A Culture in Flux
The State of Modern BMX
2017
Issue #1: Vlogging and its Influence on BMX Social Hierarchy
By Mike Hinkens
April, 2017
Since the rebirth of BMX in the early 1990’s, this culture has prided itself on being in the hands of those who do it. The pillars of this incarnation of BMX have been: rider owned and operated bike companies and shops, rider created and controlled media, and rider designed and focused skateparks and competitions. That DIY rider-centric mentality is, in my opinion, what has allowed BMX to thrive and evolve into such a rich and meaningful culture. Paradoxically, those same strengths may be at the root of some of the problems many feel BMX culture is facing in 2017. Low sales and profits, the loss of major outside support, the shuttering of bike shops, skateparks, and brands, and the general disunity and discord amongst riders are all changes indicative of serious issues in the culture. On one hand, some shout that doomsday is upon us. Others, optimistic or in denial, claim that things are completely fine. And though BMX riders are still out there every day pushing the sport and living the lifestyle, many say that BMX culture and the industry that it supports are both changing dramatically and facing the direst of times. The conundrum is: We have maintained a large amount of control of our own destiny since the 90’s rebirth, yet here we are, facing a host of problems and challenges. If we have been in control for all of these years, how did we end up here? And, can’t we just right the ship? I believe that BMX can and will overcome the new challenges it faces, if not, simply because of the perseverance innate in those who ride BMX. Yet, we can do more to help this process along. As mentioned in the inaugural piece on imprimaturBMX.com this culture, like all complex social groups, deserves intelligent discourse in order to help it grow and evolve in positive and sustainable ways. In this series I plan to discuss some of the major changes and challenges that our BMX culture is facing and through a discussion of the complexities of those issues, propose some positive ideas about how we can better BMX as a whole.
The State of Modern BMX
2017
Issue #1: Vlogging and its Influence on BMX Social Hierarchy
By Mike Hinkens
April, 2017
Since the rebirth of BMX in the early 1990’s, this culture has prided itself on being in the hands of those who do it. The pillars of this incarnation of BMX have been: rider owned and operated bike companies and shops, rider created and controlled media, and rider designed and focused skateparks and competitions. That DIY rider-centric mentality is, in my opinion, what has allowed BMX to thrive and evolve into such a rich and meaningful culture. Paradoxically, those same strengths may be at the root of some of the problems many feel BMX culture is facing in 2017. Low sales and profits, the loss of major outside support, the shuttering of bike shops, skateparks, and brands, and the general disunity and discord amongst riders are all changes indicative of serious issues in the culture. On one hand, some shout that doomsday is upon us. Others, optimistic or in denial, claim that things are completely fine. And though BMX riders are still out there every day pushing the sport and living the lifestyle, many say that BMX culture and the industry that it supports are both changing dramatically and facing the direst of times. The conundrum is: We have maintained a large amount of control of our own destiny since the 90’s rebirth, yet here we are, facing a host of problems and challenges. If we have been in control for all of these years, how did we end up here? And, can’t we just right the ship? I believe that BMX can and will overcome the new challenges it faces, if not, simply because of the perseverance innate in those who ride BMX. Yet, we can do more to help this process along. As mentioned in the inaugural piece on imprimaturBMX.com this culture, like all complex social groups, deserves intelligent discourse in order to help it grow and evolve in positive and sustainable ways. In this series I plan to discuss some of the major changes and challenges that our BMX culture is facing and through a discussion of the complexities of those issues, propose some positive ideas about how we can better BMX as a whole.
The theme of control is central in the history of BMX. It seems fitting to start off a series about the changes we see in modern BMX with a discussion of the changing hands we see on the metaphorical handlebars of BMX culture and industry. The phenomenon of the vlog (video blog) is much more the just a new form of transmission for BMX culture, it is poised to fundamentally alter the direction of BMX as a whole.
As with all things in BMX culture, our changes and issues are not happening in a vacuum. The vlog is part of a much bigger change in the way society consumes and interacts with media and how people make a living.[1] For our purposes, let’s define the vlog and its history very quickly and start with this assumption: people have begun to create and consume media in ways that are directly connected to the mediums available to them; namely, the affordable video camera and free online social media platforms. One of the precursors to vlogs was reality TV. From Survivorto the The Housewives of…Wherever, people have shown that they enjoy watching the lives of others, sometimes in long and mundane formats. Another form of media, the blog, allowed millions of people the opportunity to share their own story and their perspectives with nothing but a computer and an email account. Vlogging, then, is the combination of the voice of the every day person (blog) delivered to you through the unfiltered and first person perspective of self-filmed and self-narrated daily life (reality TV). I believe that we have seen the vlog grow so quickly as a form of media in BMX culture for two very simple reasons: 1. Money and 2. Control.
Why Vlog?
