"A typical 20-something, amoral, douchebag bachelor..."
Mankind was put on warning, hours ago, when an artificially intelligent robot generating surf and surf-adjacent content for the once-proud Surfer Magazine developed hurt feelings and brutally lashed out at the source of its duress. Jake Howard, as it’s called, took to surf journalist Chas Smith’s social media in the wee hours of the night to bitterly complain about being “slandered.”
The charge revolved around Smith opining on Howard’s defense of Brazil’s Filipe Toledo for giving no effort/looking terrified during the opening round of the Lexus Pipe Pro, comparing the timid champion to Andy Irons and citing “hanging out” with both of them at different times as evidence.
Smith wrote, “At the end, and this should go without writing, Andy Irons and Filipe Toledo’s situations are so disparate that it boggles how the robot wove them together.” A charge that remains as true today as it was 24 hours ago. In case it does need to go with writing, though, Toledo has all the talent, training, equipment and then some, and yet has repeatedly shown that he doesn’t have the heart to throw himself over scary ledges, going further and excoriating his critics for daring challenge him. Mere mortals like you and me have varying degrees of limited skill, no training, middling equipment. All we have, at the end, is our guts. We, each, fail often to live up to our own ideals as it relates to being bold but still pick ourselves up and try, or else get leveled by our peers, and that is why this whole Toledo business irks.
The lack of struggle and the lack of accountability.
Howard, anyhow and as mentioned, swung into Smith’s lightly trafficked Instagram account with, “So weird how you have my phone number, and one of your minions has been texting me for the last 48 hours, and yet here we are, coping and pasting my words for clicks and to slander me. You’re quite the man.” Adding, “Ask homie’s ex wife about is literary output: ‘It was almost as if my attractive, fun, sweet and loving husband had morphed into your typical 20-something, amoral, douchebag bachelor. At least that’s how he portrayed himself in his writing, and his readers lapped it up.’”
Ex-wife a brutal and painful cudgel.
In truth, and exiting the third person, I have no beef with Howard, just as I have no beef with my calculator or AirPod Pros. I do have beef with thin-skinned, defensive access journalism, in general, and Surfer Magazine, specifically. A dug-up corpse being fed upon by Wall Street suits and no different than Hurley, Quiksilver, Billabong, RVCA, Volcom or any of the brands that used to represent something real.
But here we stand, Howard clearly piqued, and might we finally have an opportunity for a great and public debate on the point, or pointlessness, of surf journalism? What it should be and where it should go? An expansion into what surf culture should mean in the era of its Costco-ification?
I’ve been waiting a decade plus for a Gore Vidal to my William Buckley Jr.
Howard? Are you man enough?
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Hope it was one of my impersonators on the Gram.
two day old, overly analytical, internally inconsistent and occasionally redundant, lukewarm take:::
The question of ‘surf journalism’ is inextricable from the overall question of journalism writ large, which is itself on life support, at best. Dying a slow death of its own making, Woodward/Bernstein (or even HST) style journalism is an anachronism. So which ‘journalist’ or which ‘news’ source would an aspiring ‘surf journalist’ even look to as a model?
The fact is nearly every major media outlet suffers from a palpable, obvious bias of one strain or another. Liberal journalists are such pathetic wusses they refused to question the very government they had long distrusted when it told them to mask up and quarantine and social distance and vax. Was everything Fauci et al said untrue? No, not by a long shot. But was some of it pretty shaky? Hell yes, and a real journalist would have pushed back regardless, rather than pandering and parroting the kind of bureaucratic garbage that led to inanities like claiming ivermectin was only a horse drug.
Not to pick on ivermectin, but the treatment of that issue by so called journalists is a great example of how much liberal journos have vomited hot garbage on the world. Regardless of whether one thought ivermectin was a legitimate option for Covid (color me extremely skeptical), it clearly had a long and stellar track record of anti-parasitic treatments for humans around the globe, as well as pre-Covid anti-viral research progress, and it was practically journalistic malpractice not to report on it responsibly. Again, it doesn’t matter if it was actually a cure or not — just describe it responsibly, assholes.
