Page 35 - BackSIDE rollbrett-heft 25th Anniversary
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JonnyGiger JonnyGiger
On social media you wear a shirt in your profile shot which says ‘I hate Jonny Giger’.
Is this your response to the hate club about how you sell yourself on social media?
It was just a copy from a Sheckler commercial that I saw in a magazine. I always liked
how everybody was talking like „he did that MTV show, he’s not a real skateboarder.“
In my opinion this statement is just a lack of empathy. Like go find a 13 year old
skateboarder who is gonna turn down a deal like „yo we’re the most popular TV show,
we gonna make you famous and we’ll give you more money that you could ever
spend.“ I mean you can turn down something like as an adult. But as a kid? I used to
argue on unpolite comments a few �mes but these days I just ignore the hate. I can’t
work with that because it’s usually no construc�ve cri�cism. If they wanna spend
their �me talking about how much I suck, well that’s ok with me.
I have done some research where in par�cular I found some nasty comments in the
slapmagazine forum about you and how you use social media as a skateboarder.
Does it get to you at all and what is your response to them?
I don’t respond to them at all. If somebody blindly hates you it makes no sense to
argue, it’s like trying to convince a flat-earther that the earth is round. He won’t
Kick flip - Buchs, Switzerland Soerfi
change his mind no ma�er how much scien�fic evidence you drop. You can’t make it
right for everyone and that’s fine. Only a narcissist would think that the whole world
has to like him. Even Gandhi was hated. I’m just out there doing my job, ge�ng a lot
of people into ska�ng and that makes me happy. I’m an adult and I don’t find any
sa�sfac�on wri�ng nasty comments or having arguments on the internet.
One funny thing I’d like to men�on here is that you also hear a lot „skateboarding is
all about having fun“, now we from revive aren’t the best skaters but in fact we do
have a lot of fun. We don’t have any pressure to film video parts beside like a 2-3
year deadline and it’s all pre�y mellow. But s�ll we do get a lot of hate for not being
true skaters. I mean who’s taking the right to define that anyway? There’s a paradox
somewhere. I think if you really wanna get good at something you have to go through
some physical or mental ba�les hence it’s not always fun, but whatever. It’s just a
thought of me.
You also hear that it is a virtue of skateboarding to welcome everyone no ma�er what
skin color or social status. This might be, which is good but I once saw this kid on
instagram doing super tech flatground tricks and he got so much hate because he
rode a longboard and not a regular skateboard. Just doing a hardflip on that thing is a
‘I’ve been watching a lot of Nine Club episodes and it risky thing but there we’re a lot of nasty comments on that post and our so called
was an honour to be mentioned in there.’ „open minded culture of skateboarding“ was ac�ng in a different kind of fascist way
you could say. I just wanted to men�on this for whatever reason.
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