There are a multitude of reasons why BMX is short on cash in 2017 and we can get into those in future issues,but the fact remains that the vast majority of BMX riders (professional or otherwise) are unable to make a living riding their bikes. Again, that is something that we need to address as an issue unto itself in another piece, but on the other hand, some riders need to accept that they may not be qualified to make a living from riding their bikes. The fact remains that many riders wish to make a living in this culture. In defense of those who have turned to vlogging, the simple truth is: you can make money with little to no investment. The equation is as follows: Set up a YouTube channel. Monetize it by agreeing to play ads with your videos. Create content that grows subscribers and thus grows view counts. Make money. The more views you have, the more ad shares you generate, and the more money YouTube makes and will share with you. The final part of this rests on the global reality that viewers want to watch this particular form of media. So as smart entrepreneurs BMX vloggers have found a way to use their semi-interesting—at least more interesting than the average person’s—lives to make a profit when they cannot make it riding their bikes in other more traditional ways. Stated like that, it doesn’t seem so nefarious.
The second reason to vlog, and arguably the more important one, is that vloggers realize they can utilize their platform to control their destiny. One of the central themes of this piece is that there is a conflict of control within the BMX social hierarchy. What do I mean? It wouldn’t be a discussion of vlogging in BMX without mentioning Adam LZ.[2] Adam appears to be making as much money as some of the top paid pros in the BMX world. He has bought multiple cars, a nice home, and travels quite a bit. It seems he credits his vlogging with the money that makes all of that possible. Obviously, this covers the first reason for vlogging: money. The second reason though, control, is what Adam demonstrates so well. Adam doesn’t really ride contests. He doesn’t really make DVD or web parts. He doesn’t really do anything like the rest of the paid BMXers in our culture. He makes a living in and around BMX on his own terms. From his sappy vlogs with his wife to his direct responses to kids who comment and contact him by the thousands, everything he does is by his own choice. He rides the bike he wants to ride, goes to the events he wants to attend, and he does the tricks he likes to do. And when he finally connected to a frame sponsor in the BMX community, he set the tone for the team and his parts.[3] He began to contribute to the brand by selling his own frame on his own store and to promote that brand through his own methods. Will we ever see an LZ DVD part or contest run? Who knows. It depends if he wants to. He is his own team manager and his own sponsor. That freedom, combined with the obvious monetary motivation, is the primary reason I believe many BMXers are turning to vlogging.
It's time to turn to the bigger picture and how vlogging connects to BMX culture and industry as a whole. I did not put the next topic as a “reason” for vlogging with the two reasons above because, honestly, I don’t buy it as much. In the last few years when BMXers have stepped outside of the norm and connected to the mainstream world in ways that were less-than-accepted, those people have often defended themselves by saying that they were attempting to help bring BMX to a bigger audience and thus help grow the BMX consumer pie.[4] This is an old argument, but it at least needs to be mentioned in connection to this new trend. It is fairly obvious that the audience for these vlogs is massive. Go look at the view counts on Austin Augie’s latest vlogs and you will see that these vloggers are watched by large amounts of people (hundreds of thousands[5]). The question is: What do those numbers really mean? Is it true “reach?” If their argument is, “We do this to bring BMX to a bigger audience and then more kids ride and then the culture and industry can grow and expand,” how can we see that? Do the 99,000 people who watched Austin ride a “mini BMX” bike around New York City[6] actually translate into future BMXers and then eventually future sales? Are those viewers the future base of our culture and industry? I suppose we do not have the market research capabilities to know, but my feeling is, “No, they are not our future.” I base this on anecdotal evidence such as the ridiculous amount of Instagram followers that people have in BMX that are not actually BMXers. Those followers give high interaction numbers, but do not actually ride BMX nor support the brands and riders they are double tapping. Also, I just don’t believe that all of the people watching YouTube for entertainment are going to become BMXers, just like I don’t believe that the millions of people watching Arab Drifting[7] or Wing Suiting[8] will go out and start doing those things. YouTube is simply the new television, and one thing we know for sure is that television is often for spectators. Most people who watch football, NASCAR, etc., will never get up and go do those things.[9]
What are the costs?
And then comes the qualitative question about the quantitative argument. What could it hurt to share BMX with everyone? We can cast a wide net and spread the word about BMX culture to the millions of viewers on YouTube, but at what cost to the culture? One of the main arguments against the idea of vlogging is that it is poised to destroy more than it grows. Though it helps one rider pay the bills, many argue that, in the big picture, it is unhealthy for the future of BMX. Below are some costs that may be associated with, caused by, or aggravated by vlogging.
