Surfing culturally appropriated in most disturbing way yet

Trigger warning.

It is not secret that our favorite pastime, this grand Sport of Kings, becomes regularly co-opted and used to describe something not even remotely related to wave sliding. “Surfing the web,” for example, which involves sitting indoors and typing URLs into a computer browser or “crowd surfing” which involves people being passed around a room via other people’s hands.

There is couch surfing, channel surfing, particle surfing and stand-up paddleboard surfing, just to name but a very few, though the most disturbing appropriation has just dropped.

Surfing the wave of heat pumps.

Heat pump water heater aficionado Joe Wachunas writing for CleanTechnica, the “the world’s #1 source for cleantech news and analysis” dropped the pastiche as part of his heat pump water heater tour across America. Currently visiting US Water Heating Solutions in Arlington, Illinois, the pixie-like thirty-something declared:

US Water Heating Solutions sees the opportunity inherent in the heat pump market disruption that is upon us. Heat pumps are growing rapidly for both space heating (substantially out pacing gas furnaces over the last five years) and water heating (increasing sales by 35% in 2023 alone). When I visited their headquarters, CEO Jim Eggert told me how his company views heat pump water heaters as an “innovative, technologically advanced product line” and wants to “grab a surfboard, jump in and catch this (heat pump) wave.” They see heat pumps as the way of the future and are excited by the business opportunity of specializing in this equipment early.

Oh.

I suppose the coinage is Jim Eggert’s fault not Joe Wachunas’.

Sorry, Joe, for calling you pixie-like.