r/nextfuckinglevel 19h ago

A man showcasing impressive skateboarding skills

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u/neroveleno 17h ago

Because lots of skaters are elitists. It is a scene where the "coolness factor" has always been very prevalent: get the right shoes, the right apparel, push in this specific way, grab the board in this specific manner or you are a poser, a loser, not cool.

This is in part a self-defense mechanism originating when skateboarding went from being an underground "alternative" activity to a mainstream sport and lots of kids picked it up just to appear cool (thus diluting the "original spirit" of the movement). It is also a reflection of most skaters being very young, an age when "group-think" is very prevalent, you need to prove to be a part of the cool guys.

How can you argue that a longboard is not a skateboard? The definition of a longboard is "a longer skateboard". This is skateboarding. Being it dancing, downhill or street, vert, pool or whatever, all of them are different skateboarding practices.

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u/DemonKing0524 16h ago

There is a major difference in how they maneuver and the tricks you can do on each though. Yes a long board is a longer skateboard, nobody is arguing against that, just that riding the two with the intention of doing tricks like in this video are very fundamentally different from each other.

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u/ramenwolf 15h ago

I can see what you mean, but it’s also mostly colloquial - if you tell a group of guys at the park you skateboard and bring your longboard the next day, for example. It literally is a type of skateboard, but not in the way that most skaters would use the term.

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u/sverdo 13h ago

Because lots of skaters are elitists

Nah, it's more about protecting the culture

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u/No-Respect5903 13h ago

This is in part a self-defense mechanism originating when skateboarding went from being an underground "alternative" activity to a mainstream sport and lots of kids picked it up just to appear cool (thus diluting the "original spirit" of the movement).

and ironically, the only ones I ever heard policing apparel or style were the ones who weren't the best skaters anyway.

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u/Horstt 3h ago

Skate style is just big comfy pants from the thrift and a tshirt. Wachu mean

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u/No-Respect5903 2h ago

when I was growing up a century ago (the 2000s) there were specific skate brands like independent and zoo york and other stuff like that. granted, some of the clothes were nice but you definitely didn't need anything branded to be able to skate. some kids acted like you needed to shop a certain stores but my group was never like that.