1. A loss of authenticity.
BMX has walked a fine line for many years. One that Skateboarding seems to have done a better job of walking (more on that in a future article). That line is one of staying true to the values that define our culture while attempting to be a legitimate industry that can make, sell, and use products in order to further its own goals. We have danced past the line before with cheesy action figures, corporate sponsors who had no business in our culture, and even reality TV.[10] Yet, for the most part, we have returned to the ethos of riding BMX to progress the sport, supporting brands and parks that support us, and being a tight-knit community of people who are supportive, but not afraid to call you out when you are doing something lame. Of course this is all subjective and one rider’s opportunity is another’s sell out move. But, in this case, many argue that portraying ourselves as selfie-stick toting pseudo-famous personalities is too far away from the core of authentic and real BMX culture. Furthermore, doing so will contribute to the growth of more of that behavior within our culture and contribute to a break down of BMX culture overall.
2. Over-reliance on outside brands, tools, etc. who care little for our culture.
As mentioned above, we have flirted with outside brands and companies before. And we have said that they “really are into BMX,” but let’s face it: they had money so we gave them a chance. The problem with vlogging is that it does give the rider total freedom from BMX brands and their business models, but it hands some of that control over to people who have no interest in BMX culture (or any other for that matter) aside from the profit it can raise. Vlogging relies on the relationship between the vlogger and the social media platform. In this case, YouTube. Only a few years ago, BMX was left in the dark by another social media platform, yet we don’t seem to have learned our lesson. Facebook was seen as the ultimate tool for utilizing huge reach to connect to present and future riders. In other words, it was free advertising. The BMX community slowly began abandoning other more expensive advertising options (see next section!) and put a lot of eggs in the Facebook basket. It wasn’t long before brand pages needed to be turned into business accounts and then suddenly view counts and interactions started dropping. Surprise! If you were a business account, you were going to be throttled unless you paid to promote. The gravy train ended. So what did we do? Return to the tried and true methods? Nope. We dove into the next big thing: Instagram. Spoiler alert: Facebook owns Instagram. Business accounts are popping up. And accounts are being throttled due to the “algorithm.” We have not learned. Its not hard to see this happening with YouTube in the near future. Of course, YouTube is sharing in the profits, but for how long will they let the little guy make a big buck with their expensive platform. These methods are unreliable as the people in control of the media and platforms we rely on to sell products and perpetuate our culture are not BMXers and have no connection to us. They do have a drastic effect on us though and we have already seen it…
3. The end of BMX Media and the general social hierarchy within BMX.
Again, we are not in a vacuum and that is one reason why this is so frustrating. This has happened before. Years ago the newspaper and print industry dove head first into new technology with little regard for the future and now those same newspapers and magazines are closing down left and right. Many media companies are learning the lesson that the Internet is an amazing platform and tool, yet can also be a black hole if you are not careful. Once you provide free media, how do you ever get compensation for it again? The BMX industry is still working out how we can maintain real, substantive, and meaningful media in this new world, but with less content and less traffic for our re-imagined “Web Magazines,” ad revenue and general support for those outlets will continue to shrink. And with shrinking influence, the few (maybe more than a few) who do embrace the vlog gain more power over BMX culture. Going back to the qualitative versus quantitative issue: Who will be the vloggers that exert that considerable and soon to be exclusive influence? Will the vlog and its supposed sharing of BMX with a bigger audience be able to support a new BMX industry? And will it be an industry we are proud of… one with no real media outlets and a series of talking heads on YouTube determining what is cool and what brands live or die? The internet has dramatically altered the BMX landscape and as such we should not take this new form of internet media lightly. Remember, the web-video displaced the DVD. The blog effectively ended the printed BMX magazine. And the vlog may be poised to topple the BMX Media hierarchy itself. Some may say that is a good thing, but in a culture where we set our standards collectively, we need to make sure that there are diverse as well as experienced people helping with that process. I think that there is a place for benchmarks that must be met to claim things like “professional,” “famous,” or “legendary.” Yet, the new social media environment allows anyone to connect to the world and proclaim stardom. We can all point fingers to those who claim to be “representatives” of our culture, but are that only in their own minds. I am not saying their needs to be an all-powerful group of media moguls who decides who is pro and who deserves to get coverage, but I do believe that there should be standards that we hold riders to if they are going to claim to be “professional representatives” of us all. In addition, as BMX companies struggle to survive, will vloggers support them or leave them behind? Or will the BMX industry let the vloggers control their destinies? Talk of control is strange in BMX, but it is necessary when the power of the vlog gives one voice considerable influence over the future of our culture and industry. Do we want a few loud voices or as many voices as possible shaping the future of BMX? If Adam LZ were to declare war on a brand, how many people would stop supporting that brand? Even if they are summer soldiers who may only ride for 2 years, they are still necessary parts of the BMX industry who help pay the bills and by extension pay and support other BMX riders. The power to influence and alter sales is the power to seriously affect a brand (many of whom are already fragile) and therefore exert massive influence on our culture. With the vlog, that power is in the hands of only a few people.
What should we do?
