Three Things That Can Go Straight To Hell

In the world of surf, the road to aesthetic beauty is paved in bad ideas, hideous creations, abortions of design, cinema, fashion…

Sure, there are plenty of sparkly moments—if there weren’t, we wouldn’t be ditching work, nor spending our decidedly finite time here on Earth scrolling through Instagram (or this website) just to get a taste.

While some of us are Universalists, appreciative of most everything in surfing, for the cynics amongst us, it can often seem as if there’s more darkness in our little world than light.

Noa Deane ain’t exactly cynical, but he ain’t afraid of a little public blood-letting.

He would have continued with this contrarian list far beyond the top three, but for the sake of brevity, we kept Noa’s complaints short and salty.

Hydrofoils

You can’t do anything exciting on them. You can’t do airs, cutbacks, or get barreled on them. The only thing new you can do is ride unbroken ocean swells and pump around out the back instead of paddling.

I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

When the waves are super shit they’re probably fun, but if the waves are seriously so shit you can’t even ride a twin fin or something, I probably just wouldn’t surf.

They’re sort of aside to actual surfing, it’s something completely different. I don’t exactly hate them, rather I just don’t care for them.

“If you’re posting a photo of it fucking pumping, getting a crazy barrel, don’t be surprised when the crowd noticeably increases the next day.”

Lemmings.

I can’t fucking stand it when people go and surf a spot they wouldn’t have if there was no-one out.

I don’t know if it’s because people don’t want to surf alone, or they can’t tell how a wave would be unless someone’s out there, but it’s super frustrating.

This happens to everyone, not just sponsored dudes or people who surf good, because that’s a separate issue.

I surfed this one wave a few spots down from Keramas in Bali, and most times I checked it there was nobody out. It was essentially just a big barrel to a closeout that looked good for airs, but it made sense no one was out.

There were three or four sessions where, straight after I’d paddled out and a got a few, all of a sudden a flock of people were out there.

It’s even worse when there’s multiple peaks at a beachbreak though, and people head out at the one peak there’s a person on…why wouldn’t you just go and surf a peak that has nobody on it.

Even if it’s pumping, it would depend on how good the ‘good ones’ were. If there were no other peaks, or it was over four foot and properly pumping, then I’d probably just go out, that would be stupid not to.

But when it’s average surf, it’s irritating and stupid.

Star of Head Noise, winner of Stab High and vulnerable to the same idiotic actions of others as the rest of us.

Blowing Up Swells And Sessions On Instagram

If you’re posting a photo of it fucking pumping, getting a crazy barrel, don’t be surprised when the crowd noticeably increases the next day.

When you go somewhere and you know there’s going to be swell for a couple of days, it’s pretty smart to try and keep that under wraps as much as possible.

When people immediately upload Instagram posts of a wave—whether it’s a story, or a normal post, yeah—that’s pretty cringy.

And this isn’t just for unknown waves that aren’t already blown out. It can even happen on the Goldy. People probably think, ‘it’ll be crowded and blown out anyway so it doesn’t matter’, but you’d be surprised how many people are on top of these sort of things.

Someone further down the coast might not realise how good the banks are at the moment, or someone from South Oz might not even know there’s a Goldy swell. But a simple IG post by someone well-noted changes that.

It happens with media outlets, too [note: oops], but they’re usually just reposting photos of people who are there and already posted it.

Even if a video is a few years old and posted live on a specific date, it’s possible to go back and check the reports for those days and see what swells, wind, whatever is needed. That’s crazy.

People aren’t amazing at reading forecasts either, so these sort of posts make it easy for those who aren’t great at forecasting to know exactly where somewhere’s good.

The positives are that it makes people hungry to chase waves, but I don’t think people realising the impact of these types of live posts.

I’m sure it feels good getting a few likes and some attention for scoring pumping waves; I’d be more concerned about how crowded it is.