Brink, I do not want to get into a personal argument with you. I'd much rather continue to hit you up when I'm in LA and have you be too busy to grab lunch
(Note: this is a friendly joke, please take it as such.)
I've said this many times in my posts, there are people I like as people in these institutions, but I disagree with their decision to join these institutions. I've had arguments with multiple people in these institutions about the Olympics. None of the arguments ended with any concession to any of the points I brought up at the time. And, like I said, I want to feel bad as the contract they entered was not fulfilled by the other party, but it is hard to feel bad when they knowingly signed on to something that had a history of being terrible (the Olympics as a whole), with people who suck (Ream, Hendrix, tangentially Dyrdek, and so on), and engaged in activity that they knew many skaters were against (the sportification of skateboarding).
They assumed that knew better than all of us that Olympics skateboarding was the path forward when so many had said otherwise. And, while I think some might have been fooled into thinking that they were doing good, the problem is that in order to be fooled they had to ignore obvious information. Similarly, I think Trump supporters think they are doing good when they make Facebook posts about "BiDeN StEaLiNg ThE ElEcTion" but they are doing significant harm to our democracy by repeating an obviously false narrative. I think Jereme Rogers thinks he is doing good when he posts about a COVID vaccine that was created 2 years ago giving someone brain cancer 22 years ago, but he is doing significant harm to our healthcare system/society with this bullshit. Many of these people may think that they are doing good, but in order to believe this they have to ignore obvious signs to the contrary.
And, I've been in the industry. Once we get past the shop level, I'm not cut out for it. Every time I made the leap past the local, it was a miserable experience. I did this three times on and whether it was the media side or the industry side, it was wayyyy too cut-throat and " cool" for me. And, ethics rarely seem to exist. Everyone seems to be using everyone else. Not to mention, as we both know, the industry dramatically underpays and undervalues people. The skate industry is the last place for me. I had the most fun writing for PS118 (local AZ magazine) and when it went under, there wasn't anywhere else I wanted to go.
If IASC would let me into the club, I'd be down to write reports and give presentations, but considering their last IG post was 110 weeks ago, I don't think that is going to happen.
Until I can retire and start a shop just to hang out in, I'll just keep buying local videos, shop T-shirts, trying to be friendly at the park, giving away used boards, and fighting with city councils not to make dumb ass decisions/pushing them to fix their bad decisions.