A side note: It is impossible to hide bias when writing and I have not tried very hard to hide my opinion on this topic. Yet, in the section that follows (and in future pieces) I hope to present options for how we as a community can move forward in a positive way. This conclusion offers a few options, and though it is fairly clear which one I support, I hope that we can work together through our various difference and find common yet diverse solutions to the challenges our culture and industry faces.
Option #1: Ignore Vlogging
This is simply a bad idea. The world is changing rapidly around us and a failure to change, in life, industry, etc. is a recipe for collapse. The two versions of this are to completely ignore it, which is unacceptable, but could work if you follow option #2 below. Or, the other version is to ignore it until we cannot ignore it any longer. This seems to be the path that BMX has taken in the past. We are usually last to jump on a trend and then too late to gain meaningful benefits from our late embrace. If online skateboarding media is anything, it is evidence of our slow reaction time and poor usage of fast-changing media opportunities.[11] The reality is, if we truly want to ignore vlogging, we will find ourselves in the same position as many American voters. Frustrated by their options because they let the options slip away from them. Early action can alleviate later dissatisfaction. Ignoring is a doomed or temporary solution no matter how you look at it.
Option #2: Force Out Vlogging
The step up from option #1 is to accept that it exists, but force it out of our culture. There is an argument to be made here regarding authenticity and standards. Many feel that vlogging is cheap, dumbed-down, and inauthentic in regards to true BMX culture. And if that is the case, then you can make the argument that we should not let the outside world and media change and dictate who we are. In an ideal world, I believe this argument can be convincing. My whole argument here is that we are in control of BMX and therefore should address the issues at hand and take action. And if vlogging sucks, let’s get rid of it, ostracize it, etc. This is not without merit or possibility, but the next question is then: do we have the power to do that anymore? As mentioned above, the enticement of this form of media is that it is empowering. For example, Adam LZ can do whatever he wants and no one can stop him. Some may say, “Who cares then. Let him make vlogs talking about stupid shit and let us keep riding how we always have.” In one way that is possible: no one can stop you from riding and doing it how you love to. But, on the other hand, it will be a lot tougher to have fun riding when there are no jams, no videos to watch, and no new parts to buy when bike companies go out of business. All he has to do is absorb the market to hisonline store or declare war on brands. I have heard stories of whole crews of young riders, “real riders,” who only know about BMX through Adam LZ and nothing else. He exposed them to BMX and he is all that BMX is in their minds. In 2-3 years, those kids could be the next Common Crew, or whatever, and where will their allegiances fall? With legacy brands and proven media outlets or with the vloggers and their perspectives? Could we force out vlogging? Yes, to some extent. But, I believe it would isolate parts of BMX from other parts only to the detriment of our culture as a whole.
Option #3 Co-Opt Vlogging
I have painted a pretty dramatic picture, but it comes from a look at the backside of the BMX industry over a fairly long period of time—not that its very hard for anyone to see that our actual industry is shrinking and struggling. I do not think that its the end of times for us. Rather, I am writing candidly so that we all think seriously about our future instead of trying to pick up the pieces as the world moves past us. Like we have done in the past, we should co-opt vlogging and make it ours. The longer we wait, the less control we have over it and its affect on our culture. I know that vlogging seems especially poisonous because of what it looks like, but so did web videos… and Facebook… and then Instagram videos. Sadly, many of those things did not work out so well for us either. For example, web videos certainly changed the BMX landscape and in a lot of positive ways, but our slow embrace of that medium led to a monopolization of the BMX media industry that still shapes our culture and industry today. If you don’t like the way The Come Up changed BMX, maybe we all should have embraced the changing of the BMX media earlier and gotten all of our feet in the door from the get go. I don’t particularly like vlogging, yet that doesn’t mean its going away or that it can’t be useful. Let’s not let a small group of people shape the entire media landscape of this inevitably influential form of media. We have seen it happen before and it can happen again. Do we need to do all-things vlog? Of course not. But, we need to get all of our feet in the door in order to adapt these forms of media to the general vibe of BMX for our mutual cultural benefit. Some people already are. I would argue that people like Dan Foley and Colin Varanyak are working to make the vlog a better format by shaping it more like traditional BMX media.[12] This shouldn’t be that hard for us. We have lots of experience with co-opting things. Mat Hoffmann was one of the first to do so. I have a feeling that the first rail he did was not designed for BMX, but here were are, thirty years later, still using rails for our own purposes… co-opting modern architecture for our counter-culture art. Let’s apply that same principle to the media that undoubtedly and continually shapes our culture and our industry. Let’s make the tools in this world work for us and for BMX as a whole.
