Hashtag Secret Spot
I read the news article through a glaze of indifference, the content being typically dull. The gist of the story went like this: Facebook, the world's largest social media site, have followed Twitter and Instagram by programming the hashtag search function into their website code.
Initially the news held little interest to me, but later, when I began to reflect on the hashtag function, the implications of Facebook's decision became clear. In short, the Facebook hashtag function presents a serious new front in the gradual unpeeling of surf spot secrecy.
Allow me to explain...
Prior to the arrival of Facebook the decision to name a surfspot rested solely with the editor of the magazine or website the photo was featuring in. The editor also had the power to use other measures such as cropping a photo to remove distinguishing features such as a headland or car registration plates. If the wave was so sensitive they could even take the drastic step of not running the photo at all.
These decision were the editors and the editors alone. And as there were very few publications available the power to protect secret spots rested with very few people.
Since the advent of Facebook and other forms of social media there's been a gradual shift in these dynamics. Magazines are no longer the sole source of surf information as people go online to get their surfing fix. Information can come from many different sources now meaning editors are no longer the gatekeepers of sacred knowledge.
Facebook is the go-to site for much of the surf information – how many surf publications don't have an FB page? - and it's also the repository for a huge amount of surfing photos. Again, how many surfing photographers, even your bog standard amateurs, don't have an FB page? Facebook hosts millions upon millions of surfing images.
Just as it slowly dawned on me, the power of the hashtag function may also be dawning upon you right about now. By introducing hashtags, Facebook have created a way to itemise and search for specific images. They are introducing order to that databank of existing surf photographs and the millions (billions?) more to come.
And if just one careless person decides to tag a photo of a secret spot with its real name? Then, privacy settings notwithstanding, everyone on the whole 1.1 billion-strong Facebook network can potentially search for it. Worse still, it's not just their own photos, they can tag other peoples too.
Think about it like this. A photographer can do all the right things: shoot a secret spot, crop the headland, delete the car rego, and then post it to Facebook without identifying it. And then someone else can simply hashtag the location of that photo so it shows up in searches.
For surfers, the promises of social media are finally coming true; it's democratising the game and bypassing the old gatekeepers of information. It's also presenting a dramatic new challenge: never mind us crusty old surfing editors looking to increase our readerships, the responsibility to protect secret spots now rests with everybody.
Comments
We can fight back!!!! All you fuckers arguing about which Kiwi transvestite the blonde guy is rooting, start trolling the internet and tag everything. Get on sites like wannasurf and make up breaks round your local area, give misdirections to known breaks, recommend the wrong tides, tag all face book pics with bullshit. Spread so much misinformation(just like you do here) all over the internet so the information is generally unreliable.Make it a bit harder to find the truth.
I'm off to find a tafe course on computer hacking.
Shaun is actually currently writing this under a pseudonym from his stronghold in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
I reckon Shaun actually the 'Big Blonde Bi Guy'
Na, Brutus has bleached his hair and from memory he has made mention of shaping in high heels and stockings and if that's not true it is now.
Shaun , love your work, I could not agree with you more. A call to all surfers, rise up and fight. Death to the internet!!! Hack away fellow conspirators.
yeah morris,the fishnet stockings and high heels are now a must for all surfers that......want to get their feminine side more developed so that...........when the cancer fighting hormones are fired up.....yeah bring on the stockings and high heels....
bloody high heels........keep tripping over the shaping racks!
Ive never been on Facebook and never will.
You don't need friends to voice your opinion.
Look at this site, its probably way better fun.
Is it??????????
I once read that it only takes 5% of currency in the market to be counterfeit before for the whole thing to come crashing down.
5% of 1b is still a lot but :/
find a tafe course on computer hacking. Hahaha
Have no idea what you talking about, do you?
You've always been able to do the same thing on Twitter and Instagram.
Yeah but the FB installation raises the stakes by many orders of magnitude.
secret spots are for the greedy-
True and it's going to be a very powerful tool for Zuckerberg and his pals. They're cornering the market, first on text, then images, and as of today videos. The # search was a longtime coming but well overdue to make sense of their vast, cross-platform, multi-media kingdom. Zuckerberg's "age of privacy is over" speech is no longer viewed in the abstract.
