Reddit 101 for Skateboarders
The world wide web is such a vast tangle of data and info that it can be mind-bending to try and imagine it. For today let’s imagine the internet as a house with Reddit as the front door. This website bills itself as the front page of the internet with a staggering number of users and an entire subculture with its own acronyms. If you’re new to Reddit the structure is deceptively simple: it’s a collection of forums based around any and EVERY topic you can imagine. Want to chat soccer with like-minded hooligans? There’s a thread for that. Want to debate the death penalty with actual lawyers and judges? You can! And if you’d like to browse endless pictures of cat-breading (yes, that is when you cut a baseball-sized hole in a piece of white bread and place it lovingly on your cat’s noggin), well Reddit has you covered here too.
There are nearly endless threads and sub-threads, but as die-hard skaters, we’re really interested in one thread and one thread only: SHREDDIT, the skateboarding forum. Before we delve into some can’t-miss internet skateboarding wonders, you should know that Reddit has its own lingo. Remember the old instant messaging jargon: brb, lol, g2g, etc? It’s like that, except there are SO MANY MORE. If and when you find yourself lost in acronyms, merely google the string of letters with a comma and then the word “Reddit” and you should see an accurate translation from Reddit-speak to English. You should also know that posts rise or fall on the page based on up or downvotes. Unlike other social media outlets who keep their post algorithms top secret (looking at YOU, Instagram!), Reddit gives total control to the users – power to the people, man! If you see something you dig, vote it up! If you see something annoying (ads!), vote it down.
The majority of the thread is photos and videos people submit of themselves skateboarding — everything from street cruising to homemade skateparks. There are wipeouts and clean landings, skaters of every age and race; it’s a grand melting pot of all things skate. And posers? They get voted down super-fast, keeping the community authentic and focused. You could lose hours eyeballing the rad pics and videos here, honestly. Not to mention the user-submitted art: everything from deck designs to graffiti to oil paintings and sculptures - there's a fantastic amount to see! The only rule is that it must be an homage to all things skate. We can get behind that!
If you’ve never been brave enough to post photos or videos of yourself skating in other corners of the internet, Reddit is a stellar first foray into the world of sharing your shred. Almost all users are super supportive of others, so go ahead and post a skate vid of yourself shredding with your Board Blazers, of course! And anyone caught being a jerk gets down-voted quickly. It’s a great way to build confidence and simultaneously your volume of skating material before launching your personal skateboarding Instagram empire (reach for the stars, peeps)!
The /r/skateboarding thread also has a rad permanent post pinned to the top of the page, “Skateboarding Weekly Discussion Thread.” This is where people post any and all questions about skateboarding. You can ask anything from “Any recs for 60mm wheels?” to “I’m a 76-year-old who wants to get into skating, where do I start?” And here’s the cool part: you can answer too! All that skateboarding knowledge you’ve stored up that your family and non-skater friends don’t appreciate, put it all to use. These are our people, skatefam. We need each other and spending some time browsing this thread is an excellent reminder of the community in our sport. Helping skaters less experienced than you and asking questions to those who’ve been at it longer is a solid way to contribute to skateboarding culture.
If you sign up for a Reddit account, you too can post anything you like in the /r/skateboarding thread to connect with other shredders! The only rules apart from the general Reddit content guidelines are that all conversations, photos, and videos must relate to skateboarding in some way. But doesn’t skating work itself into every conversation anyway? Now get out there and make some SHREDDIT history, skatefam!