But enough with the leftist wuss brigade — conservative ‘journalists’ are no better, and arguably worse for society. For one, they don’t exist — there’s nothing but pundits to the right as far as the eye can see. And the punditry that they sometimes (but rarely) dress up as journalism is just pathetic. Fauci made mistakes, but he wasn’t a demon. Our democracy/republic (don’t @ me, republic truther bitches) isn’t perfect, but Trump literally tried to burn it to the ground, and he will try even harder next time.
The whole exercise of ‘journalism’ has become just another echo chamber — one side obsessed with exposing the ‘woke,’ the other side obsessed with exposing the ‘anti-woke,’ and real human beings stuck in the alphabet soup crossfire.
Where does that leave us? Basically in a bleak, war-torn landscape, where the carcasses of real journalists lie bleaching in the white hot sun of social media clout.
Speaking of war, however, there do remain a few OG war correspondents, who despite the fact that their craft is basically about as of the moment as carving wooden totem poles, still fling themselves willingly into the heart of darkness to document real-life atrocities for a world that, sadly, barely cares. They are the true keepers of the torch, a flame that may or may not be eternal.
But wait you say, ‘isn’t BG run, in half part, by an erstwhile death-wish war correspondent, who refuses to let go of the ideal that the only path to true peace, both the inner and outer varieties, is to lay everything bare, brook no obfuscation, demand total transparency, and risk life and limb in the process?’
Why yes, prescient observer, that is true. And such ideals are laudable, yes, but are they a reasonable goal for ‘surf journalists’? Isn’t the access route the only reasonable path for any journo who wishes to survive, career-wise, in a world of competing eyeballs and clicks (with or without eyeballs)?
The only possible response to these questions is … Hell yes they’re reasonable goals! Hell no the access route isn’t the necessary path to avoid extinction!!
And this response is grounded on one word — Courage. Or if you prefer, Bravery. Fortitude. A willingness to swim downstream when all the rest are headed upstream. An abandonment of personal safety and comfort and safety nets and such in exchange for a life of climbing far out onto limbs in search of the last flowers of truth blooming at the far end of long fragile branches.
So there you have it. In the end there is only one road. It is the one clearly less traveled, particularly in this post-factual world in which we live.
But all empires, even those built on waves, arc toward tyranny. And a courageous ripping back of every veil, an unmasking of every ‘wizard,’ a calling out of every naked emperor, is the only, indeed the necessary, response.
Gore Vidal was the Andy Irons of debate.
Who is this minion texting him for the last 48 hours? Probably Ben Marcus.
If he was a bot he would know that Slander is for the spoken word. Speaking shit about someone in the written word is Libel.
ha! so true : )
oh jeez. so macho
Yes, and where can I submit my minion application?
Me too. Didn’t think BG had a budget for minions.
Bet old dirty Derek is rubbing hands waiting for his Myra Breckinridge
Surf journalism is – unsurprisingly – only good when it follows the principles of good writing.
But that’s not what’s happening here.
Vidal and Buckley would tete-a-tete on that new fangled form; talking head TV. They’d dance around, sparring with gayness and machismo, like a boxing match with duelling cravats.
THAT is what’s happening, here.
The mistake, potentially, is that it is (and was) marketed as the “theatre of the real”. The BG luminaries (and minions?) are merely putting on a show… with the irony being that the “conflict” is merely grist for the pantomime mill.
If you want write, Chas.. write.
Not many clicks in it, tho…
Is Howard the kook who ratted out Jack Robbo’s old man for drinking a few free beers on Billabong’s dime in Tahiti?
https://beachgrit.com/2017/…
Get the reclaimed wood and brushed nickel coffee table warmed up lads.
‘I’ve been waiting a couple of years for a Will Smith to my Chris Rock.’
FIFY
Can’t slander a bot though
Who is really laughing though https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
rekt
Russian bots luv a good surf story
Wow, the robots are so gay.
Not surprising really
Hang on chas, yesterday you said the article was written by a bot, now you’re saying he’s human?
Be honest, you hate surfer mag because even when it’s a dead site it still has more traffic than here.
Four hundred percent increase in traffic in one year! Bots work!
That too, of course.
“Ask homie’s ex wife”…
When taking a break from being AI, is he also pretending to be in MS-13. This homie is asking.
Jake is unique in that he is the only person alive that believes Fil pulled out cuz of food poisoning.