Watch: A Love Letter To KSPS

Videogame-like surfing
/adj./

A term applied to manoeuvres that exceed conventional human ability and plausibility, often involving aerial rotations, delayed landings, or contortions that suggest either divine interference or input lag. Typically resembles something rendered rather than rehearsed. Usage implies disbelief, awe, and mild suspicion.

Historically applied to surfers like Bronson Meydi, Mateus Herdy, or anyone with movement patterns that suggest outsourced muscle memory, or perhaps a neural implant.

As artificial intelligence continues its race toward embodied cognition, it is not unreasonable to anticipate a humanoid executing a Skate 3-style quad backflip at Teahupo’o within the current decade. Ethical implications remain unaddressed.

Usage (field recording):

“Damn, cuh, that’s some video game type-shit out there.”

Well, damn, cuh. There’s some video game type-shit in the edit above, but not in the way you might expect. 

Jao Errera is a Moroccan-born, Hossegor-raised shredder that appears to have spent much time suckling on the digital teat of Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer. His self-made, self-funded Indonesian edit kicks off with a nod to the era-defining, and still the universe’s most untouchable surf video game: choose your character, your board, then spawn where you dropped your pin on the world map.

“I grew up in Hossegor, and my parents used to hang out at ROCKFOOD in La Centrale,” Jao says. “That’s where I first met Kelly Slater — in a Game Station. I made this edit because I always dreamed of surfing perfect waves with no one out. This trip felt exactly like that — like a video game, barrels back-to-back, nonstop.”

Special shoutout to GOAT (the band) on the soundtrack — whether an oblique nod to the hoofed mascot of the video game or just a genuine fetish for psychedelic flutes, the song fits swimmingly.

“I don’t have a real life job,” Jao says. “I want my part of the cake, or just maybe some crumbs.”
Don’t we all, Jao.