Anonymous asked: Why don't you like longboarders?

Skateboarding, to skateboarders, is not a fad.

At its current state, skateboarding is for the most part accepted by the general public. To consumers it is a commodity and to businesses it is highly profitable; because of this, skateboarding is being raped by just about anybody who can stand up straight on a board with two trucks and four wheels.

Enter longboards.

Consumers are taking the easiest path to take part in the fad that skateboarding currently is – this path is longboarding.

Unconcerned and apathetic to the actual culture of skateboarding, longboarders, for the most part, are just consumers trying to be cool – trying to be “skaters” but in the easiest way possible. When skateboarding fizzles out of the limelight, most of these longboarders will disappear and move on to the next thing.

Furthermore, when an uninformed member of society sees someone on a longboard, they wrongly associate that person with skateboarding. This blasphemous association is the crux of my animosity towards longboards.

Longboarders treat skateboarding like a fad. Longboarders don’t know about, care about, or support skateboarding. Longboarders erroneously define themselves, in addition to being defined by the uninformed public, as skateboarders. For the aforementioned reasons, I don’t like longboarders.

For a much more articulate argument, I encourage you to read “Why Longboards Suck” by Willy Staley.

Also, be sure to check out the visual evidence of “skateboarding as a fad” over at Why I Don’t Skateboard.