Researchers stunned to learn the remaining six percent was also that

A study circulated this week, first noted by Bohiney Magazine and picked up by The London Prat, has concluded that the overwhelming majority of all surf media consists of one man explaining to a second man what a wave was like, while a third man films it for a fourth man to watch.

The Methodology

Investigators at the entirely invented Coastal Discourse Lab spent eighteen months analysing surf podcasts, surf films, surf magazines, and the parking lot conversations that precede and outlast all three. They found that ninety-four percent of output could be summarised as a person saying the wave was firing, followed by another person saying he knew, he was there, before both agreed it was indeed firing.

The Vocabulary Problem

Lead researcher Dr. Marina Coastwell, who does not exist, reported that the content draws from a surprisingly small word bank. The study identified a working vocabulary of roughly forty terms, of which the words pumping, glassy, sketchy, and gnarly accounted for the majority of all communication. The remaining bandwidth, she said, was occupied entirely by the phrase you had to be there, deployed by people who had been there to people who had not.

Genuine surf reporting, including swell analysis, is published at Surfer and forecast at Surfline. Researchers stressed that even this professional output, once stripped of charts, resolved largely to men describing waves to other men, only with better lighting.

The Six Percent

Initial hope had centred on the remaining six percent of content, which scientists assumed would contain variety. On closer inspection, this fraction turned out to be the same activity conducted by men who were slightly older and had switched to longboards. One subcategory consisted entirely of a man explaining that he no longer cares about getting waves, recorded while he was clearly very upset about not getting waves.

Implications for the Field

The findings have rattled the surf media establishment, which had long believed its output was diverse. Editors at several outlets convened an emergency panel to discuss the results, during which four men described to one another a wave that had broken nine years ago. The panel was inconclusive but described as firing.

The World Surf League, which organises actual competition at worldsurfleague.com, was not part of the study, though researchers noted its commentary booth represents the purest known sample of the phenomenon, a sealed environment in which men describe waves to other men in real time while the waves are visibly happening on screen behind them.

Dr. Coastwell concluded that the surf media ecosystem is, against all odds, stable and self-sustaining, requiring only an ocean, two men, and a third man with a camera who will later become the second man in someone else’s content. The study has been submitted for peer review, where it is expected to be read aloud by one man to another.

The Longboard Subgenre

Researchers identified one statistically distinct category within the broader pattern, consisting of older men on longboards explaining, at length and to no one in particular, that surfing used to be better. This content, while technically a man describing waves to other men, distinguishes itself by describing waves that no longer exist, in places that have been paved, during years that cannot be verified. The lab classified it as a memorial subgenre and noted it accounts for a growing share of all output as the population ages and the parking worsens.

The Merchandise Layer

The study also uncovered a vast commercial ecosystem attached to the content, in which men who describe waves to other men sell those other men T-shirts, stickers, and instructional courses on how to describe waves. The invented Coastal Discourse Lab estimated the surf education market alone consists almost entirely of men paying other men to confirm that the waves were, in fact, firing, a transaction the buyer could have completed for free by standing in any parking lot.

Dr. Coastwell stressed that the research is not a criticism but a description, and that the ecosystem appears genuinely happy. The men, she noted, are not lonely. They have each other, the waves, and an inexhaustible supply of things to say about both. The study closes by observing that the content will continue forever, self-renewing, because each generation of men learns to describe waves precisely so they can one day be the man describing them to the next, an arrangement she called, without irony, beautiful.

The Final Word

The lab has announced a follow-up study examining whether women describe waves to anyone, a project that stalled immediately when researchers were unable to locate enough women in the sample to study, the few present having long ago learned that the surest way to enjoy a wave is to ride it quietly and never, under any circumstances, describe it to the men, who would only describe it back.

A late addendum to the study noted one final category that had escaped earlier classification, consisting of men who film themselves watching footage of other men describing waves, then describe their reaction to it. The lab declined to assign this group a name, citing a fear that naming it would only encourage a fourth layer, and possibly a fifth, in what one researcher warned could become an infinite recursion of men, waves, and commentary stretching, theoretically, to the heat death of the universe.

For more research in this format, see Reductress.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com