Jones had struck me, over the months I was in conversation with him, as if he was searching for the next summit and feeling stymied. I found this surprising — it was almost impossible for me to think of a better life at 20 — but listening to him and Henry talk, it started to make sense. Skateboarding prefigured an influencer economy that has come to overtake everything. Now anyone can aspire to work without really working, document it and then have some brand pay them to do it. And if they succeed, they can probably make way more money than someone as gifted as Tyshawn Jones can, hemmed in as he is by the size of the industry and the subcultural norms that have shaped it — and him. These norms have both benefited him and circumscribed his potential; they prevented skateboarding from becoming something as boring as a sport, but as a result, Jones may never be recognized as the world-class athlete he arguably is.