Recognize that a wink and a nod toward the sheer ridiculousness of the pastime that consumes us provides an essential guardrail against over-sentimentalizing the whole thing…
Last week on a Thursday afternoon, Deadspin died. You are wondering what the hell this news, which is now a week old, because I am not very fast with the typing, has to do with surfing.
She made us read about her bikinis, the red one and the mismatched one, and we put up with it.
She told Stab to fuck off, and we played along, even though we still sometimes go there. Do you think she knows? (Yes, I know.)
Now, she’s making us give us a shit about a website we never read and doesn’t even cover surfing. Who the fuck does she think she is, anyway? Fucking wannabe surf writer who has never been to Hawaii.
Does she even surf? Fucking jock, going to the gym all the time. She probably doesn’t even surf.
This part is true, actually. I don’t surf! There are no waves! I’m pretty sure there are never going to be waves again. I have tried every possible sacrifice, and none has so far worked.
Times are desperate. Send help.
Back in the time when magazines roamed the earth in herds (rather than the few hardy survivors who remain today), Chas had a column: This has nothing to do with surfing. Of course, wherever he started, he would end up writing about surfing.
I think that’s because eventually, everything is about surfing. This story is like that. It will be about surfing. I promise! And I would never go back on a promise.
Last Thursday, Deadspin died after management told the editorial staff in no uncertain terms to stick to sports. If you read the site regularly, you will know that straight-up sports coverage was one element of a mix that included an annual review of the Williams-Sonoma catalogue, withering critiques of the Trump presidency, and advice for layering season.
The editorial staff refused to bend to management’s edicts. Management fired the deputy editor (the editor-in-chief had already resigned).
The writers walked.
What made Deadspin good was the joy and talent its writers, allowed a long leash, brought to the project. The results were not always good! Blogging is writing as a live performance, and quite honestly, even the best among us, sometimes fuck it up. But the writers at Deadspin played this game better than most.
There will always be the lure of becoming an insider, of sliding under the velvet rope in the hope of becoming one of the cool kids. It won’t work, though. Writers can never be cool, not if they are actually going to do the work of telling stories that are authentic, and especially not if they’re going to be rude.
Until the end, it was one of the sites that I read more days than not — and I don’t generally care about mainstream sports at all.
What also made the site good and necessary was a relentless determination to puncture the egos and pretensions of the powerful, in sports and beyond. Those take-downs took many forms from detailed investigative reporting to straight mockery. Powerful people, in general, do not enjoy mockery. Oh it burns! It burns so bad!
And there it is, right there in the internet for everyone to see and all their money and power can’t make it disappear (Sometimes they can! But it requires lawyers and stuff).
Deadspin was one of the last of the “rude press,” says Alex Pareene, a former editor of Gawker, one of our era’s original rude media outlets. “Rudeness is not merely a tone. It is an attitude,” Pareene wrote in an essay published on Thursday. “The defining quality of rude media is skepticism about power, and a refusal to respect the niceties that power depends on to disguise itself and maintain its dominance.”
Around the time the Deadspin writers were heading for the exits, Chas dropped a post here asking what the surf media should look like.
If you could wave your wand, what would you want to read and watch about surfing?
(See, I told you! Surfing!)
You all had plenty of answers to this question. For me, the surf media should be fun. Leave the earnestness to the New York Times and their ilk. It should be authentic and real — while recognizing that authenticity is not only the job of writers and creators.
It’s a two-way street, and the characters who populate our little island need to meet us halfway. Give it naked emotion, both good and bad.
Show us what’s at stake, whether it’s a contest heat or an interview.
And recognize that a wink and a nod toward the sheer ridiculousness of the pastime that consumes us provides an essential guardrail against over-sentimentalizing the whole thing.
The surf media would do well to take a page from Deadspin’s playbook and be rude. Raise that middle finger high. In truth, the necessary skepticism should come easily for us.
How often have you read a surf forecast and believed it?
And do you actually think it was better yesterday?
No, of course you don’t.
Surfers already have the required skepticism burned into their well-brined souls. It remains but to use it.
There will always be the lure of becoming an insider, of sliding under the velvet rope in the hope of becoming one of the cool kids. It won’t work, though. Writers can never be cool, not if they are actually going to do the work of telling stories that are authentic, and especially not if they’re going to be rude.
Eventually, to be one of the cool kids or the pretty people, you have to sell out, and that negates the possibility of ever writing anything that’s good and real.
(Selling out because you need to eat is an entirely different situation. Please sell out, if you need to eat. That is just common sense and anyone who judges you for that can suck it!)
There’s nothing especially complicated here.
Be rude. Be authentic. Avoid the cool kids and their velvet ropes.
Write what’s real. Keep your stiletto at the ready.
Mock pretension. Find joy in the stupid details. Laugh as much as possible.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Now, let’s build it.