Endnotes
[1]Vlogging as a self-employment. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/24726895/meet-the-vloggers-self-employed-and-worth-a-fortune
[2]Adam’s YouTube channel and home of his vlog: https://www.youtube.com/user/LZBMX
[3]Adam joins Stranger and the rest of the team quits: http://thecomeup.com/videos/adam-lz-on-stranger-new-tcu-tv-interview/
[4]Connecting BMX to the world at large: Nigel Sylvester: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4148826/Pro-BMX-Nigel-Sylvester-Nike-Instagram-YouTube-Forbes-30.html. Harry Main: http://www.vitalbmx.com/features/Harry-Main-Explains,5727
[5]Austin Augie’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzRjzjxudb_BDbUlto8vHXg
[6]https://youtu.be/a3UmTqFF8NI?list=PLc_f_rO9HQRtFUuzifDHdglmqKPItMFnB
[7]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izgdk51vLGk
[8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k
[9]Real Footnote: Most people like to pretend they are part of the things they see to satisfy desires for those things. They do that through watching them instead of doing them: Adorno, Theodore and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Reprinted in Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader(Routledge, 1993) p.29-43.
[10]Cory Nastazio on The X-Life: http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/the-x-life/cast/309004
Action Figures: http://www.genesbmx.com/miniature-bmx-bikes.html
Sponsors who had no place in BMX: http://www.espn.com/gallery/8911341/image/4/mike-spinner-ballpark-franks-bmx-pros-unusual-sponsors
[11]What they did: Skateline - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7V-xVyJYY3d9qYqF_F4Dr04Gr5tG-WBN
What we have tried: http://www.vitalbmx.com/videos/features/The-Big-Big-BMX-Show-Season-2-Episode-1,9863/GlennPPMilligan,1772,http://digbmx.com/videos/no-donuts-episode-001
[12]Dan Foley:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsK-Dbcs3dPhqsshvU-Ir5w, Colin Varanyak: https://www.youtube.com/user/colinlikewat
As with all things in BMX culture, our changes and issues are not happening in a vacuum. The vlog is part of a much bigger change in the way society consumes and interacts with media and how people make a living.[1] For our purposes, let’s define the vlog and its history very quickly and start with this assumption: people have begun to create and consume media in ways that are directly connected to the mediums available to them; namely, the affordable video camera and free online social media platforms. One of the precursors to vlogs was reality TV. From Survivorto the The Housewives of…Wherever, people have shown that they enjoy watching the lives of others, sometimes in long and mundane formats. Another form of media, the blog, allowed millions of people the opportunity to share their own story and their perspectives with nothing but a computer and an email account. Vlogging, then, is the combination of the voice of the every day person (blog) delivered to you through the unfiltered and first person perspective of self-filmed and self-narrated daily life (reality TV). I believe that we have seen the vlog grow so quickly as a form of media in BMX culture for two very simple reasons: 1. Money and 2. Control.
Why Vlog?
There are a multitude of reasons why BMX is short on cash in 2017 and we can get into those in future issues,but the fact remains that the vast majority of BMX riders (professional or otherwise) are unable to make a living riding their bikes. Again, that is something that we need to address as an issue unto itself in another piece, but on the other hand, some riders need to accept that they may not be qualified to make a living from riding their bikes. The fact remains that many riders wish to make a living in this culture. In defense of those who have turned to vlogging, the simple truth is: you can make money with little to no investment. The equation is as follows: Set up a YouTube channel. Monetize it by agreeing to play ads with your videos. Create content that grows subscribers and thus grows view counts. Make money. The more views you have, the more ad shares you generate, and the more money YouTube makes and will share with you. The final part of this rests on the global reality that viewers want to watch this particular form of media. So as smart entrepreneurs BMX vloggers have found a way to use their semi-interesting—at least more interesting than the average person’s—lives to make a profit when they cannot make it riding their bikes in other more traditional ways. Stated like that, it doesn’t seem so nefarious.
The second reason to vlog, and arguably the more important one, is that vloggers realize they can utilize their platform to control their destiny. One of the central themes of this piece is that there is a conflict of control within the BMX social hierarchy. What do I mean? It wouldn’t be a discussion of vlogging in BMX without mentioning Adam LZ.[2] Adam appears to be making as much money as some of the top paid pros in the BMX world. He has bought multiple cars, a nice home, and travels quite a bit. It seems he credits his vlogging with the money that makes all of that possible. Obviously, this covers the first reason for vlogging: money. The second reason though, control, is what Adam demonstrates so well. Adam doesn’t really ride contests. He doesn’t really make DVD or web parts. He doesn’t really do anything like the rest of the paid BMXers in our culture. He makes a living in and around BMX on his own terms. From his sappy vlogs with his wife to his direct responses to kids who comment and contact him by the thousands, everything he does is by his own choice. He rides the bike he wants to ride, goes to the events he wants to attend, and he does the tricks he likes to do. And when he finally connected to a frame sponsor in the BMX community, he set the tone for the team and his parts.[3] He began to contribute to the brand by selling his own frame on his own store and to promote that brand through his own methods. Will we ever see an LZ DVD part or contest run? Who knows. It depends if he wants to. He is his own team manager and his own sponsor. That freedom, combined with the obvious monetary motivation, is the primary reason I believe many BMXers are turning to vlogging.
