“Any political posts that are posted in the Surfer forums will be deleted and accounts will be removed.”
With only 164 days left until Don and Joe fight for the right to jerk the American steering wheel either left or right, Surfer magazine has reacted by banning all readers from expressing any personal political opinion on their forums.
Surfer magazine, which most recently featured on BeachGrit when they advertised for a human to monitor its AI-driven content, had over one thousand pages on its politics forum covering everything from the Ukraine-Russian war, a political assassination in Slovakia, Peru’s decision to classify trannies as mentally ill, Biden’s “inflation explosion” and Trump’s “Hush Money”.
Written in what you might imagine as a creepy sing-song voice, Surfer magazine told its readers.
“IN AN EFFORT TO KEEP THE CONVERSATIONS SURF-RELATED, THE POLITICAL FORUM HERE HAS BEEN REMOVED. Let’s talk surf trips, surfboards, and the latest happenings from around this beautiful, blue planet. Thanks!”
And, as a sticky in the main forum,
“Effective immediately, the politics forum here on Surfer.com has been shut down. Any political posts that are posted in the Surfer forums will be deleted and accounts will be removed. We want to continue to offer this forum as a surf-related area, and we know that bleeds into everyday life. With that being said, we will not have this forum devolve into a political area that is disrespectful of others and intentionally marginalizes or disrespects other groups/individuals.”
The fall and rise of Surfer magazine, heritage title driven into the ground before being rebirthed as a dystopian zombie site complete with AI-generated writers, was best documented, I think, in this story by Santa Barbara’s Jen See.
As humans, story-telling is one of our most ancient traditions. We drew on cave walls, wrote on papyrus rolls, and scribbled illegibly on parchments and yellow legal pads. Now we tap out our Instagram captions and text messages. The medium doesn’t matter that much.
It feels like the deepest cut to replace this profoundly human process with a machine trained on the work of so many human writers. Who are we, if not our stories? And who do we become in their absence? What’s lost in this dystopian world of trained robots and hyper-efficient editors? Certainly what’s left starts to feel a lot like Roth’s “claustrophobic and airless culture.”
Surfing is nothing without its stories.
At times, it can feel like the stories are as important as the thing itself. Sitting around campfires and hanging out in parking lots, we talk of that one perfect day, that probably wasn’t all that perfect at all. But we were there, we experienced it, and we’ve come here to tell of it.
There is then, something beautifully, magically, and fundamentally human about telling stories. Dumb stories, true stories, completely fake and made-up stories — what matters is that they belong to us. In the telling, we spin another thread and add to the ties that connect us to one another.
And isn’t that elusive connection what we’re all here to find?
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Did you see him try and sit down today at the D-Day ceremony?
“Dr.” Jill had to cover her mouth while telling him to stop.
It’s elder abuse.
It appears that the “Replace Joe” tide is beginning to rise.
While the WSJ isn’t strictly Left Wing it is still respected.
By the way….the NY governor rescinded an unpopular tax today which would have disproportionately impacted the outer boroughs of NYC like the Bronx.
Just two weeks after Trump’s successful rally in the Bronx.
Coincidence?
Opinions like:
Taiwan is a separate country.
Xi is almost certainly a paedophile.
Putin is a demented mouldy sausage.
Israel should be reduced back to its 1964 borders and pay reparations to Palestine.
Trump is a puppet fronting a grave danger to US democracy and stability.
Freeze Peach.
!?!??!
Then you’re on the same dementia cocktail as Joe is.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Hillary was right….about EVERYTHING!!!
Maybe you should have some of Donald’s Kool Aid.
He showed up in AOC’s backyard on Thursday and was well received by a rowdy and diverse crowd.
And he forced the governor into calling his supporters clowns.
He certainly won’t win New York but the tired trope of him being a white supremacist took a big hit.
Surfer endorsed a presidential candidate in 2020, for the first time in their history.
Surfer, the Boring of Surfing.
You think I’m kidding?
Look at CNN and MSNBC ratings with Trump vs without Trump.
He’s their greatest gift.
I hope here stays a safe space where we can read about how people hate transgender and like guns, and communism and how surfing judges are fucked and brazilians rules unless it’s the rich kids from san clem who now rule the roost, say it’s ok please Chad and D
Excellent point.
Lefty Media desperately needs his shtick.
YET…they haven’t Epsteined him yet.
But that would likely be a bridge too far especially since he has USSS protection.
Sure…they can make it look like a Vince Foster™️ but that also means his protection agents take the blame.
LoL! Day one, the fib would be no more! They’d have to get new jobs. Imagine them handing someone their resumes…..
Vaguely? 😆
The same zero politics policy should be used on BG. Oh wait, that would mean half of the articles couldn’t be posted and 75% of those money making clicks would be lost. Never mind.
More like 85% and 90%.
I like Chas’ Libertarian, surf adjacent click bait.
And Derek is steadfast in his opposition to the lady boys in women’s sports.
If you’re an Australian this is almost like attending a Klan rally.
Politics? OK, here ya go. EVERYONE of you reading this are on stolen land! Please gather your belongings, and head to your piece of ground. Thank You! ~ Indigenous
That pretty much settles ALL poli’ convos.
A shout-out to Tim Nelson aka DSS&S…gone but not forgotten!
Surely he’s not gone gone but could be forgoing forgotten
Election not trending favorably. Surfer doing its part to shut down the conversation. No HamSammish.
Plumber or pizza?
While the pussy grabber will veer hard right and right off the road. It’ll just be more to the right of the centre right than Joe, whose similar birth date way back in the last century has almost certainly impaired his steering ability.
His cute little shuffle…aah the circle of life
Surfer banning politic comments while making the most bias political comment imaginable:
“latest happenings from around this beautiful, blue planet”.
So what, the whole planet is a “blue state?”
…and what of green? just because green is a minority color on earth, they completely remove it from earths “beautiful” color spectrum? Is green not beautiful?
…and what of all the other colors on this “beautiful….planet?”
as a happy camper, I take offense. not many can camp in the “blue”.
disgusting.