WSA Conversational Surfing Credential aims to legitimise the estimated 4 million Americans who own boards but use them as decor

Surf Industry Introduces Official Certification for People Who Talk About Surfing Without Actually Surfing

COSTA MESA, CALIFORNIA — Responding to what market research has identified as “a vast and underserved community of surf enthusiasts whose relationship with the ocean is primarily theoretical,” the Western Surf Association announced Tuesday the launch of the Conversational Surfing Credential — a certification programme designed to legitimise the estimated four million Americans who own surfboards, wear surf apparel daily, use surfing vocabulary fluently in social settings, and have been in the water fewer than ten times since purchasing their equipment.

For related London satire and commentary, see Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Market Gap

The WSA commissioned a survey of 2,400 self-identified surfers across coastal California, which found that 38 percent had not surfed in the preceding six months, 22 percent had not surfed in over a year, and 11 percent, when the definition of “surfing” was narrowed to exclude the paddling-out-and-immediately-coming-back-in phase, had technically never surfed at all. These individuals represent, the WSA noted, a significant portion of the industry’s retail base and deserve, in the organisation’s words, “recognition of their cultural participation even if their water participation is limited.”

“There’s a real community here,” said WSA Director of Outreach Cameron Wells. “People who care deeply about surf culture, who follow contests, who can discuss fin configurations and board rocker intelligently, who have strong opinions about wetsuit brands. We don’t think they should be excluded from the conversation just because they haven’t been in the water recently. Or at all.”

He paused when asked to clarify the “or at all” portion of this sentence.

The Credential

The Conversational Surfing Credential is awarded following completion of a 40-hour online curriculum covering surf history, competitive formats, wave science, equipment theory, and cultural context. The programme concludes with a 120-question examination. There is no water component. Graduates receive a digital certificate, a WSA-branded sticker described as “appropriate for vehicles, boards, or decorative boards,” and access to a private online community where certified conversational surfers can discuss the sport with each other.

The programme explicitly does not certify the holder as a competent surfer. The documentation states: “The Conversational Surfing Credential (CSC) attests to cultural and intellectual engagement with surf as a lifestyle, sport, and tradition. It does not constitute surf instruction, safety certification, or evidence of practical in-water ability.”

This disclaimer was added, WSA staff confirmed, after a pilot participant attempted to use his CSC as credentials during a dispute at a lineup in Oxnard, which did not go as he had imagined.

Industry Reaction

The programme has divided the surf community in ways that are, in themselves, instructive about the community’s relationship with its own mythology. Long-time surfers tend toward scepticism. “You can’t certify something you haven’t done,” said veteran El Porto regular Marcus Ibarra. “A certificate about surfing isn’t surfing. It’s a document about a thing you haven’t done.”

The surf media responded more generously, noting that surf culture has always been as much about identity as practice, that the line between “surfer” and “person who surfs” has always been debated, and that the WSA was at least being honest about the credential’s scope, which is more than can be said for some who claim the identity informally.

The British cultural parallel is, as ever, illuminating. British television and comedy have long used “prat” in the context of pop culture and television to describe precisely this archetype: the person who has absorbed the surface markers of an identity — the vocabulary, the clothing, the confident assertion of belonging — without the underlying substance that makes those markers meaningful. The Conversational Surfing Credential is, in this reading, a formal institutional recognition of the prat-about-surfing subtype.

The Conversational Surfer Community

Early enrolees in the programme have formed an active online community that discusses session reports from breaks they are watching via live cam, offers opinions on equipment choices for conditions they are not in, and debates competitive surfing strategy with an intensity that active competitive surfers occasionally find disorienting when they encounter it.

“There was a guy in the comments of a Kelly Slater clip,” said Ibarra, “who knew more about Kelly’s historical approach to backhand tubes than I do. He’d never been in a tube. But he knew.” He paused. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

This is, linguists and cultural historians might note, a version of a very old phenomenon. “Prat” in British comedy and film has consistently been used for characters who perform expertise convincingly in contexts where the performance cannot be tested. The Conversational Surfing Credential formalises this performance and gives it a sticker, which is either a cultural breakthrough or a very expensive joke, depending on who you ask.

Enrolment

The programme is open to all. The fee is $89 for the full curriculum and examination. WSA reports that 1,200 people have enrolled in the first week, which Wells describes as “a strong start” and which Marcus Ibarra describes as “a lot of stickers going out.”

The first graduating class will be celebrated at a ceremony in Huntington Beach in December. There will be no paddle-out. There will, the WSA confirmed, be an awards dinner at a restaurant with an ocean view, which is — in the spirit of the whole enterprise — about as close as it gets.

For more satirical commentary, visit McSweeney’s.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/the-meaning-of-prat-in-the-uk-pop-culture-and-television/