Some call it progress. Some call it good old fashioned one upsmanship (made up phrases are the best phrases). Some call it the reason we give out the Darwin Award. Whatever you want to call it, the internet has obviously changed every game, not just the game.
Take “The 900,” for example. In 1999, Tony Hawk stomped out the historical spin in X-Games competition – a trick he’s still pulling off today while knocking on the door of 50 years old. It was monumental at the time and still amazing now. But just over a decade later, Tom Schaar, a kid who was born the same year Hawk made history, snatched skating’s holy grail with the 1080. Progress.
Surfing has Kelly’s 540, Laird’s Millennium Wave, and I’m pretty sure the “biggest wave ever caught” is a new thing every year now. Steven Kotler devoted an entire book to this whole concept of progression in action sports, exploring the idea that they’re essentially the final frontier of human performance. It’s all really interesting. Give it a read.
But let’s be real. For every superhuman athlete who’s just accomplished an amazing world first on Instagram, there are five a**holes eager to get wrecked by physics.
