To be fair, that is, an small interesting story, IMHO, not much to ask for a stranger to open their place to another stranger. In the good old times, an story was not enough, you had to describe much more of yourself to help people trust you. That what CS did, created a global trusting metric. The free nights (that is exactly the symptom of not understanding the CS concept) on someone place was just part of the whole thing. The connections were some of the main benefits and those were incomparable. Or course, CS was not for everybody, you needed to be wired in certain way to use and to enjoy it, but f you did, there was nothing like it and it was as good as travelling gets.

Everything is correct what you said. I am not cricizing CS, despite how my parent comment looks, I am just saying I clearly wasn't the target audience

Well, couchsurfing is a community meets social network, it's hard not to be "intrusive".