Stuart Nettle May 15, 2009 Yesterday morning in Sydney Layne Beachley rang up the Merrick and Rosso radio show and announced that she will shortly be surfing Cape Solander. Then after informing their whole FM audience scooted across Botany Bay in a boat to be towed into a few waves. The cameras captured it and the wave appeared soon after on various websites. The 'story' (fuck, it was just a wave!) also appeared in the online site for The Age under the headline 'Layne Beachley hailed after best ride in Australia.' I reckon there'd be a lot of PR folk giving a big nod toward Layne for that stunt. I also read yesterday that Billabong are giving all their top-flight pros handycams to film their own private lives; eating breakfast, doing the laundry etc etc. Billabong will use this material in weekly video content sent out to fans. Apparently there are lots of people out their who want to see Taj and Parko scarfing Coco Pops and seperating their whites. ***** Recently I sat in on a media lecture where the fella up front said that we have to redfine our meaning of privacy. He meant that in an age of Facebook, Twitter and citizen journalism there isn't much that can be hidden. Especially not for people who actively use this technology. The line in the sand that previously divided public and private life has been seriously blurred by the 'new media landscape'. Now the affects of this new media landscape are starting to impinge on surfing. Of course it was always going to happen, why would we be exempt? But now that I see it happening it's a worrying prospect. We all saw the shots of Michael Phelps pulling a bong recently. Well, do you reckon that all pro surfers are spotless? That there aren't some that dump pills, rail coke or pull cones? Or that engage in other unsavoury shit? And it doesn't just have to be unsavoury shit. Do surfing celebrities want 'unofficial' photos of themselves doing the shopping, walking the kids or, um...eating their breakfast posted on the internet? Cause there are a million blogs, and at least one surf magazine, that'll gladly run them. My point being that if you encourage people to check out 'your world' then they are gonna go in and snoop around. And it won't always be with your handycam. Nor will you be able to control what they see and in what context they see it. It'll become a juggling act, or a tightrope walk (notice how each analogy involves a circus) controlling what information gets out and what doesn't. And if you do let them in how can you complain when they start seeing the things not intended for their eyes? After all, you opened the door. We've all got our secret gardens and private places which we don't want exposed to the public (no, you're not the only weirdo out there). So to the pro surfers I ask: how far do you want to go to sell yourself? And to the budding self-promoter I say: by all means use this technology to expose yourself, but don't complain if they start seeing things you don't want them too.

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