Photo: Guy Kawasaki//Unsplash
“But did you die???”
Spencer, a Southern California surfer who goes by the handle @lohkulzonlee, is pretty sure he just dropped the mic with those four words.
“@salteedaze808 won’t have a clever comeback for that one,” Spencer tells me.
Riley, aka @salteedaze808 online, is a fellow Southern Californian by way of Hawaii. And a new reply to Spencer’s latest dart would push their monthlong comments section thread into triple digits. The dispute at the center of it all: A motion passed by the Byron Shire Council in New South Wales, Australia that effectively made it illegal to surf without a leash back in April. Riley has been in favor of the new law since day one, touting its intended safety benefits. Spencer is grossly offended that surfing has “gotten so soft,” using every spare pre-surf minute in the parking lot to gripe about those Aussie sissies and post internet memes which most accurately articulate his frustrations.
Just 30 days ago now it was precisely one of those memes on a page they both follow that caught their attention while scrolling online. Riley’s latest and greatest defense of the law was anecdotal evidence of that one time he was almost hit in the head with an errant log at San O, where he would have been sent to the hospital for three weeks, and left with tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. Hence, Spencer’s checkmate, “But did you die?”
Ironically, Riley makes personal exceptions for surfing leashless and does so occasionally, “But only on my hydrofoil at First Point Malibu,” he says. “I always have a leash otherwise.”
Spencer, on the other hand, has never walked to the nose of…well, anything. But leashless surfing is still important to him. Because it might be a thing he does someday.
The neverending online feud has included gross accusations of their characters, assumptions of political beliefs, and more than a few attempts at creating fake troll accounts to like and support their own comments. They’re so entrenched in their opposing viewpoints by now that they just can’t give in to the other. Can leashless surfing actually be outlawed? Surely, it would be the end of surfing. Period. Or will lawless and leashless loggers be forever permitted to mow down unsuspecting children splashing in the shorebreak? How will this end? If one thing is certain it’s that a positive global solution will be found on the internet.
Ping!
Spencer’s phone has a new notification. One more volley.
Thirty days of internet arguing. One hundred comments and counting now. And there they sit, 7,000 miles away from anybody on Earth who is actually impacted by the issue at hand.
Editor’s Note: Johnny Utah is an “Eff-Bee-Eye” agent and an expert in satire. More of his investigative work can be found here.