It's time to turn to the bigger picture and how vlogging connects to BMX culture and industry as a whole. I did not put the next topic as a “reason” for vlogging with the two reasons above because, honestly, I don’t buy it as much. In the last few years when BMXers have stepped outside of the norm and connected to the mainstream world in ways that were less-than-accepted, those people have often defended themselves by saying that they were attempting to help bring BMX to a bigger audience and thus help grow the BMX consumer pie.[4] This is an old argument, but it at least needs to be mentioned in connection to this new trend. It is fairly obvious that the audience for these vlogs is massive. Go look at the view counts on Austin Augie’s latest vlogs and you will see that these vloggers are watched by large amounts of people (hundreds of thousands[5]). The question is: What do those numbers really mean? Is it true “reach?” If their argument is, “We do this to bring BMX to a bigger audience and then more kids ride and then the culture and industry can grow and expand,” how can we see that? Do the 99,000 people who watched Austin ride a “mini BMX” bike around New York City[6] actually translate into future BMXers and then eventually future sales? Are those viewers the future base of our culture and industry? I suppose we do not have the market research capabilities to know, but my feeling is, “No, they are not our future.” I base this on anecdotal evidence such as the ridiculous amount of Instagram followers that people have in BMX that are not actually BMXers. Those followers give high interaction numbers, but do not actually ride BMX nor support the brands and riders they are double tapping. Also, I just don’t believe that all of the people watching YouTube for entertainment are going to become BMXers, just like I don’t believe that the millions of people watching Arab Drifting[7] or Wing Suiting[8] will go out and start doing those things. YouTube is simply the new television, and one thing we know for sure is that television is often for spectators. Most people who watch football, NASCAR, etc., will never get up and go do those things.[9]
What are the costs?
And then comes the qualitative question about the quantitative argument. What could it hurt to share BMX with everyone? We can cast a wide net and spread the word about BMX culture to the millions of viewers on YouTube, but at what cost to the culture? One of the main arguments against the idea of vlogging is that it is poised to destroy more than it grows. Though it helps one rider pay the bills, many argue that, in the big picture, it is unhealthy for the future of BMX. Below are some costs that may be associated with, caused by, or aggravated by vlogging.
1. A loss of authenticity.
BMX has walked a fine line for many years. One that Skateboarding seems to have done a better job of walking (more on that in a future article). That line is one of staying true to the values that define our culture while attempting to be a legitimate industry that can make, sell, and use products in order to further its own goals. We have danced past the line before with cheesy action figures, corporate sponsors who had no business in our culture, and even reality TV.[10] Yet, for the most part, we have returned to the ethos of riding BMX to progress the sport, supporting brands and parks that support us, and being a tight-knit community of people who are supportive, but not afraid to call you out when you are doing something lame. Of course this is all subjective and one rider’s opportunity is another’s sell out move. But, in this case, many argue that portraying ourselves as selfie-stick toting pseudo-famous personalities is too far away from the core of authentic and real BMX culture. Furthermore, doing so will contribute to the growth of more of that behavior within our culture and contribute to a break down of BMX culture overall.
2. Over-reliance on outside brands, tools, etc. who care little for our culture.
As mentioned above, we have flirted with outside brands and companies before. And we have said that they “really are into BMX,” but let’s face it: they had money so we gave them a chance. The problem with vlogging is that it does give the rider total freedom from BMX brands and their business models, but it hands some of that control over to people who have no interest in BMX culture (or any other for that matter) aside from the profit it can raise. Vlogging relies on the relationship between the vlogger and the social media platform. In this case, YouTube. Only a few years ago, BMX was left in the dark by another social media platform, yet we don’t seem to have learned our lesson. Facebook was seen as the ultimate tool for utilizing huge reach to connect to present and future riders. In other words, it was free advertising. The BMX community slowly began abandoning other more expensive advertising options (see next section!) and put a lot of eggs in the Facebook basket. It wasn’t long before brand pages needed to be turned into business accounts and then suddenly view counts and interactions started dropping. Surprise! If you were a business account, you were going to be throttled unless you paid to promote. The gravy train ended. So what did we do? Return to the tried and true methods? Nope. We dove into the next big thing: Instagram. Spoiler alert: Facebook owns Instagram. Business accounts are popping up. And accounts are being throttled due to the “algorithm.” We have not learned. Its not hard to see this happening with YouTube in the near future. Of course, YouTube is sharing in the profits, but for how long will they let the little guy make a big buck with their expensive platform. These methods are unreliable as the people in control of the media and platforms we rely on to sell products and perpetuate our culture are not BMXers and have no connection to us. They do have a drastic effect on us though and we have already seen it…
