Tony Hawk, the Skyrim of athletes.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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It's not that Tony Hawk is that much more popular it's that nobody gives a shit about the extreme sport fad anymore. That died in the 90s along with Gen X's political ambitions.
Do not disrespect the princess Rayssa Leal like that. She was smoking professional skateboarders in the Olympics at age 13.
Hardly. Tony Hawk became popular (outside of the skateboard world) because of licensing (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater).
She's immensely popular on Brazil and was popular enough to become a playable skater in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4.
That has always struck me as a bad hot take.
One of my closeted racist family members love to ask "Who is Africa's Leonardo da Vinci ?" to make some sort of claim to both his da Vinci's genius and the implied lack of genius to Africans.
And the answer is Leonardo da Vinci is Africa's Leonardo da Vinci ... and the only people trying to say otherwise is people trying to profit off of making up a difference.
So I guess that I get it but also it is ... I just think that it is a bad take.
Fuck me, all I said was there’s no culturally significant skateboarders coming up any more and you’re bringing a whole racism thing into it. Chill the fuck out dude
First time?
> Accuses every generation after theirs of being useless
> Gets pissy and defensive when their bad logic is pointed out
No one called you racist, bud, but clutch those pearls.
The guy compares my post to White supremacist rhetoric and I’m the one clutching pearls? lol
I know he didn’t call me racist. I said he brought racism into it, like as though it was anything like on the same level and not a ludicrous pearl-clutching analogy. Also “accuses every generation of being useless” is a way OTT characterization that you’ve inferred solely so that you can have something to get mad at. It was a lighthearted showerthought about a skateboarder.
and I’m the one clutching pearls?
Yup, still are, ignoring the point of the comment in favor of the "ludicrous" context of their anecdote. "It's just a joke" is also a poor, worn out excuse to discredit criticism.
Oh wait I see, you're in training for when they add Extreme High Horse Riding to the X-Games. Careful you don't fall off.
Nobody was calling you a racist but if it's that upsetting that someone pointed out that your ~~tactics are~~ logic is similar that's on you.
Edit: tactics is unnecessarily accusatory and that wasn't my intent and I don't think it was the original commenters intent either. Changed "tactics" to "logic."
"your tactics" is still like, several notches above a sane take on what OP actually posted. This is not a remotely problematic post, at least not in the sense you guys are implying.
You're right, tactics is accusatory when it shouldn't be. There's no evidence of motive or intent. Let's call it "your logic" instead.
Popularity among millennials is what made Tony Hawk a celebrity.
Once again Gen X is doing all the heavy cultural lifting.
Okay, I really don't buy into the generations bullshit, but I think something needs to be said here:
Its apt gen X was the generation to invent the term poser because it applies so well. Say what you will about everything boomers did after they hit 30, they did some important shit when they where young. You don't get a Kent State without pissing the right people off.
The MTV generation's symbol of youthful rebellion was a cable TV channel owned and operated by Viacom with the express purpose of selling music which was pre-packaged by one of three major record labels.
It was a way for boomers to sell them fake rebellion because they remembered how bad for profit the real stuff from their youth was.
I mean, what serious political action did the US have between the civil rights movement and occupy wall street? The early 00's anti-war movement? Arguably attributable to early millenials since those where their college years.
Gen Xers like to say they where "working in the shadows, doing their own thing", which is code for sitting around, letting billionaires do what they want, and doing nothing about it since everything still kinda worked out alright for them up until now.
I don't know what part of the world you live in, but the late 1980's and early 90's were wild, the whole eastern bloc fell in 1989, there were revolutions in the Philipines, South Korea, South Africa, and dictatorships in Argentina, Paraguay and Suriname elected democratic governments.
I mean, what serious political action did the US have between the civil rights movement and occupy wall street?
My fault for not being more clear, I blame my countries national main character syndrome for that. Especially since it just hit me OP is technically from a Canadian instance, though I'm not sure the lived experience up there was THAT different.
I was a teen in the 80s, a young adult in the 90s, and overall, America was pretty fucking nice, especially the Clinton years. With the benefit of hindsight you can say we should have fought for X, Y and Z, but we weren't at war, starving or overrun by fascists. Was a 20-something young man to have foreseen today's disastrous climate? I was partying and getting laid.
And I have never once in this heard of this, "working in the shadows" bullshit. None of us talk that way, never have, we embraced being disconnected slackers.
Tony Hawk is generally a GOAT. Skateboarding comes with a lot of territory and trying to keep up the bad ass image. There were a lot of dickheads who were pro skaters in that era.
I have followed Tony for many years and as far as I can tell he is pretty clean cut as far as celebrities go. And he has done a hell of a lot to uplift skateboarding as a profession and a hobby.
Some will call him a sell out but to each their own.
On every single skateboard post or short video, somebody will mention Mullen too.
But anyway, outside of skateboarding, millennials also know of Bam, Sheckler and maybe Dyrdek.
Gen-z probably knows of the YouTubers that show up in their feeds. SkateIQ (Mitchie Brusco), SkateNomad (Mike Boisvert) and probably Andy Anderson because he's everywhere.
I think it's safe to say that skateboarding isn't as mainstream as it used to be when MTV was the main youth cultural feed, but it also allows for a lot more unknown people to rise up. Nobody cares about what young dude Thrasher and the industry wants to portrait as a professional. The skate scene these days basically consists of old men and young women watching footage on YouTube.
Generational cohort analysis had a mildly useful function in a very limited number of obscure subfields. All the blather and memes forcing everything into an artificial construct is not sense making, its sense destroying.
Edit: It's the Zodiac of our times.
Then: I'm a Pisces, that means I'm meticulous, commanding and a natural leader.
Now: I'm a millenial, that means I'm into authentic derivative and contaminated experiences, I'm good with technology I don't understand and I like to masturbate into the carton of coffee creamer in the fridge at work.
Culture war is made to distract you from class war.
I gotta say, I was kind of expecting to get some pushback from people who had their own favourite skaters who turned out to have a billion YouTube views or something, but I wasn’t expecting this number of replies to be people butthurt over some imagined attack on their own identity
I feel like Lemmy has taken drugs recently, because I am seeing more and more absolute bonkers responses like that user's to silly, apolitical posts like this one, and it's bumming me out.
Tony Hawk won't be supplanted until someone manages to do an 1800.
I predict it will be a Chinese skateboarder, on the moon.
Lol, no
Now THAT'S a shower thought. I can't think of a single athlete that's crossed over so many decades.
And of course lemmy is spitting, hissing mad.