Y’all fucking realize we are in this fucking predicament because skate shoe companies shafted shops and sold everywhere? Like this is such fucking modern liberal bullshit pyschobabble without any historical context for why things are the way they are with a touch of anti corporatism and anti capaitalism. Anti corporatism is not bad by itself, what causes anti corporatism to go bad is the individuals at the top once their companies take off end up realizing they can have extreme wealth and start making decisions based on that, or sell it to some other company make a lot of profit, and then those guys at that top of that conglomerate or private equity firm end up doing the same thing. This is what occured with SKATER OWNED COMPANIES. do you think Pierre and Don started fucking selling to malls because it was ethical compared to skate shops. Hell no, as a matter of fact they are even More fucking greedy because they don’t have thousands of shareholders to distribute their wealth with. They have a few select individuals who made a shitload off of selling to malls and what not, and now they try to save face with this stupid marketing they have all gotten stuck in your fucking heads about “being skater owned bro”, shit is fucking crazy how brainwashed y’all fucks are. Like at the end of the day it’s human nature to want to achieve success you never dreamed of if that opportunity suddenly presents itself right to your face to provide for your kids and their kids kids, it’s just basic evolution, so it’s not like I slight say Don or Pierre in the case of Sole Tech but y’all really have been fucking brainwashed. Do you all understand the concept of Triage? Like dealing with the most pertinent problems essentially that will cause the most death to skateboarding there is? You know what that is? It’s shops fucking closing, plain and fucking simple. Other then California, and very few states west of Kansas that have an insane number of skateparks and shops, most places in the United States have one or two tiny-medium dope shops in the entire fucking state, and those guys closing there doors is so much more detrimental to skateboarding then big corporate brands controlling it. At the end of the day skate shops are like the heart of the human body, and the shoe brands are like the legs. Even if the big skate shoe brands sucked USA dry and paralyzed us, skateboarding would go on because our heart is still beating, but the second you kill shops, you decimate fucking skate scenes, and there is nothing more detrimental to skateboarding then shops closing, and Nike and Adidas are the sole reason 40-50% of shops in America can stay in business. Shit sucks but if you gotta have a pacemaker, you gotta have a pacemaker.