In a landscape of weekly, and sometimes daily, vlogs on YouTube, John John Florence may be the one surfer whose content doesn’t require a touch of storytelling. Just take a mental inventory of all the popular surfer-fronted YouTube channels you watch each week and consider what those surfers’ reach might be if their latest video didn’t have a hook, an angle, a story to tell each time you tuned in. These vlogs are a great way for athletes to share glimpses of their daily lives, their travels, their heaviest sessions or even a little bit of insight we can apply to our own surfing. But it’s never just surfing. Even Mason Ho’s weekly content is built around an ever-intriguing hook: what’s the craziest, barely surfable wave he found this week?
Throw that all out the window with John John. We all know the story with him this year, looking dominant and fully healthy. Other than that, just tell us he uploaded some content and show the guy surfing. Case in point: here are nine minutes of the two-time world champion surfing in 300 frames per second, slow-motion. It’s as mesmerizing as it sounds. And that’s all the storytelling we need.
