The Problem With Skateboarding When Everybody's Watching

• Posted by Dez Fontaine May 13 Filed in Sports #social media  #Authenticity  #skateboarding culture  #street life  #real progression  40 views
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  I been thinking about this a lot lately. How skateboarding went from something you did in empty parking lots at midnight to something that's on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, every platform you can name. And I'm not hating on the exposure or the new spots getting built or kids picking up boards who wouldn't have otherwise. That's beautiful actually. But something shifted that I can't quite shake.

  Used to be, you'd learn a trick and only like four people would ever see it. Maybe your crew knew. Maybe some random dude at the park clocked it. That was enough. The validation came from inside, from that moment where your body finally understood what your brain had been telling it to do for weeks. That click. That feeling. That was the whole thing.

  Now everybody's got a camera in their pocket and suddenly every kickflip is a performance. Every session is content. I'm guilty of it too, don't get me wrong. I post clips. But I started noticing how my skating changed when I knew I was being filmed versus when I wasn't. My tricks got sloppy when I was just vibing, but tighter when there was a phone in my face. That's backwards. That means I'm chasing the wrong thing.

  So I did something wild. I went a whole month without recording anything. Not a single clip. Just me and my board and the concrete. And yo, my skating got weird again. Not weird bad, but weird good. I was trying stuff that looked stupid, falling harder, laughing at myself, actually progressing instead of just repeating the same five tricks that looked good on camera. My friends thought I lost my mind.

  But that's where the magic actually lives. Not in the engagement metrics or the comments or the validation from strangers. It's in that moment when you're the only one watching yourself do something you couldn't do yesterday. When the only audience that matters is you.

  The boards are still real. The concrete still cares. The question is, do you?