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Well since we know he's reading this.
"Trae talks back at times. He doesn't listen"
Well no shit bud, you're raising him like a commodity instead of a child. How do you expect a child to show you any respect or even have self respect when all you've instilled in him is a purely risk reward mindset. I know single A baseball teams don't teach Social Rule System Theory but this poor kid's entire existence revolves around you exploiting him for your own gratification and gain on social media. Deny it all you want but the way his entire social media presence is crafted is out of his control and everything in those clips and pictures points to a kid his been coached and managed and conditioned into something simply to please his failure of a father.
Let him be a kid and actually skate with other people away from the camera. Just the sheer volume of content alone on these pages you've made for him is disturbing. We all skate, we know how time consuming it is traveling from spot to spot and the time it takes in between these trips to rest up. Not to mention the fact that he's in elementary school and spends his entire day in school. Like what time does he actually have to be a child and develop normal relationships and learn about life the way kids are supposed to?
I did my first tic tacs and rode a board for the first time when I was 3, and could you know ride around the driveway on my little world industries board. I then quit like 3 weeks into it and didn’t become a “skateboarder” until like 10, although I rode a board on and off in my driveway not doing tricks every summer between then, which I credit with making me realize the importance of not doing tricks.
I mean when I was a young kid and started taking it seriously, close to traes age now all I wanted to do was be a pro skateboarder. I could see his dad trying to help his son as much as possible even if it’s a fucked up way of thinking. I think he realizes that marketing the kid is the trick to getting sponsored as opposed to baseball or something where it’s purely based on statistics and win loss percentage. Now I definitely ate some shit at 3 years old, and to be honest the younger I was, the more shit I was willing to eat before giving up, I found this to be true even as I aged. Like if I get smoked now it’s fucking over, so I don’t agree with that shit. I also had a similar experience of having a black eye from jumping off my roof as kid and the school thinking my dad or mom beat me as a kid, so putting this out here like this is definitely not shalom because little kids do crazy shit, and my dad or mom definitely did not beat my ass. Like at this point everyone here thinks this dude is abusing his child and we genuinely don’t know and are making assumptions like a bunch of idiots on the internet, I mean it’s slap, but for real.
All very valid points. I personally haven't used to word "abuse" because you're right we can draw conclusions from assumptions here and that's not right even if this dude is actually "abusive".
But when you look at the things we have to go off I definitely think it's fair to call the dad "exploitative". You're absolutely right about social media being a means to an end in regards to sponsorship and shit. However when you look at hashtags like "grandeur" and "instafame" and read comments from the guy it gives serious credibility to the stories about him being demeaning to his son in public and makes the overly managed social media accounts look weird as well.
Most of us were under age 10 using some form of social media. I had a fucking geocities page dedicated to Korn at that age (and was deep into skateboarding) so you'd think there would some form of personal expression from Trae on his own pages. These pages just feel like a marketing tool from the dad more than Trae's own outlet which again reinforces the "exploitative" nature of everything.
I just think it's sad. Is it uncommon? No and unfortunately because of social media this stuff is more prevalent than it's ever been. But in this case being skateboarders we know what "normal" is in regards to how somebody skating at that level should be. I mean just the way he slams like a wet mop alone gives the impression that his entire time on a skateboard has been about being a hashtag. It started as #4yearoldskater and now here we are at #9yearoldskater or #10yearoldkater. What I mean by that is that I think his entire time skateboarding has been about producing these "stunts" or whatever that audience of 47 thousand instagram followers see them as more than a kid falling in love with and progressing at skateboarding on his own.
The poor kid seems negatively conditioned to just going out and doing the biggest shit possible for the sake of producing content is my point and that's unfortunate.
Topic: 9-Year-Old Trae ”The Tank” Montgomery Ollies A 20. But What's Up With His Dad? (Read 109227 times)