Scandal: Stab lying about socks?

Chas Smith

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Has a massive falsehood been foisted upon all trusting surf fans?

Today found me heartbroken. Utterly bereft of joy. Crying onto my keyboard. Sobbing even and, when I finally found breath, screaming toward Stab‘s new Venice-adjacent location II “Why SurfStitch? Oh why?”

Yesterday, you see, I wrote a piece on Stab‘s fantastic “How to wear socks” feature. Oh sure I had wished they included the most fantastic of all ways to wear socks but still I was very pleased that 18,025 fellow travelers had clicked on the story, through Facebook, and “liked” it.

What a wonderful truth!

Eighteen thousand and twenty-five surfers as thrilled by mostly proper sock etiquette as me!

This morning, though, I returned to Stab having expected the number of “likes” to have shot through the roof. To 30,000! 40,000 thousand even!

But there they sat at 18,025.

Still eighteen thousand and twenty-five souls.

Hmmmmmm.

I started poking around and seeing that the rest of the “likes” on Stab stories averaged maybe 250. Maybe. And doubt started to creep. Are there fewer surfers who appreciate correct sock etiquette than reported? Not 18,025?

But no way! And how would Stab perpetrate such a thing?

Then I read a story on ZeroHedge titled A Russian Went Inside a Chinese Click-Farm: This is What He Found. It read:

On the day when Snapchat erased billions of market cap from investors (and founders) accounts – as the MAUs-means-money model seems to break – we thought it worthwhile taking another glimpse into the hush-hush world of ‘click-farms’ and the fakeness of the latest social network fads.

In 2014, we first exposed the world to the ‘click-farm’ where nothing is what it seems, and where social networking participants spend millions of dollars to appear more important, followed, prestigious, cool, or generally “liked” than they really are. As we detailed at the time, social networking has been the “it” thing for a while: for the networks it makes perfect sense because they are merely the aggregators and distributors of terrabytes of free, third party created content affording them multi-billion dollar valuations without generating a cent in profits (just think of the upside potential in having 10 times the world’s population on any given publicly-traded network), while for users it provides the opportunity to be seen, to be evaluated or “liked” on one’s objective, impartial merits and to maybe go “viral”, potentially making money in the process. Of course, the biggest draws of social networks also quickly became their biggest weaknesses, and it didn’t take long to game the weakest link: that apparent popularity based on the size of one’s following or the number of likes, which usually translates into power and/or money, is artificial and can be purchased for a price.

As we concluded previously, the bottom line is simple: “The illusion of a massive following is often just that.”

Son of a motherfucking bitch.

Are the Chinese wearing their socks cooler than I am?

Stab? What did you know and when did you know it? I WANT THE TRUTH!

Help: I wanna be a pro surfer!

Chas Smith

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A "Choose your Own Adventure" part III!

We are in the middle of a wild choose your own adventure adventure. Read part one here and two here. And I thought it was a misbegotten charade and gave you an out but you chose to continue… but I totally accidentally gave you the wrong path so I’ll include that one as a bonus and the one you meant to choose too.

So here we are!  Again vote either (A) or (B) in the comments!

BONUS (the one you accidentally chose on my recommendation):

You really do love spending time with your dad but you were up late watching Friends and are way to tired to even move. All the the girls at school are binge watching and talking about “Monica” and “Chandler” and “Ross” and “Rachel” nonstop. To even crack in to their conversations you have to know about the dollhouse or what tapping your elbows together means.

Exhausting but definitely worth it. Just yesterday one of the cutest girls in your social sciences class totally laughed when you sang, “Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?”

Your dad is very sympathetic and will understand so you tell him you’re too tired. He smiles and whispers, “Ok son. I love you so much. Have a great school day.”

You go on to develop a prescription pill addiction and end up selling insurance, your wife cheats on you with a 5th grade teacher at a local Christian school and your kids think you are a sissy.

THE END

And now the real one. The one you meant to choose.

Your dad winks and whispers, “A bagel and orange juice are on the kitchen counter. Meet you in the car.”
You stand, stretch and head to the corner to get your surfboard. Its wax smells like summer but you know that it is cold and wintery outside even though it is only just early fall. You know the first bite of cold Pacific will make you hate yourself.

The swell is forecasted to be pretty fun. Surfline is calling for 3-4 feet at something blah blah seconds and you are thinking that 54th street might be the call but it is for sure going to be super crowded and you don’t know if paddle-battling all morning for two waves is going to be worth it. Maybe you could hit up 17th street in Huntington instead? The waves won’t be even half as good but you would have a fun surf without any pressure.

Hmmmm. You head to the laundry room to grab your still damp wetsuit still thinking about where you should head and are still undecided when you reach the car. Your dad, already behind the wheel, asks, “Where to, champ?”

You respond…
a) Let’s just go to 54th… It’ll be crazy but better.
b) I’m over the crowds lately. Let’s go to Huntington and try 17th.

Hero: British surfer saves the world!

Chas Smith

By

A cyberattack thwarted and we have Cornwall to thank!

Have you always chuckled at the British surfer too? Do you picture him, with reddish hair and pale skin, floundering on an egg-shaped surfboard in the windswept Corn Wall? His face ruddy from the ice-cold water and bangers and mash? His wax and even shade of brown from the countryside’s loamy soil?

