I remember, many years ago, sitting on my parents’ bed as my father — a mild-mannered engineer — dug through their closet, pulling out blade after blade from his knife collection. “All this will be yours when I’m gone,” he joked, pointing to the panoply of fighting dirks, Swiss Army gadgets, and fat multitools that overflowed from the shelves, along with hunting gear, dozens of flashlights, and even a pistol or two.

We were searching for an appropriate knife for me to take on our hike up a nearby mountain, just in case something terrible happened. As we sifted through the pile, my father said that when he was my age, he carried a pocket knife with him everywhere he went. I pointed out that would probably get me expelled from my middle school, but he just laughed. “That didn’t stop us. We wanted to be prepared for anything. You should carry it with you when you can.”

Users would reveal the items they carry on their person every day, such as your wallet, keys, phone, or even a knife or two

Scrounging for Father’s Day gifts for my dad over the past few years has introduced me to a world he would probably feel right at home in: “everyday carry,” or EDC. While the term — usually used as a noun, like “my EDC” — was originally born out of threads on outdoor enthusiast forums where users would reveal the items they carry on their person every day, such as your wallet, keys, phone, or even a knife or two, it’s now exploded into full-blown subculture.

Since these EDC hubs began to sprout up all over the web, from the popular Reddit community /r/EDC to the lifestyle blog EverydayCarry.com, the meaning of the acronym has shifted from what people do carry to what they should carry, with a focus on “readiness” — often at a fairly steep price point. While proponents of the EDC lifestyle stress that personal carry is ultimately dependent on your needs and personality, there’s a strain of perfectibility that runs just under the surface; a creeping sense that the next piece of gear you buy will be the one that finally makes it into your ideal.

The world of EDC has many entry points, and for r/EDC user Tim Hayes, having the power to control situations that crop up in everyday life was a big part of the appeal. He came to the hobby through a particularly popular 2013 YouTube video featuring Mythbusters host Adam Savage. (Several people I talked to also cited this video as a major turning point.) The concept of treasuring the seemingly mundane objects that you carry every day was inculcated in Hayes by his father, who gave him a wallet that belonged to his own grandfather as a symbol of his entry to adulthood. As a former Boy Scout, Hayes was more than familiar with the concept of “readiness,” so when he stumbled upon page after page of carefully posed shots of high-end gear like flashlights and folding knives, he felt right at home.

“EDC has been crucial to me, especially in the subcategory of vehicle everyday carry,” he says. “I’ve used my carry to treat small cuts and burns, tie down loads in and on my car, repair my brakes when I was stranded dozens of miles from home, help a driver out of a snowbank. ... To be prepared is to be in control. It’s not like I expect zombies to pop out of the ground or terrorists to attack. It’s the things we all run into in our daily lives that make us feel powerless when they happen. I take back control and power by having the tools I need when I need them.”

The Boy Scouts in particular have been praised and criticized in equal measure for promoting a vision of rugged manliness that is inextricably tied to this idea of readiness, as reflected in their longtime motto, “Be prepared.” But while many admit that traditional Western concepts of masculinity certainly contribute to the popularity of the subculture, /r/EDC users like Sean S. (who asked that we not use his last name) stress that your personal choice of carry is ultimately a very intimate decision that says more about a person and their vocation than the community as a whole.

“The intimacy is important because I know that what I’m carrying is not completely to the taste of someone else,” he says. “It’s my carry, which fits my needs and meets my standards.” (Others agree: For example, when Hayes started working at a bank after a stint as a mail carrier, he changed his EDC completely, dropping from a backpack full of outdoor gear to just a handful of items that could fit in his pockets.)

That said, not everyone is entirely happy with the community’s stereotypically masculine overtones. Although several subjects pointed to their mothers’ seemingly bottomless purses as inspirations for their EDCs, others, like Kevin Diale, feel that the subreddit can be somewhat hostile to women. “When you see people post problems that they bump into as a woman, like not enough pockets on pants, you get folks who crawl out of the woodwork and wave a pair of niche work pants marketed to women and try to invalidate them,” he says.

