Do you really think people didn’t call Tom Penny lazy? You shoulda been at the skate shop when Menikmati came out
I don't recall people calling him lazy, it was more like a total mystery. He completely disappeared for a few years. This was when the first message boards were online and every now and then Penny sightings would pop up, as if he was a Bigfoot or Yeti. I remember one particular post that he was squatting in London and addicted to H.
There was hardly any way to verify information back then even if you worked in the industry.
There was also the infamous "RIP Kareem, Joey Suriel killed him by accident playing with a gun" post and everybody was in shock. It took days to debunk that rumor. Maybe weeks.
As far as I remember people didn't call Penny lazy but were more like "what the fuck happened to him?" until Rowley (kind of) explained it in the Menikmati voice-over.