Online Surf Sleuths Declare Kelly Slater's Surprise Visit To Rival Melbourne Wavepool A Psy-ops Play, “Guaranteed He Wasn’t Surfing; He Was Evaluating!”

"I wonder if we will see a collaboration between Urbnsurf and Slater’s Surf Ranch."

The greatest athlete of all time, as determined by The Outsiders star Rob Lowe, has sent surf fans, conspiracy theorists and online sleuths into overdrive after a surprise visit to the Urbnsurf wavepool in Melbourne, Australia.

Fifty-one-year-old Kelly Slater, along with fluid mechanics engineer Adam Fincham, created Surf Ranch in 2016, a one-off pool near Fresno, California, that has become the go-to for tech millionaire birthday parties and home to the tour’s own Coachella-esque event and festival.

En route to Margaret River, where the 11-time world champ will attempt to keep his spot on tour, Slater visited the two-year-old Wavegarden pool a short taxi ride from Tullamarine airport.

And while the Champ’s jumping and swerving was adored, as always, online gumshoes were quick to point out there may be more to his visit than a simple rinsing after Bells.

“Been there, surfed it, seen others surf it in real life and posted! No one, no one has ever destroyed a wave like that… Kelly your a legend! P.S. don’t think I have ever seen you do that at your surf park, must be a better wave here.”

I wonder if we will see a collaboration between Urbnsurf and Slater’s Surf Ranch. Guaranteed he wasn’t surfing; he was evaluating.”

A psy-op or psychological operation is the use of propaganda, disinformation and other psychological techniques to twist the minds of a target audience’s behaviors.

Think, Operation Mockingbird from the nineteen-fifties when the CIA recruited journalists and editors to spread propaganda and disinformation in support of US government policies or the wonderful MK-Ultra, when the CIA, responding to claims of Commie-brainwashing in Vietnam, used drugs and hypnosis to get into their subjects’ heads, Charles Manson a famous test pilot.