Living legend Kelly Slater on wrong side of public opinion, called “soy boy” by omertà-abiding surfers for attempt to publicly out older man burning younger boy at plus-sized Kandui as drill-gate stretches into third day!

Strange days.

I am usually a prescient surf journalist, able to hold a tanned finger to the warm winds and divine the general consensus and so you can imagine my confusion in getting the most recent earth-shaking surf-based episode entirely wrong. For those living under a rock, days ago adventure-based listicle blog The Inertia posted a video on its Instagram account featuring living legend Kelly Slater calling a 14-year-old boy into a Kandui grower.

New evidence has surfaced that the boy received a slight shove from his father but, nonetheless, the drop was steep and he fully committed. Then, out of the sky, dropped an elder man wearing what appeared to be a trucker cap, forcing the boy to straighten out and get drilled into the reef while the man continued his ride to the end.

It was captioned, “That’s @kellyslater backing off of one and calling teenage local @thariq_inanuttshell into an absolute bomb, only to end up on the receiving end of the most egregious burn you’ll see this summer (not to mention a near disaster and serious bummer). We’re told the culprit was promptly shown out of the lineup after this one…”

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Slater promptly responded with “@captain_kook_berry_crunch tag him.”

Now, being blocked, I was only sent a screen grab of the exchange and assumed that Slater had tagged the surfer himself. I was very wrong. Slater was asking for the captain of the boat the elder man was traveling upon to do the tagging and not outing @captain_kook_berry_crunch as the offender.

Very confusing handling these matters in the black outerknown.

In any case, Slater calling for Internet mob justice was not met kindly by most omertà-abiding surfers who called him a “soy boy” for not dealing with the issue, himself, in the lineup.

Mano-a-mano, as it were.

A wild turn of events and one that I did not see coming. I imagined loyal fans combing various social medias, finding the offender and gathering outside his virtual doorstep torches and pitchforks held high as opposed to rounding upon the world’s greatest surfer, teeth bared.

Strange days indeed.