Do you you picture him like Dusty Payne without skill?

Well then you too are in for a big surprise. The world owes its peace, this morning, to a fine British surfer!

The anonymous 22 year-old who maybe lives in Cornwall discovered some new computer virus before it could get fully activated and thwarted its growth hereby allowing you to read your beloved BeachGrit this morning. Let’s learn more!

The researcher, who identified himself only as MalwareTech, is a 22-year-old from south-west England who works for Kryptos logic, an LA-based threat intelligence company.

“I was out having lunch with a friend and got back about 3pm and saw an influx of news articles about the NHS and various UK organisations being hit, I had a bit of a look into that and then I found a sample of the malware behind it, and saw that it was connecting out to a specific domain, which was not registered. So I picked it up not knowing what it did at the time.”

Etc. Etc.

He said he got his first job out of school without any real qualifications, having skipped university to start up a tech blog, write software and surf.

“It’s always been a hobby to me, I’m self-taught. I ended up getting a job out of my first botnet tracker, which the company I now work for saw and contacted me about, asking if I wanted a job. I’ve been working there a year and two months now.”

But the dark knight of the dark web still lives at home with his parents, which he joked was “so stereotypical”. His mum, he said, was aware of what had happened and was excited, but his dad hadn’t been home yet. “I’m sure my mother will inform him,” he said.

“It’s not going to be a lifestyle change, it’s just a five-minutes of fame sort of thing. It is quite crazy, I’ve not been able to check into my Twitter feed all day because it’s just been going too fast to read. Every time I refresh it it’s another 99 notifications.”

He is now more famous than Dusty Payne.

All hail the British surfer!

Kelly or Wavegarden Mach 1? Here, Wavegarden for your critical examination.

Superseded Texas Wavegarden Re-Opens!

Derek Rielly

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Is Texas pool the equivalent of film in a brave digital world?

Y’gotta give it to the German inventors of Wavegarden. They don’t fuck around.

When Kelly Slater squashed the presumption that the burgeoning artificial wave market would be theirs, they spent two years building a pool that at least puts it in the same realm as Surf Ranch.

You might’ve heard about their new version of a wave-tank called Cove. All we got is PR propaganda and a handful of WCT surfers who rode it, but who signed non-disclosure agreements and therefore can’t offer an independently verified opinion, so who knows how good it is?

But how do we know if the KS pool’s got legs? More NDAs etc.

Anyway, while all the confected hoo-ha about Cove was going on, poor little NLand Surf Park has finally re-opened. If you’ll remember, the tank was open for only one month before shutting its doors last November.

A bummer since nearly every session y’tried to squeeze into had been booked out, making a mockery of the naysayers who said they wouldn’t be able to find chumps willing to spend ninety bucks on a ten-wave session. Even Ozzie Wright was dying to gun his fist into it.  

For some visitors, the experience was… divine! 

Now that it’s open, and you can watch Wavegarden Mach 1 in action below if you want to form an opinion, do you think the owners are sad they poured millions into a pool that has been so roughly superseded by Cove?

Do you think the owner, in this case Mr Doug Coors from the fabulously wealthy beer family, wants to unscrew the fountain, unplug the plough and start again?

Do you think the vibration of a slamming door was heard all over Austin when Cove was loosed?

Or do you think nothing will matter when Kelly finally unveils to the world?

And then, of course, we have the mysterious Greg Webber who claims to hold the key to the greatest secret of them all.

Wavegarden, says Webber, will “end up being redundant. They’d be horrified at what Kelly did and and even more fucking horrified when I build my one. (But) only one is going to make money. My one. There’s only one design and it revolves around using the Kelvin wake. It allows us to do 500 waves an hour as a base rate. We can have a ride rate of 5000 rides per hour. That’s fucked up. That’s proper money. “

Will JJF retain the gold jerz in Fiji? Math says yes!

WSL: Upsets Abound on Day Three!

Michael Ciaramella

By

Is it day three? I honestly have no clue!

Yesterday’s smugness lit a fire under the boss’s ass, leading to the subtle suggestion that I write about round three of the Oi Rio Pro today. There is something to be said for digging your own grave, though. Makes you feel like you’ve earned the punishment.

I won’t pretend that I watched any heats live, nor that I spent more than ten minutes on the Heat Analyzer. But here are the big fish that fried today in Saquarema:

Johnny Florence

While I adore our reigning world champ, I also like the idea of a title race — not a goddamn cakewalk. In my mind, Yago defeating John achieves two favorable objectives: the world title becomes achievable to the Owens, Jordies, and Gabriels of the world, and we get to see more from the inevitable talent that is Mr. Dora.

Has anyone looked more in control of their surfboard in these trampolining conditions? I say nay and look forward to a Yago victory in a few days’ time.

Filipe Toledo

Ok, what’s going on here? Filipe lost early in the two events he should have won and made it far in the two events he should have lost. Surf comps are often fluky, but four outliers in one year is pretty hard to reconcile.

On the interference… it was an unnecessary and unfortunate event, but the judges made the right call. The wave had a right, true, but Kanoa commanded the peak and therefore had the right to push Filipe off. You may not like it, but the judges called this one by the book.

Fantasy Teams

Is everyone’s dead or is that just me? I expected more from you, Freestone, Fioravanti, Filipe and Florence.

Vai Adriano!

E morte para Saquarema!