"The tyranny of prescriptive joy."

I have, unfortunately, not watched one minute of this year’s Quiksilver Pro France. The time difference between California and France’s western front is unwieldy and I haven’t mustered the necessary internal fortitude. I thought this lack of professional surf watching was going to make me sad and maybe sick but, oddly, the opposite has occurred. I wake up each morning healthier and heartier than the night before. Happier. There’s an undeniable spring in my step.

I didn’t correlate the two, not watching surfing and my improved state of being, but I should have for a new series of studies declare that the “tyranny of prescriptive joy” including, but not limited to the World Surf League’s “Wall of Positive Noise™” is actually depressing and possibly killing us.

And we must turn to Forge, a publication about personal development, for more on what is being called “toxic positivity.”

But that relentless focus on positivity — what Kate Bowler, a Duke Divinity School professor and former cancer patient, described in her memoir Everything Happens for a Reason as “the tyranny of prescriptive joy” — isn’t just ineffective. Research has shown that it’s actually harmful.

One 2012 study found that encouraging people to push away their negative emotions often has the opposite effect, making them feel bad about feeling bad, in addition to whatever else they were already going through. A 2005 study found that relentlessly focusing on the positive during times of stress — what the authors call “avoidance coping” — increased the risk of depressive symptoms later on. And there are plenty of other examples out there pointing to the same conclusion: Forced positivity often leaves us worse off.

It can eat away at relationships, too. “Seeking out people who bring ‘positive vibes only’ will ensure shallow bonds,” says Cleveland-based therapist Karly Hoffman King, whose work focuses on trauma. Instead, the relationship becomes a performance of happiness. Difficult conversations, moments of vulnerability — all off the table. “People are left to deal with their feelings alone instead of seeking support,” says King. “Offering up toxic positivity like ‘look on the bright side’ or ‘it could be worse!’ often just makes the other person feel invalidated, creating a wedge between the two of you.”

In her work counseling cancer patients, Los Angeles-based health psychologist Stephanie Davidson often encounters family members who maintain a facade of positivity so extreme that the patient feels they can’t discuss their fear or the losses they’re experiencing. “Feelings that we don’t like are not the enemy, and there’s no research that says acknowledging those feelings will make medical conditions worse,” Davidson says. “However, there is research that says that those who are not able to get support from those around them tend to do worse.”

On and on and on the piece goes, detailing the horrors of life behind the Wall of Positive Noise. The pain and suffering. The illness and death and it got me thinking. Now, I know I’ve been all down on “suing” and “lawsuits” lately but what if we brought a class action against Santa Monica? I think, if forced to listen to one heat featuring Joe Turpel and the ’89 World Champ Martin Potter any judge or jury would agree that we have been poisoned.

Did you read about the billions of dollars Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, is coughing up in settlements?

I imagine we’d be looking at something like that.

So?

Are you in?

Come and get your piece of the fun…

Shortly, and in waves that may prove to be an improvement on yesterday’s bad tempered, indecipherable closeouts, although Courts C and Johanne Defay found inviting morsels, we’ll be gifted the money end of the contest.

Round four. Eight heats (I checked).

I choose, Jeremy, Ryan, Marc, Julian, Gabriel, Seth, Kolohe and Italo. Betting agencies in Australia have locked out multi-bets thereby eliminating the possibility of a million-dollar payout.

And did you know that Jordy Smith, Sally Fitzgibbons and Stephanie Gilmore have all successfully negotiated the Olympic selection process and have qualified for Tokyo 2020?

Many excitements, as our Japanese friends say.

But, first, today, Hossegor, France.

Buckle up, dress down.

Watch here. 

Quiksilver Pro France Round of 16 (Round 4) Match-Ups:
HEAT 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
HEAT 2: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Ryan Callinan (AUS)
HEAT 3: Marc Lacomare (FRA) vs. Wade Carmichael (AUS)
HEAT 4: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Jack Freestone (AUS)
HEAT 5: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Adrian Buchan (AUS)
HEAT 6: Seth Moniz (HAW) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
HEAT 7: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
HEAT 8: Michel Bourez (FRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)

News don't come for free…

France is popping. The early spring sun is flashing its tanline on Australia’s east coast. America hasn’t been overthrown by a pro-Iran/Shark/Dora troika.

Yet. The world turns.

So, I apologise in advance for doing this. But there’s something Ben Marcus said last week I want to examine. A tiny morsel of interest hidden in the OuterKnown of his plucked carcass that could, if it’s cooked the right way, deliver a tender intellectual treat.

BeachGrit’s owned by the WSL.

Yeah, I know.

The guy’s like a Jesuit priest in Tokugawa Japan, preaching his outdated scriptures to a dead-eyed audience. His roots cannot hold in this laissez-faire world.

But this particular conspiracy theory is not the craziest thing he’s ever said. In fact, he could even be right.

WSL could be funding BeachGrit. And we’d all be bit players in a grand false flag attack.

It’d fucken suck if it was true. Wouldn’t pass the pub test, or comments section, for a second.