Stu ,
Is that photo there to rile me up .... it was what i was hinting at the other day ...
Shaun , your a few pages behind me but luckily on the same book !?!
the only probelm i find is Some people are real competitive . and as you try and deceive it only brings out more people trying top correct you . and next thing its got wings ......
No one wins this war .
Shaun might've been joking but there's an element of truth hidden in his comment. The hashtag search function is another example of internet finetuning as online data mounts. I read somewhere how much data FB and Insta transfer each day and it was simply astronomical, like it could barely be sustainable.
Anyway, online search functions eventually get over run (how many people visit the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th Google page?) and the same will happen with hashtag. Personally I think this will happen faster with image searches as imagery is the real oil of the internet. If a 'secret spot' happens to have the same name as a geographical location then this will happen even faster. (In fact that may be a reason to name all undiscovered secret spots by their gepgraphical names!)
There's no way to future proof the hashtag search function either, further improvements will depend on more specific tagging by the user.
@stan I'm not joking, the truth s there for all who surf barrel with eys wide open.
@ leo, some times no, depends on what time of the day. I'm old school mate if I can't learn it from a tax payer funded tafe course I'm not interested, I'll bring this government down by bleeding them dry.
@southy, comics not books, but yes fill the world with misinformation, the smart ones will get there and start thinking for themselves and enjoy the adventure, not the same as what we grew up with but a puzzle just the same. We have to stop handing it to the little pricks on a plate, make it harder and they'll be better for it.
@ mat, you do realize surfing is the most self centered lifestyle/obsession on the planet, only a surfer knows the feeling.:)
Ahh Shaun your such a dick when you've been drinking.
Sorry, maybe I'm missing something in my understanding of how the whole hashtag thing works. I actually discovered a "secret" spot a couple of years back, and took photo's. It's a place that doesn't break very often, but any time I've been there, there's never been anybody there, although I have since found out that a select few know of it. We didn't name it, instead referring to it as "secrets", and none of the people that know of the break have an actual name for it either. I've showed people that have lived and surfed in and around the area for years the photo's without editing and removing some VERY obvious landmarks, but none that didn't know of the spot previously were able to pick the location, or even able to pin point it even though there are some well known spots a couple of KM's either side of this "secret" (meaning the obvious landmarks should have been able to narrow their field of guesswork).
So, my question is - how the fuck can a # spoil an actual secret spot? Chances are the punters who "tag" it are wrong anyway, and Shaun's misinformation mission simply gathers more momentum. In fact, who searches for the name of an unknown spot? By definition, if you can type in it's name, it's hardly a fucking secret now is it?
Sorry, too much paranoia in this argument for me...
Really good point barrel dogs.
BTW when does a secret spot not become a secret spot?
At which point is it not secret anymore, how many people must know about it for it not to be secret?
It's like the surf charter boats and surf camps in Indo, posting photos of so called secret spots on fb..how the hell can they be secret spots when they take paying guest there possibly hundreds a year.
It's all a bit of a wank, same with naming rights, and people thinking they are the first to surf or discover a wave, truth is you really never know.
IMO, the more names a so called secret spot has the better as this confuses people and keeps them less known.
barreldogs .
Carpark talk and Pub talk are classic examples of how guys could let slip a place that had a name ....
and could be obscurely overheard , to which it wouldn't matter as a name only to them .
Now there might be different circles that will name it different names , but until its plastered all over any sort of literature ( including online ) then that wave could be a secret that say up to a couple of hundred ( at the max ) depending on how hard of an access it is , people would know about .
And there are many spots where this is the case and you could surf it irregularly for half a dozen years without really bumping into others there on the same day as you . Only if its a very specific condition spot could it be that everyone would regularly show up on the same swell/day/hour .
Naturally as more and more places get busy people start looking elsewhere , some enjoy that more than surfing the same spot . This stuff will speed up how quickly a " Definite secret ( only a handful have surfed ) through to a secret spot that under a hundred know of then till a semi secret and onto people that won't walk further than 500 Metres from their car knowing about . and eventually people that only surf a couple of spots all their life know about it but too lazy to check it .....
