topic:HP123 said:
Is there such a thing? Newschoolers seems to glorify partying, dick-sucking front flips, and the jerry of the day. Don't get me wrong a double ejection and that oh so fresh back 2 out can be entertaining for a quick minute but don't you ever want more? Currently some of the most idolized skiers in our sport are Gus Kenworthy making bank milking the gay claim for all it's worth and David Lesh who promoted his brand and became even more internet famous by pouring gallons of milk on teenage girls in bikinis. Is that really the best we can do?
There are loads of intelligent people in skiing.
The thing you have to realize is that skiing is entertainment. Its what people do to blow off steam for the most part. As such, you see a lot of the glorified lifestyle - which is super fun while you're doing it. My old ski crew are all engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. now. When we're together, we rage out like the old days and shred hard.
Many people have this experience, and as such when you're partaking in the media involved - we rarely bother going into the deep part of it. For instance, take my experiences you see in On The Road. You see the partying, doing stupid shit, having fun. What you don't see is the late night politics conversations with Walker, hanging out with the senior parent company people in the hot tub at Dew Tour and talking about the future of the media landscape, Lesh and I chatting about politics, marketing strategies and the intricacies of running a small business. This type of stuff happens all the time - but it isn't the central focus of the promotion around the "core" aspect of the sport because to your average person who views skiing as entertainment its simply boring.
I do think it would be great to highlight deeper and more intelligent themes when interviewing people, but making that stuff entertaining to read in a superficial social media world is next to impossible. I mean how many people would want to dig into the political leanings of a pro skier? Would you like to read about the business ethics of Virtka? If you would... are there many out there like you?
If you ever meet me in person, I'd absolutely love to engage in high-level intelligent discourse. We can even do a flabongo while we chat, or simply make the chairlift chat a worldly learning experience. there's tonnes of people out there like that, and the first step is to not assume everyone is a moron and just start talking like intelligent people.
Much like most of modern media though, it simply doesn't take on a mass scale. You end up having the lowest common denominator, who wants to just see the lifestyle as is. If you want intelligence, there is a load of places out there to get it.
I'm all for more intelligence in skiing though. Just need to figure out how to make it fit in the larger landscape of the sport.
