How to Be a Real (Social Media) Surfer
It’s 2024, and we’ve traded SURFER mag for off-target tweets, and classics like the Occumentary for reels of turtles slapping each other. While some of us (ahem) are old enough to remember frothing over Transworld Surf, all you need to do these days to stay up on surf culture is scroll forever, just like the big kahunas of the tech world want you to. So, please like, click, follow, and sacrifice your analog soul for some solemn instructions on how to become a “real” surfer. Sharing these acts below on your feed will surely blow up your channels, and maybe even your DMs.
Get Your Dog on Board
Canines love cruising and clearly, they’re sick of ripping up skateparks. Forget your own surf career, your overweight pup shows way more promise. Grab the pooper-scooper, lace his kibble with a CBD/THC blend, and let the mutt off the chain to go barrel huntin’. If Bowser falls off your bonzer, no worries! Just let him sink to the bottom like a stone; you’ll get more likes that way.
Light Yourself on Fire
Surfing is easy, so why not dip yourself in lighter fluid – good for the ocean, and your skin – and grab rail? Your crush will be so stoked that they’ll care for your first-degree burns for the first 24 hours, until you’re left sobbing and alone, unable to even move your fingers enough to take a selfie.
Bonus: if you surf in Southern California, you can just light the Pacific on fire at your convenience – no gasoline required.
Get a Surf Coach
We all need someone to make us drop and do 20 then fire up some grainy game tape of us bogging ass while eating a high-protein, low-taste meal. It won’t be cheap, but in exchange, you’ll gain little to no improvement in your surfing and a free t-shirt that only comes in XXXL and your least favorite color. All in the name of stacking clips.
Get a New Board
It doesn’t matter how quick your quiver is: you need a thruster made of space-age tech-tek that costs twice as much as your Subaru. A new board is guaranteed to make you surf better on camera,* so get that high-interest loan and while you’re at it, pick up some overpriced surf wax made of sage, sandalwood and mushroom paste. When you’re too broke to afford food, you can also spread the wax on a cracker.
*No guarantees accompany this purchase. This new board will probably – no, definitely – make you worse.
Become a Kook
Everyone’s proudly expressing their Kookdom these days on the socials, and you Kook it with the best of them. But now that it’s Kool to be a Kook…you’re Konfused. Should you keep trying to get better at riding waves or just give up and join the Kool Krowd?
There are risks to both which include getting cut off by fellow Kooks and then bashed by a foam board in the family jewels, or, having old-school not-cool-with-Kookin’ locals set your car on fire because, you know, localism (BTW, does it get any more analog than spray painting “Kooks Go Home” on rocks?!)
Work Out Underwater
Crunches on the carpet while you watch Blue Crush are out. Iron pumping in the pool is in. Grab a weight vest, get in your kiddie pool, and make sure someone keeps the camera running even if you sink beneath the chlorine. What this type of training does is perfectly simulate the days when you and your dumbbell friends paddle out some dumbbells just to get a good pump on between waves.
Bonus: Flexing afterwards and then jumping in a big bowl of ice that costs more money than you owe the IRS this year.
Start Skimboarding
If you’ve never snapped a shin bone in the shorebreak, then you haven’t lived. You thought skimboarding was over when your dad sold yours in a garage sale when you went off to college (a sad, true story), but why surf when you can twirl like you’re finless and then ride waves on a glass-thin deck that will dice your ankles? There’s nothing like falling on hard-packed sand for your joints, either. Thanks, Blair Conklin, for making a child’s game scarily relevant again.
Surf with a Santa Hat
This is kind of a specific share for the season, but we all know Santa hats are just as funny as those neck collars you wear after you snap your neck skimboarding. Celebrate Christmas and Festivus all at once by wearing a Santa hat while surfing. No one has ever done it before, and as a hidden bonus, Santa hats attract sharks!
Bonus: Wearing your Halloween costume while surfing on Halloween to entertain only yourself (I’m kidding, I love this tradition).
Get More Tattoos
If you own a surfboard, you should be already designing an elaborate, barbwire pattern, detailed drawings of people you’ve never met and gravestones for your surfing Saint Bernard who met his end at Blacks when his board was commandeered by a stoned Sammy the Seal.
We’d recommend two to five sleeves, depending on how much regret you want to carry into your 40s.
Grow a Mustache
Who says mustaches have had their time in the sun? There is nothing that makes you look more like a pro surfer than facial hair reminiscent of Mark Twain, Freddie Mercury and Ron Burgundy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a thin line of sketchy stubble or a thick garden that looks like your beard threw up on your face; the point is that you’ll feel like a better surfer. As a matter of fact, you’ll feel as though you just woke up hungover in Tijuana and someone stole your razor and your dignity.
Start a Podcast
Surf podcasts are the new rage because no one listens to them and they’re profitless for everyone involved. As such, these fascinating pods offer essential tips on everything from paddling to popping up, insights into the mesmerizing lives of pro surfers – they eat at Taco Bell, just like us! – and hosts who say “Rad, that’s totally, super interesting,” 500+ times per pod.
Bonus Pod Points: If you have an Australian accent or can fake one.
Get a Surf Skate
These hips don’t lie: you can’t peep your feed without someone wiggling like a fish in a bowl. While the skaters I grew up worshipping, like Mike Vallely or Ed Templeton, might find these clips puzzling or mildly grotesque; the future is awkward skateboarding and surf skates will transform your crappy surfing to crappy skateboarding and then back to even crappier surfing. Steal some traffic cones and make sure to practice in a crowded parking lot or smack in the middle of the 101. And don’t forget to tag #surfskate when you post.
Get a Motorized Surfboard
Wait, does this really exist? If so, I’d like one. Let my fiancé know before my b-day, would ya? Not sure of the tag here? Maybe just #kooooooook
Pump up Your Pop-Up
According to surf influencers and social media surf coaches – both of whom we greatly admire – your pop-up is as slow as L.A. traffic, and a quicker pop-up is the only thing holding you back from taking Slater’s spot when he officially retires.
While I don’t remember the pop-up being such a point of contention before guys were filming themselves “popping up” on their yoga mats in landlocked apartments, perhaps the secret to being a “real surfer” is to over-obsess over things as you commodify them at the same time, right (see “surf influencers”)?
Let us know in the comments how your surfing improves as you chase the Endless Summer from the comfort of your couch.
The post How to Be a Real (Social Media) Surfer first appeared on The Inertia.