3. The end of BMX Media and the general social hierarchy within BMX.
Again, we are not in a vacuum and that is one reason why this is so frustrating. This has happened before. Years ago the newspaper and print industry dove head first into new technology with little regard for the future and now those same newspapers and magazines are closing down left and right. Many media companies are learning the lesson that the Internet is an amazing platform and tool, yet can also be a black hole if you are not careful. Once you provide free media, how do you ever get compensation for it again? The BMX industry is still working out how we can maintain real, substantive, and meaningful media in this new world, but with less content and less traffic for our re-imagined “Web Magazines,” ad revenue and general support for those outlets will continue to shrink. And with shrinking influence, the few (maybe more than a few) who do embrace the vlog gain more power over BMX culture. Going back to the qualitative versus quantitative issue: Who will be the vloggers that exert that considerable and soon to be exclusive influence? Will the vlog and its supposed sharing of BMX with a bigger audience be able to support a new BMX industry? And will it be an industry we are proud of… one with no real media outlets and a series of talking heads on YouTube determining what is cool and what brands live or die? The internet has dramatically altered the BMX landscape and as such we should not take this new form of internet media lightly. Remember, the web-video displaced the DVD. The blog effectively ended the printed BMX magazine. And the vlog may be poised to topple the BMX Media hierarchy itself. Some may say that is a good thing, but in a culture where we set our standards collectively, we need to make sure that there are diverse as well as experienced people helping with that process. I think that there is a place for benchmarks that must be met to claim things like “professional,” “famous,” or “legendary.” Yet, the new social media environment allows anyone to connect to the world and proclaim stardom. We can all point fingers to those who claim to be “representatives” of our culture, but are that only in their own minds. I am not saying their needs to be an all-powerful group of media moguls who decides who is pro and who deserves to get coverage, but I do believe that there should be standards that we hold riders to if they are going to claim to be “professional representatives” of us all. In addition, as BMX companies struggle to survive, will vloggers support them or leave them behind? Or will the BMX industry let the vloggers control their destinies? Talk of control is strange in BMX, but it is necessary when the power of the vlog gives one voice considerable influence over the future of our culture and industry. Do we want a few loud voices or as many voices as possible shaping the future of BMX? If Adam LZ were to declare war on a brand, how many people would stop supporting that brand? Even if they are summer soldiers who may only ride for 2 years, they are still necessary parts of the BMX industry who help pay the bills and by extension pay and support other BMX riders. The power to influence and alter sales is the power to seriously affect a brand (many of whom are already fragile) and therefore exert massive influence on our culture. With the vlog, that power is in the hands of only a few people.
What should we do?
A side note: It is impossible to hide bias when writing and I have not tried very hard to hide my opinion on this topic. Yet, in the section that follows (and in future pieces) I hope to present options for how we as a community can move forward in a positive way. This conclusion offers a few options, and though it is fairly clear which one I support, I hope that we can work together through our various difference and find common yet diverse solutions to the challenges our culture and industry faces.
Option #1: Ignore Vlogging
This is simply a bad idea. The world is changing rapidly around us and a failure to change, in life, industry, etc. is a recipe for collapse. The two versions of this are to completely ignore it, which is unacceptable, but could work if you follow option #2 below. Or, the other version is to ignore it until we cannot ignore it any longer. This seems to be the path that BMX has taken in the past. We are usually last to jump on a trend and then too late to gain meaningful benefits from our late embrace. If online skateboarding media is anything, it is evidence of our slow reaction time and poor usage of fast-changing media opportunities.[11] The reality is, if we truly want to ignore vlogging, we will find ourselves in the same position as many American voters. Frustrated by their options because they let the options slip away from them. Early action can alleviate later dissatisfaction. Ignoring is a doomed or temporary solution no matter how you look at it.
Option #2: Force Out Vlogging
The step up from option #1 is to accept that it exists, but force it out of our culture. There is an argument to be made here regarding authenticity and standards. Many feel that vlogging is cheap, dumbed-down, and inauthentic in regards to true BMX culture. And if that is the case, then you can make the argument that we should not let the outside world and media change and dictate who we are. In an ideal world, I believe this argument can be convincing. My whole argument here is that we are in control of BMX and therefore should address the issues at hand and take action. And if vlogging sucks, let’s get rid of it, ostracize it, etc. This is not without merit or possibility, but the next question is then: do we have the power to do that anymore? As mentioned above, the enticement of this form of media is that it is empowering. For example, Adam LZ can do whatever he wants and no one can stop him. Some may say, “Who cares then. Let him make vlogs talking about stupid shit and let us keep riding how we always have.” In one way that is possible: no one can stop you from riding and doing it how you love to. But, on the other hand, it will be a lot tougher to have fun riding when there are no jams, no videos to watch, and no new parts to buy when bike companies go out of business. All he has to do is absorb the market to hisonline store or declare war on brands. I have heard stories of whole crews of young riders, “real riders,” who only know about BMX through Adam LZ and nothing else. He exposed them to BMX and he is all that BMX is in their minds. In 2-3 years, those kids could be the next Common Crew, or whatever, and where will their allegiances fall? With legacy brands and proven media outlets or with the vloggers and their perspectives? Could we force out vlogging? Yes, to some extent. But, I believe it would isolate parts of BMX from other parts only to the detriment of our culture as a whole.
