Another surfer has a vlog. Sounds wild, right? Not exactly.
J.O.B. and Ben Gravy will forever be the grandfathers of surfing’s vlog explosion, way ahead of everybody else in a race that started to pick up some momentum in the past year or two. Now it seems like everybody with a sticker on their board has a camera following them, meanwhile talking to their own smart phone in selfie mode. Some of them produce great content. Some of them…well, many of them, not so great.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Julian Wilson’s ‘In Between’ series is already the best of them all. And honestly, it’s because he’s doing it all with a tone we rarely get from the rest of the field: sincerity.
I get it, that word alone sounds boring to a lot of people. Especially to a crowd of people used to consuming surf content. The internet craves surf porn and gimmicks and viral moments and a stronger urge to laugh at somebody than to laugh with somebody. Admittedly, I watched Wilson in Brazil here and wasn’t exactly mesmerized the first few minutes, until something triggered that little s-word in my head. He obsesses over gutless waves and conditions and preparing himself to maximize heat scores. He drinks coffee. He doesn’t say much. There’s no feeling of excitement and tension as viewers wait for the moment our host’s sidekick may or may not get blasted in the junk with a football.
But then you see the guy light up on a simple Facetime call with his wife and daughter. He’s a different person for the 30-or-so-seconds we get to see of that phone call, and then he goes back to being CT guy; a world-class athlete with a job to do. The worldwide web (has anybody called it that since 2002?) is filled with pranks, videos of big, perfect waves, and people putting all their energy into making life appear more interesting than it actually is. And it’d be really easy for Julian Wilson to pawn off his experience on tour as a video travel brochure but instead, it looks like he’s sharing life as it is. We can all use more of that.
