Look at that gym douche bag klapping some gym boet. Just look at him. Look at him checking his schweet biceps in the mirror my china, pumping some serious iron.
Now look at that surfer douche. Just look at him. Check him looking back at the pack after he’s finished shredding a schweet wave, checking out who checked out his wave.
Let’s get real folks. We surfers are really up our own arses. It doesn’t matter how much of a nice person you actually are; we all have ego’s when it comes to surfing. Very few of us can argue against that – and although there are most certainly an absolute, teensy-weensy tiny majority of surfers who possess little to no ego (John John Florence is a pro who comes to mind), most of us at the very least won’t be posting the photo the local amateur photographer took of us nose diving with bulbous backside stuck in the air like the world’s crappest fish eagle.
Indeed team – let’s be honest, surfing may be the funnest thing you can do in water and has more soul than James Brown’s trousers – but let’s forget all that for a moment. All surfers are glory hounds to some extent. When things get heated in the lineup, calling another surfer a kook is about the worst thing you can say. Nasty comments about their face, body shape, intelligence, personality, mother, lack of success finding a willing partner, lack of success finding a paid partner, their refusal to use toothpaste, the weird thing on their neck, their bizarre smell of cabbage, lack of genitals, back pimples, insinuated relations with a Great Dane, simply won’t infuriate as much as a comment calling them out on their lack of talent – or perceived lack of talent.
Anyhow, an obvious way in which we surfers pursue our own egotism is in photo’s. Sure, the ooh’s! and ah’s! of an admiring pack is cool and all, but the only way to truly cement our ego’s fragility is with the permanence of a photo or a video clip. Here’s something interesting though. Often a photo can flatter a surfer of lesser ability – and also occasionally insult a decent surfer if the exact timing of the photographer was slightly off. And let’s not even mention Photoshopping the image to make the wave look bigger and/or gnarlier, adding some sick spray or making a little hop look like a 6 foot high air. And prettying up the surfer? Pfft. A simple case of airbrushing the wrinkles off the surfers face or increasing the size of their biceps, schlong, breasts etc.
The same can be said of video clips in terms of misleading edits; but very few people in their right mind will bother with a 10 second phone clip of someone hacking their way through an onshore bowl and turning it into a facsimile of Medina at pristine Pipeline.
Sometimes, it’s not even about the actual act of surfing. Sadly, it’s just about being a surfer. Look at that oke with the surf T-shirt and boardshorts sauntering through a crowd, like a peacock that’s just had a steroid enema and been on the cover of People magazine. We know we’re cool, right? Or at least – we think we’re cool.
