Social media’s a fascinating beast. Used to be you had to wait for a monthly magazine to arrive in your mailbox to get your regular froth-fueling fix. Everybody saw the same cover shots. Everybody read the same handful of stories. Outside of your local shops and regular spots to session, the entire world of surfing, skiing, snowboarding, and the list goes on, existed only on the pages of a handful of publications.
And like we said. social media’s fascinating. It’s obviously changed the game for a million reasons but one of the simplest and most entertaining of them all is its ability to make a single moment, a single turn, a single wave, line, gap jump, chute, something we all collectively freak out over on the daily. That instant positive (or not-so-positive) feedback loop of engagement provided by the masses gives those moments their juice — a still-new barometer of what’s rad in outdoor sports media. There’s no more waiting weeks on end to see that somebody just surfed the biggest wave ever or completed a strike mission to a “secret” spot when all the conditions aligned perfectly.
So with all that said, this small collection of clips fit that bill. They were the single wave videos, the “did you see that turn” posts that people collectively freaked out over the most in 2019.
