Louie Lopez is the most overrated skater of his generation. Everything about him is slightly above average. Not too technical, not too gnarly, not too creative, not too stylish, not too original. He panders to the “core” skate demographic, giving them exactly what they want and expect at every turn (hence the title of his latest video “As You Wish”). This conformity and desperate need for approval is antithetical to the ethos of skate culture and the appeal of skateboarding in the first place. As a result, Louie’s skating has no discernible personality beyond his conception of what other people expect him to do. It perfectly reflects the current general taste of those who refer to Thrasher as “the Bible” and frequently use the word “kook” as an epithet. He campaigned harder for SOTY than any other skater in history, all while pretending otherwise (because that’s “kook” behavior). He dropped a million parts, half of them mostly consisting of forgettable filler, and strategically spread them out throughout the year to avoid criticism of actively campaigning for SOTY even though that’s clearly what he was doing. After back to back years of Silva and Suciu brute forcing their way into SOTY with feature length film’s worth of footage, Louie thought he could exploit this new formula the same way. Quantity over quality: If I put out twice as much footage as everyone else then I must win by default. Tyshawn correctly called this out, and was open and honest about his own obvious attempt to win skateboarding’s highest honor. That shows strong character and integrity, which should factor into the SOTY decision. Even Nyjah is willing to own his eccentricity; nobody wants him to wear leggings or skate to Christian rock, but he does it anyway because that’s who he is.
Topic: 2022 unpopular opinion thread (Read 185917 times)