Or love and loss in the time of Disqus.
It started out innocently enough. Gorgeous model who also surfs, and a series of questions the likes of which have not been seen since Woolcott was asking Ke11y if he is eating cereal and if he likes it:
“Have you been travelling a lot lately?”
“Is it creepy if we ask what you had for breakfast this morning?”
“Sounds delicious…For the guys sitting in our comments section, can you describe your perfect man?” [I’m generally curious—is there anyone but guys in these comments sections?]
“What about the best vs worst date you’ve ever been on?”
Par for the course. But as readers here know, no one really shows up for the articles (except that LongTom review of Pyzel—straight up junxt). It was time to dig in and scratch the upvote endorphin high, or fail in vain by trying. Yet this time things quickly got weird—Negs came over and bantered with Newman about the fall from glory-days-grace and then MC started going after comments and out of the blue Rory starts throwing his weight around all the way from Maui and the Scarlet Letter of “M” for misogyny is branded and bannings occur (RIP VONR) and I haven’t seen such hypocrisy since, well, I see it every day with white evangelical Republicans in the States, but not on Stab’s comments.
Who takes this shit seriously? I’ve been a haiku writing dildo as a past avatar—is that reality? My personality type is OCD, sarcastic as hell, and the annoying younger brother. I missed Negs’s rein at Stab by a few months but I entered into his slipstream 3 years ago. He got out when the impact on his psyche was on the wall. 3 years and 6,000 comments later, I’m seeing it to (*too). Negs saw his cynicism, sarcasm, bomb drops, and one-upmanship as a downward spiral; well, I’m Negs 2.0, without the humor, more pimples, and a hairier ass crack. If there’s no fun in the game, time to get out.
The final kicker of the massacre was Rory tracking down my real
identity via the email I provided to disqus when I logged in and
mentioning this in a comment to me. A touch freaky, but out of
respect for his vision of Stab I offered to him I’d gladly call to
discuss Stab’s new approach to comments since he knew my real
identity. He didn’t take me up on it, but maybe one day in the
water we’ll have that talk and can smile to each other in the flesh
as real people and not avatars…
So dontneednochokebrain is now choked to death. Why? I figured I’ve
spent a combined 6 months of my life in the Stab dungeon (not all
that different from the BeachGrit dungeon, just with different
furniture arrangement).
This massacre was a good chance to break free from the
panopticon and restrategize priorities. For example, now I will
have more time to organize my archive of Lucy Pinder pictures;
search the dark web for the mythical Gabby and Charlie sex tape;
join neo-Nazi websites to help Make America Great Again; play
Sudoku; and learn to SUP.
At some point I’ll create a new avatar and rejoin the fun and be
more generous with upvotes and less generous with snark, and am
willing to do so by old and new community rules at both sites. And
as much as I rip the punters publishing typo-ridden pish at Stab, I
know they love surfing like the rest of us and are good people,
with good humor; and as much as Ashton is ridiculed both here and
over there I think he wants to see Stab be a vehicle for positive
good in the surf community, and I can dig that, too.
I like all of them, and I hope they know that. And while I’ll still find Chas annoying and narcissistic (Don’t jump the table, bro! And I am looking forward to the new book.), the reality is that he and I are pretty close in personality type and I applaud his desire to see BeachGrit be a vehicle for pointing out the overall hypocrisy of a capital-driven surf community that makes gods and goddesses out of high school drop outs who happen to be skilled at riding 28 ounces of stickered foam down and above a wave face.
Lastly, I’ll still remember some good times at Stab with guys I
came to love: VONR, Baldy, Scorn, Newman, Phatty, Dart, Wiggs, and
some other anonymous deplorables and how for a bit of time we could
be cunts and revel in it because it was all an escape from the
bullshit of Babylon to begin with.
P.S. Fuck off, joiny.