Anything for a few likes, right?
A popular surf publication is under fire today for a hotly contested breach of social media ethics. The offense: geotagging a wave in one of its recent Instagram posts. And unsurprisingly, more than 1,000 surfers were counted in the lineup for the following morning’s dawn patrol. The move has officially blown the cover of a once-secret spot in California.
“This is so f***ed,” Peter Braggs told The Inertia on the morning in question. Braggs, who moved to the area last month from Ohio, says he’d grown accustomed to surfing the wave with “other diehard locals only.” Now he must adjust to fighting “all these kooks on the reg,” a rare curse in California’s often empty lineups.
“Back when I moved here it was just me and the boys every day. Such a solid four weeks…but the media will do anything for a couple likes. There’s just no respect for us locals, ya know?”
The surfers themselves weren’t the only people to notice how much popularity a single social media post and a proper geotag could bring to a wave. Jabroni Meyers, a local parking enforcement officer in the area, was impacted too.
“Most mornings I can usually only dish out a couple parking tickets an hour,” Meyers says while standing in the Manhattan Beach parking lot surfers use to access this once-secret wave. “Today there were so many people in the parking lot that I hit my quota for the day by 9 a.m.”
By Meyers’ count, the day before the image went viral there were 982 cars passing through the beachside lot throughout his shift. The following morning there were 1,001 — an obscene boom undoubtedly attributed to its new Instafame.
Meanwhile, the publication isn’t taking all the heat. The photographer who submitted the image says he’s received multiple death threats to his inbox since it went viral.
“The other 32 photographers there that day are all giving me the silent treatment now,” he said. “If I could take it all back, I’d have photoshopped the lifeguard tower you see in the foreground. It clearly says ‘Tower 42’ on it. I should’ve changed it to ‘Tower 40.’ That’s what they all did. All of this could’ve been avoided.”
“Totally worth it,” the social media manager of the publication added without a hint of remorse when I asked for comment. He twirled his mustache and chuckled menacingly as his phone vibrates during our Skype call; another wave of likes. “Do you know how many social media dollars 10 thousand likes are worth?”
Editor’s Note: Johnny Utah is an “Eff-Bee-Eye” agent and an expert in works of satire. More of his investigative work can be found here.
