Op-Ed | Blue Check Blading
Like most individuals these days that utilize social media, a handful of rollerbladers are concerned with their perception. In 2018, in an effort to reduce imposter accounts and spam, Instagram began to verify certain accounts for individuals such as celebrities or musicians. In 2023, they offered this verification to the general public as a paid service; it is meant to act as a means of credibility, but many also utilize it to silently announce their importance to society. AI generated image via the prompt “A rollerblader holding a blue check mark sign painted in a Norman Rockwell Style”, via Microsoft Bing’s AI Generator; prompt and further retouching to meet prompt by Ryan Breslin for Daily Toast.
Blue Check Blading
December 7th, 2024
by Ryan Breslin
Imagery via Bing AI with prompts and additional retouching by Ryan Breslin
There isn’t a question that social media acts as a heavy influence in the way we conduct our day to day lives. In fact, I’d be bold enough to say that it’s an overwhelming element that weighs heavily on most these days, and that is particularly reflective in terms of the way we conduct ourselves; the number of followers we have and the likes we accrue are now the currency of our self worth.
Throughout my extensive history of social media engagement, which, to age myself, dates back to the time of AOL and MySpace, as well as the birth of Facebook, Instagram and a plethora of other platforms. I’ve seen the positives and negatives of it; and while it is meant to broaden the horizon of communication and knowledge, it would also simultaneously play a hand in the degradation of almost every single participants view of their self image, myself included. In the recent years, I’ve noticed a pattern of behavior that, on the surface, wouldn’t read as problematic, but, upon further investigation, found is not truly genuine and thus, concerning.
And so the spark of this op-ed stems from a recent post I found on Facebook; if you’re familiar with my previous assessments and, often, mockery of the behavior of modern-day rollerblading, you’ll know that I often, albeit happily and proudly, cite the infamous Facebook group, “Rollerblading Rollerblading” for problematic behavior that over-romanticizes the nostalgic days of rollerblading, conveys an unrealistic standard of what one should consider “acceptable”, as well as serve as a breeding ground for baseless or misinformed statements such as, “no does hammers anymore” or “whatever happened to Aron Fienburg?”. A haven that is composed of washed up skaters, a handful of Tom Moyse click bait videos, as well dudes that quit 20 years and just recently rediscovered it again; while being the most active and engaged Facebook group focused on rollerblading, it often produces posts that yield a face palm.
And so, it isn’t surprising that the premise of this op ed stems from a post I found there recently ; and so I’d like to elaborate a bit further.
I’ve vocalized previously that I’m very opposed to people taking content that isn’t theirs and posting it to their own account. Examples of this include BladeLife.tv, which amasses an impressive following of over 100k despite never posting true original content; I mean, yeah, he does his “remix posts”, if you will, where he takes original content and adds a different track to it, but there’s nothing altered beyond that. And it really isn’t that hard to do. “There’s that many people that rollerblade or, let alone, give a fuck about rollerblading?” I said to myself upon originally learning their follower count.
I’ve been vocal with a few of these accounts before, including Director Brazil, as he calls himself ( born Helton “Brazil” Siqueira). And Brazil actually has a history as a videographer; he had a brief run doing video for Razors in the late aughts/early 2010’s; this was around the time of Razor’s, “We Out Here” and “Color Technology” era. Siqueira had the unfortunate luck of having to follow AJ’s two, now considered classic, videos, Icons and Ego. And so when he came out with Game Theory in the early 2010’s, it was met with mostly mixed and negative reviews. “He tried making a skate video into a music video”, was one excellent comparison I was provided by a Daily Toast reader. So when I found Brazil posting clips of Alex Broskow, with some vague byline on the RBRB group the other day, I got agitated. “He didn’t film this…” I said, confused to myself. “Did he film this?”, I asked as I went to Alex’s insta and pulled up the clip in question. I mean, it wasn’t far fetched seeing as he was a filmer; but simultaneously, I knew that Alex would never film with this goofball. And the answer was, he didn’t. So why was he posting this content as if it was? I called him out, inviting him to a discussion on the matter of appropriating others content for one’s own social gain. I was curious why a guy who actively creates other content, such as his corny podcast that follows the Alex Hormozi method sans the nose strip; Helton works in a similar fashion to Moyse where the premise isn’t about good journalism or telling stories, it’s about the views, the likes, the comments, the shares, the followers; the social media profitability is of more interest than anything else. So I knew I would be blocked, and after being providing a surface level defense that had no depth, I was, well, blocked.
I’m a purist in certain regards; when it comes to the catalog of the prevalent videos that have defined rollerblading, I feel they need to be left as is. But, I seem to be among few, because over the course of the last few years, as accounts like BladeLife.tv and Montgomery Monsters have become more prevalent, that doesn’t seem to matter to most skaters. “It just needs to be seen”, is the common response I hear in regards to my critique. And to me, that’s a tone deaf statement. While I think it needs to be seen, it also needs to be presented in a manner that provides content. Who made this video? Who’s in this video? Why is this video so significant?
Social media has made a lot of things disposable; we all seem to lose interest quickly, and so in turn, a machine exists that continues to churn out thing after thing after thing. It’s sensory overload; it’s too much at times. And it sends the wrong message; we are not who we are based on our likes and followers. At the end of the day, that shit does not matter. What matters is the effort you put into this world to help others, educate others, and do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s the like-able thing to do.
