The cardinal rule of perpetrating an excellent hoax? Don't get caught.
It probably found its way onto whatever social media feed you favor in the past week, “This Pro Surfer’s Selfless Act Got Him Disqualified,” attached to some maudlin schmaltz about how a surfer took a crippled guy out during a heat.
It’s a stupid notion even if you take it at face value. Who cares if he got disqualified? Even if he wasn’t, it’s not like you’re gonna win a heat with some dude clinging to your back like a limp legged limpet. Why not just wait half an hour and take the guy out then? It seems like a good way to waste your contest entry fee and maybe drown a guy in full view of a ton of people, but that’s about it.
Well, GrindTV, Yahoo’s XTREME! Sports media outlet par excellence, is reporting that it was all just feel good bullshit. Argentine surfing campeon, Martin Passeri, staged the affair, shooting the surfing footage outside competition, then editing in some voice over and footage of the contest area.
Turns out the guy isn’t an idiot after all. Passeri realized that, first, surfing with another person on your back is hard as all hell and, second, he’d probably be DQ’ed.
Now, I love a good hoax. Playing with people’s understanding of reality, manipulating their emotions and getting them to laugh or cry of feel an all encompassing rage, that’s awesome. Because, you know, man, what is real, anyway?
But the cardinal rule of perpetrating an excellent hoax is “Don’t get caught,” and Passeri blew it big time in that regard. Now he’s gonna be treated as some nefarious charlatan by the online community, when he could have made a video that’s pretty much the exact same thing, just not put in the contest part. Because, again, that was just stupid, even if, especially if, it’s true.
it’s pros.