Alos might i add forget the hashtag function , what about how facial recognition can do you in on facebook , how about when your looking at a photo of a wave in VIC that you know , and good old face book suggests you be friends with its long lost sister wave in SA up on the right hand corner of your time line ,
Don't think like this is too far off in a virtual world !
Interesting point Stu...the only way to stop it is don't publish the shots? wouldn't you think?...my concern is a certain swellnet employee who needs to #every #word #he #has #written #to #describe #his #surf #and #situation Am I allowed to name the culprit?...Oh bugger it..c'mon Craigo stop #### the #!!hahaha...seriously stop it!!
@shaun- tell that to the Paskowitz Family
Wellymon your right, facebook is for needy people. Swellnet is for those who have an opinion and faced up to and embraced loneliness, yep it's just me a slab of beer and a computer. I'd be going surfing today but it's a weekend, there are people that will follow me, it's offshore all week. I can wait, patients Shaun....Precious.
@Mat, I have know idea who the Pastfukwitz family is. but give me their contact details. you only think secret spots are for the greedy cause you don't know of any....Precious.
This has been the case for a while now - and I've exploited the shit out of it. Anyone with Facebook is trying to present themselves in a certain way, to tell their story the way they would like it to be told - and some people just love to be seen as the hardcore, secretive surly surfer. Just jump on their FB and trawl it for secrets - they are bound to be there. I've found waves by numerous means - road signs, headlands, houses... I found a perfect 'secret' a-frame in Indo based on the radio towers under construction in the background. If you take a photo and put it on the internet, eventually someone will find it. If not, it only takes one dickhead to post it underneath for a laugh and your dream is over.
If you are trying to keep your secret spot secret - it is simple. Don't take photos. Most people won't believe the hype until they see the proof. Or as a long time friend and Indo veteran told me at a now resort ridden and crowded wave in Java - 'if you score ten second barrells in Indo without the photos to prove it, did you really score at all?'.
Haha Barely, I admit I go a little overboard on the # but it's usually describing the wave type and then broad region, but if it's a sensitive spot I leave that out all together.
It's more for a wider audience to see my shots outside of my followers, and that's where this could become a problem.
A lot of kids put photos up and leave comments naming it etc. and don't understand the implications. I think this is the main area where the problems will start.
Barley, you've also missed the point that any person can publish a photo on Facebook and have it hashtagged.
As it is, a significant portion of the most 'shared' items on Facebook are often uploaded by personal users (rather than admins of website/magazine FB accounts).
Here's a test - log on to Facebook now, and count how many surf photos appear in your feed that were uploaded in the last 24 hours. Two of 'em will be from Swellnet (if you 'Like' us already, that is).
There is a healthy easy way out of this problem. Do not have Facebook? it is lame. Share with your real friends your experiences, not all your "friends" that you have collected from a lame waste of time such as Facebook.
Yeah, OK Supertramp. Let's petition everyone to close their Facebook accounts. You start at one end, and I'll start at the other.
I don't think there is a solution. Like many other problems we face, education and adaptation is probably the best way forward.
If only i could.
Southey,
I'd call my spot half way between the real secret of a handful to the "Oh yeah, I've heard of a wave around there" of less than a hundred, but still don't understand how the hashtag affects it. Let's say me and the few that I've been there with call it "#secrets" while others that I know call it "#thebommie" and yet others call it "#crayholes". How the fuck can somebody from the Gold Coast planning a trip to the area think they're gonna look up places on Facebook by using hashtags for a place they've never heard of. Like you say, it's very dependant on swell direction and wind direction as well as swell size and even period, so yes, if it's going to be breaking, the crew that know will go, but still haven't been there at the same time as any of them.
This whole argument is a mute point, secret spots simply don't get hash tagged. Fuck, I reckon I could post photo's of at least three places I know of on a site as public as this, and all it would do is make people scratch their heads a bit at best - and if I put a hash tag on them, every single one would read "#secrets", so how the fuck is that giving away anything?
P.S Don't worry Jimmy, I can hear you groaning from here - of course I won't publish them… you taught me better with the line a while back "the people that get the most joy out of those pictures are the crew that were there with their mates". Sorry - fuck the rest of you, go waste a couple of good swells chasing the elusive dream. "Just one more headland" hey Nick?