Option #3 Co-Opt Vlogging
I have painted a pretty dramatic picture, but it comes from a look at the backside of the BMX industry over a fairly long period of time—not that its very hard for anyone to see that our actual industry is shrinking and struggling. I do not think that its the end of times for us. Rather, I am writing candidly so that we all think seriously about our future instead of trying to pick up the pieces as the world moves past us. Like we have done in the past, we should co-opt vlogging and make it ours. The longer we wait, the less control we have over it and its affect on our culture. I know that vlogging seems especially poisonous because of what it looks like, but so did web videos… and Facebook… and then Instagram videos. Sadly, many of those things did not work out so well for us either. For example, web videos certainly changed the BMX landscape and in a lot of positive ways, but our slow embrace of that medium led to a monopolization of the BMX media industry that still shapes our culture and industry today. If you don’t like the way The Come Up changed BMX, maybe we all should have embraced the changing of the BMX media earlier and gotten all of our feet in the door from the get go. I don’t particularly like vlogging, yet that doesn’t mean its going away or that it can’t be useful. Let’s not let a small group of people shape the entire media landscape of this inevitably influential form of media. We have seen it happen before and it can happen again. Do we need to do all-things vlog? Of course not. But, we need to get all of our feet in the door in order to adapt these forms of media to the general vibe of BMX for our mutual cultural benefit. Some people already are. I would argue that people like Dan Foley and Colin Varanyak are working to make the vlog a better format by shaping it more like traditional BMX media.[12] This shouldn’t be that hard for us. We have lots of experience with co-opting things. Mat Hoffmann was one of the first to do so. I have a feeling that the first rail he did was not designed for BMX, but here were are, thirty years later, still using rails for our own purposes… co-opting modern architecture for our counter-culture art. Let’s apply that same principle to the media that undoubtedly and continually shapes our culture and our industry. Let’s make the tools in this world work for us and for BMX as a whole.
Endnotes
[1]Vlogging as a self-employment. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/24726895/meet-the-vloggers-self-employed-and-worth-a-fortune
[2]Adam’s YouTube channel and home of his vlog: https://www.youtube.com/user/LZBMX
[3]Adam joins Stranger and the rest of the team quits: http://thecomeup.com/videos/adam-lz-on-stranger-new-tcu-tv-interview/
[4]Connecting BMX to the world at large: Nigel Sylvester: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4148826/Pro-BMX-Nigel-Sylvester-Nike-Instagram-YouTube-Forbes-30.html. Harry Main: http://www.vitalbmx.com/features/Harry-Main-Explains,5727
[5]Austin Augie’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzRjzjxudb_BDbUlto8vHXg
[6]https://youtu.be/a3UmTqFF8NI?list=PLc_f_rO9HQRtFUuzifDHdglmqKPItMFnB
[7]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izgdk51vLGk
[8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k
[9]Real Footnote: Most people like to pretend they are part of the things they see to satisfy desires for those things. They do that through watching them instead of doing them: Adorno, Theodore and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Reprinted in Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader(Routledge, 1993) p.29-43.
[10]Cory Nastazio on The X-Life: http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/the-x-life/cast/309004
Action Figures: http://www.genesbmx.com/miniature-bmx-bikes.html
Sponsors who had no place in BMX: http://www.espn.com/gallery/8911341/image/4/mike-spinner-ballpark-franks-bmx-pros-unusual-sponsors
[11]What they did: Skateline - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7V-xVyJYY3d9qYqF_F4Dr04Gr5tG-WBN
What we have tried: http://www.vitalbmx.com/videos/features/The-Big-Big-BMX-Show-Season-2-Episode-1,9863/GlennPPMilligan,1772,http://digbmx.com/videos/no-donuts-episode-001
[12]Dan Foley:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsK-Dbcs3dPhqsshvU-Ir5w, Colin Varanyak: https://www.youtube.com/user/colinlikewat
Responses
Conversational Response
Editor Mike Hinkens and BMX icon and industry insider Matt Coplon discuss some of the main ideas of the original CIF #1 piece. Matt is certainly not a "yes man" and shares his insightful and informed ideas about various topics.
Recorded May 19th, 2017
Published June 25th, 2017
Editor Mike Hinkens and BMX icon and industry insider Matt Coplon discuss some of the main ideas of the original CIF #1 piece. Matt is certainly not a "yes man" and shares his insightful and informed ideas about various topics.
Recorded May 19th, 2017
Published June 25th, 2017