Others in the community disagree, calling it an egalitarian space, while still admitting that the /r/EDC is undeniably male-dominated. (For example, of the 10 most upvoted posts this week with the gender of the poster in the title, only two are women.) “Most people have an EDC whether or not they realize it or put any conscientious effort into it, both men and women,” says Sean S. “Furthermore, I don’t see anything preventing a woman from using or creating, in any facet, an EDC.”

A few participants even push back on the notion that these spaces rise to the level of a community, but one thing’s for sure: For the companies that make these trendy products, the EDC label can be big business. Just ask Sean Frank, chief operating officer of the Ridge Wallet, a self-proclaimed “EDC-friendly” direct-to-consumer manufacturer. Though the Ridge is best known for its eponymous product, a metal “minimalist” wallet that launched via Kickstarter in 2013, it also traffics in several of the staples you’ll find on many of these forums: weatherproof bags, leather phone cases, and compact knives. As Frank sees it, the EDC world is the convergence of many smaller crowds, such as flashlight or firearms enthusiasts, which are themselves stratified into different use cases. He also estimates that the community is “90 to 95% guys.”

He divides the company’s customer base into two main groups: techies who are more invested in the aesthetics and the features of a tool, and outdoorsmen types who are concerned with durability and practicality. “People scroll down the Reddit and see guns everywhere,” he says. “A lot of them like to shoot our wallets [and] post pictures of them, just to show how durable they are. But you have to remember that … you just can’t carry guns in that many countries. Knives are far more popular, though most people would say that they’re more of a tool than a weapon.”

Though not everyone in the community is interested in firearms — Diale in particular was turned off at first by all the talk of carrying guns before realizing that the community was more about general-purpose tools — some members take it to extremes. For example, Frank says he often sees some gun enthusiasts in EDC spaces repeat the refrain “one is none,” which reflects their belief that carrying at least two firearms at once is the only way to ensure their personal safety. When I bring up the example of my father, who has never once used any of his guns to shoot anything more threatening than the squirrels invading our attic, Frank admits that the focus on “readiness” can seem a bit at odds with the white-collar lifestyle of some EDCers — including himself.

“A lot of it is those guys preparing for any situation, a bit of masculine cosplay”

“I have a very comfortable life in LA, and I get to walk to work, and everything’s super safe,” he says. “I carry a knife, but partly for my job. But the community is super-focused on that. Like the guys who carry two guns, how often do you need to use one gun? Never. A lot of it is those guys preparing for any situation, a bit of masculine cosplay, trying to be that person.”

Perhaps the supposed focus on “readiness” above all else can seem a little goofy to some, especially when it’s clear from a cursory glance that accessorizing and aesthetics factor heavily into the subculture. In that sense, it’s not all that different from the mindset of apocalyptic “preppers” who compete to have the most stylish camouflage after society collapses. However, as an EDCer might argue, in your daily life, you’re a lot more likely to run into a problem that a multitool can solve than a pack of zombies. Frank notes that the EDC label has a lot in common with the YouTube makeup community, even down to the snazzy unboxing videos that rack up millions of views.

Still, while fads and trends might drive the buying habits of these EDCers more than they might want to admit, these tools really can help you in your daily life. For example, Sean S. recalls seeing an influx of pocket pry bars (similar to a crowbar, and some of which retail for hundreds of dollars) on the subreddit at the beginning of summer, and he wondered why someone would bother carrying such a large object on their person. Just a few days later, when he ran across a dog locked in a car, he “scrambled” to find the right tool to free it. “Although I got the dog out, the whole situation got a little too close for comfort,” he says. “That day, my whole view of pocket pry bars and what it means to have something in an EDC in general changed.”

Of course, you can forgo the high-end $150 pry bar with a skull engraved on it for a $5 Gerber Shard, which will perform the same task just as readily. Then again, you can’t exactly brag about scoring that to your buddies. Perhaps it’s Frank who puts it best: “At the end of the day, we just really like having stuff, you know?” he says, laughing. “And if it looks good and it’s functional, that’s all the better.”

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