare minutes each day. It’s more fun than doing chores, less depressing than reading the news, and much more rewarding than binge-watching bad shows…