But, in today’s media landscape it’d be no more surprising than, say, discovering Trump doesn’t write his own speeches.

News don’t come for free, baby.

Of course, BM’s way off the mark. The Wozzle is too scared of its own shadow, too risk averse, to ever consider being associated with this glorious bin fire.

And Derek and Chas strike me as many things, but Machiavellian ain’t one of them.

Yet, we know the Woz froths on a good content partnership. They love to crow about them. Show ‘em off to the world. A big green tick on some god forsaken ‘key engagement strategy pillar’ somewhere within the Santa Monica high tower.

Pay Rolling Stone money. Get positive ‘independent’ media coverage. Watch middle America come flocking.

It’s sponsored content, and everyone’s doing it.

I’ve written before about surfing’s need for a fourth estate. No, we’re not the United Nations. This isn’t life or death stuff, for the most part.

But dissent is important. Critical opinion is needed. Walls of positive noise can only hold so long. The masses are smarter than they’re given credit for, and somebody needs to keep the bastards honest.

So, who pays the bills?

For BeachGrit it’s Cheezstix. Bemboka luxury blankets. Lonely singles in your area. Yeah, those fucking annoying pop-up ads and videos are this site’s lifeblood.

And, for the best surf reporting in the free world, I reckon it’s worth it.

Sure, BG could take the road of TheInertia. 

As per their media kit:

Between our website, social, and OTT channels, we’ve built a comprehensive network of surf, mountain, and health enthusiasts whom we talk to every day. We can effectively integrate your brand into our channels to ensure you’re speaking to the right audience wherever they go.

Just check out their sponsors list. Samsung. Corona. WSL. Michelob ultra lite.

What’s it mean? Every word they publish is tainted. And unless you’re a single-use plastic, there’s nary a dissenting opinion to be found.

TheInertia presents itself as an army of woke, environmentally conscious warriors. But its business model is built on the most insidious form or post capitalism out there. Paid editorial. Where church and state are no longer separated, and corporate brands are allowed to infiltrate our lives so completely that we’re no longer just consumers, but unwitting advocates in their pursuits for profit margins.

It’s crass commercialism dressed in whatever political and social trend is popular at the time.

We all make a faustian pact when we come online. Everything’s for sale, including and most especially you.

But at least on BeachGrit we’ll look you in the eyes when we fuck you.

Of course, BM could be right and BG might actually be a WSL apparatchik.

In which case, Mr Logan, I’m a skilled corporate communicator with over a decade’s experience with some of the world’s leading brands.

Please find my resume, buried under the southern lifeguard’s flag at Newcastle beach.

A character study.

(Editor’s note: Besides quit-lit, and the saga of “man-eating” Great Whites, bashing/defending Miki Dora’s legacy has become a favorite sub-sub-genre of surf writing. Dora, to his credit, is a compelling study and while I thought I had my mind made up about how history should remember the man, the following piece changed it. Or at least made me very conflicted.)

Michelangelo Caravaggio, without hyperbole, the most impressive painter of his time, or all time; he painted his monumental canvases alla prima, no preliminary sketches or underpainting. Conceiving of an idea, he searched his mind for the faces and figures he knew the best: the bums, the larcenous, the gamblers crooks and slouches he hung with, and he brought them to life as the saints and Gods and heroines who knew them to also be.

When he painted The Death of The Virgin, the depiction of the most holy woman “of the people”, he used the best model for Mary that he could, a prostitute, whom he knew. She had drowned, and he painted her as such.

The monumental canvas, commissioned and contracted for the Church would of course be rejected by the Cardinal in charge. It was so full of honest emotion, of love and sorrow and rage at this woman’s premature death. It was, and is, the painting that would certainly speak to the world.

An outrageous affront, cried the Cardinal! Crude beyond belief! and unacceptable. Why? Because she had bare feet! (the official reason), and of course the painting would not be paid for, instead it was hidden away for years. However the open secret of the time was that everyone, including the self-righteous Cardinal knew that this woman was indeed a prostitute and therefore an improper stand-in for The Virgin.

Caravaggio constantly flaunted his skill and ideas against a church that at times supported him, or even apologized for him, and then at times punished his very existence. The history of his work shows us that the only constant was his dedication to his art.

Caravaggio was at best a rude and arrogant loudmouth and a petty criminal, but at worst a rage-a-holic, guilty of murder. He rejected his own brother who tried to help him, and he burned every bridge he had, and used up every chance he was offered. He painted himself as the villain Goliath, head hewn off. More than once! And he did so because he knew he personified that monster, but also because he knew he was the best artist to do it.

What an ego!

He doesn’t have a tombstone that I know of. He died alone on swampy beach, sick and desperate.

Dora once claimed that he declined to share his thoughts on how surfing made him feel, because “those thoughts were his own and he didn’t wish to share them.”

One certainly wouldn’t want to do things the way Dora did. And I for one, would certainly never want to emulate the tragic self destruction of Caravaggio either, but it seems as if each character lived their life for themselves and not for anyone else.