^ Honestly I have no idea, but I will ask him.
I know this may sound harsh, but I just don't think people care as much as you do. It's really cool that you push underground skateboarding through Live and I respect your dedication to showcasing these unknown skaters and their scenes.
With Instagram and how much skateboarding is released out there, and the decreasing shelf life with a lot of these clips, people just prioritise what they watch more than ever, and are a lot more likely to watch a video with skateboarders they are familiar with and brands they like/support. How many views would a video with BDK & Hjalte get skating the same spots and Ben Chadbourne released it on his Vimeo?
(incoming long reply)This didn't sound harsh to me and I actually encourage this kind of criticism otherwise situations can only remain stale, so thank you.
My idea of a media platform is that it's supposed to have an editorial line that it uses specifically to point out the good stuff and help people prioritize their viewings, like you're saying.
I'm also well aware that commercial content altogether - and Ben Chadourne's personal Vimeo counts here or else you're not really looking at the skaters that he films - is bound to catch more views than most of the sincere stuff out there with zero industrial validation because this is the world we live in, where people are conditioned to think in terms of mighty entities and otherworldly heroes as opposed to actually consider the inherent qualities of what's in front of them - but I think that's very wrong (if not downright scary) and worth lamenting and I can't and won't accept, personally. Especially as far as skateboarding is concerned since the activity used to culturally boast about being some kind of last resort against that very error in many ways and I like to think that it used to succeed - historically sanctifying D.I.Y./sustainable ethics and economics, and in fact actually federating the probably somewhat naive, usually likeminded people with more or less shared criticism of the excesses of capitalism (keyword: excesses).
The culture used to encourage looking beyond the beaten path, right? Like I was saying before, SLAP as a magazine I always thought embodied that really well. Personally I grew up on so much SLAP Magazine content, so many SLAP articles and photos before I realized where those were even coming from, and how much of it was literally alternative; then to me this message board was always a remarkable user-fed extension of that alternative spirit - and to this day I believe it still is, in fact it even managed to modernize it in many ways which is something I celebrate. I'm talking the yearning for something a bit more sincere and substantial than all the rest of the everyday bullshit, that always was a shared appeal to a lot of people and the common denominator was being able to look at a skateboard for what it is and be amused or intrigued by how different individuals would make it move.
Just to make it clear, I don't believe in numbers and am in no way worried about 'views' (I'm not exactly trying to use the people's skating here) - this is not about Live, this video in particular or any kind of personal interest because even if the world collapsed (and in a way, over the past two years it kind of did) then I'll be keeping doing my humble celebrating and sharing of independent works and people that I think are interesting anyway. I'm just... intrigued? And skeptical of a lot of behaviors I'm seeing (although I respect the individual). Watching a skate video for the shoes, for logos, for this or that pop star of a skateboarder you've already studied under every possible angle so much that you already know the footage before you've seen it. And then what, no curiosity for real life skateboarding anymore because you're too busy watching the same TV show on loop, no interest for unofficial but authentic approaches that should speak to you as a skateboarder more than any branding? How much is the skateboard and the skateboarding still at the core of this whole stage play?
I don't judge but am very wary of skateboarding losing its human touch, if that makes sense. People used to be curious about what they didn't know and then skateboarding was a convenient vector to connect with different cultures, people, customs, landscapes. This thread (which just so happens to be mine here, but had it been a similar one by someone else I would have drawn the same observation) being ignored for 72 hours is just one out of a million of micro details that eventually add up into a more concerning form. But it is a good demonstration of how brainwashed we're getting - in contrast, what skateboarding are people exposing themselves to instead? Look at the BATB thread - and literally everyone in there is complaining about how shit the content is. I don't get why everyone thinks they have to routinely dive their nose into dog shit just because it's corporate - or maybe, clearly that must mean it's more interesting than the next original creation produced out of nothing but passion (and in the case of this thread, literal love) by independents from Serbia, or really what the next skateboarder does on an organic level, sometimes right in front of them. Are all those people really happy subjecting themselves to the reality TV that they claim hating, are they not really missing out on the skateboarding that they really wish they could be watching instead when in fact it exists and they just don't know where to find it - which makes sense since it's not especially being promoted or pushed on social media and in fact that's why I try and start these threads, but no I guess the neon-colored laces barely shrouded in the darkness of scientology-backed settings are still too bright.
Now, every day I interact with literal thousands of skateboarders from all over the planet and you wouldn't believe the shit I see flying that stems right from the opposite formatting and leaning towards pensée unique. Even skate media, supposedly a cultural enterprise in the first place (which the most naive still regard as such) has been consumed by advertising budgets and marketing so hard, a lot of it has progressively lost its original senses and now treats the everyday skateboarder like shit. It's a very sorry sight when, in fucking skateboarding, independent creatives are literally being told to adapt or give up by the very entities that should be representing them - one straightforward example I can give from not so long ago is a magazine I won't be naming telling a crew of Slovenian rippers brave enough to make their own VX edits to stop sending them emails unless they basically stopped filming their friends and maybe moved to a different country; the guys spontaneously showed me the emails because they were half broken, half confused about them and I couldn't fault them - what kind of fucking skate media does this? Shouldn't that person be working for a brand as a sales rep or some shit instead of discouraging skateboarders worldwide for not being marketable unless they're willing to give up on everything to go and film the same boring Instagram clips as everyone else in Berlin and calling it an editorial line? Even as a business model, that shit is putrid - when we eventually ran the Slovenian guys' video and interview, it turned out to be the most popular article we dropped that year, organically outclassing the non-indie stuff.
Finally, I have no problem with certain scenes, videos or happenings being niche at all (quite to the contrary in fact), but I do have one with the general discontentment people express all the time when they aren't curious or serious enough to consider changing their habits in favor of new ones that may be more uplifting personally, and more constructive when it comes to painting healthier standards in skateboarding. And that problem of mine isn't with those people themselves - who are merely being victims - but with the root cause of the issue: the exclusive articulation of skateboarding around whichever scenes/cities/countries/shops have the strongest economy and are the most profitable for an elite, and the idea that at the end of the day money should be dictating art.
Also HORSES, I appreciate you or anyone following Live even from afar. That actually means a lot to me.
Topic: "SHIT PIE" / Belgrade, 10mn (Read 679 times)