Proof That Instagram Followers Don’t Correlate To Talent

I’m not one to place significant weight on the quality/magnitude of someone’s Instagram presence, but I’m also not one to ignore it altogether. Not sure if that says more about me or about the state of the world. Probably both.

Either way, Jacob Willcox sent us this clip of Jack Challis, a fella I’d never even heard whispers of, and I was pretty floored when I scoped his Insta. With tube-technique like that, I was expecting to click over to social media and see him “influencing” lesser surfers. 

Not so. 

With 800-or-so Instagram followers (now including me), no stickers, and a computer programming job, Jack is about as mysto as it gets.

After watching his edit, we concluded Jack definitely deserves more recognition for the cone-time he’s been clocking over the last year — whether he wants it or not.

“I took a couple of gap years before uni, and ended up getting a boat charter gig in the Mentawai Islands. I met some bloke that was working whilst on a surf trip and that flexibility really appealed to me,” says the 25-year-old. “I finished my Master of Information Technology last year and have been working full time at a small company in Perth maintaining remote servers and stopping hackers. I don’t game or anything so most people probably think it’s pretty fucking mysto of me, but I’m hoping it’s going to be what allows me to travel and surf the most.”

How many people know how to stop a hacker and can also navigate set waves at The Box?

Probably only Jack Challis.