OK, here comes a crazy story of how I was hated and hunted by a nation of automobile fans (long text Alert)
Its a mix of skateboarding, getting 'cancelled', virtual lynx, family threats and scams (bonus footage at the end of the post)
Here we go, so I am a professional skateboarder from Brazil and I like to explore unusual locations and objects and sometimes it is only possible to achieve the unusual those objects and locations are abandoned like this abandoned water park :
or abandoned cars like this one:
or an abandoned Gas Pipe:
Of course, we are not that crazy, we don't want to destroy usable stuff, we wouldn't cross any line unless its clearly abandoned. The unoccupied water park accumulates water from the rain, and that's the direct cause of illness for people who live around the site, the skaters occupy an abandoned factory with lots of trash, but what defines trash? May be trash is something that's unusable for someone and sometimes trash has interesting shapes to skate in.
Here in Brazil we have lots of abandoned places and stuff, and we almost don't have smooth floor to skate. Here is an example of our standard sidewalk.
We are almost obligated to invade places people don't use, like empty parking lots (cause their cars deserve to have smooth floorsor their expensive tires...) And in a parking lot our history begins...
There is this parking lot (of a market which I usually buy food from) which is the only place we have to skate in my neighborhood, it's a shady place, full of dust where people leave runaway cars, use heavy drugs (nothing against), and even have sex in the abandoned cars (even less against it). I used to go there since I was a kid, and once my ollie got high enough I started using cars as obstacles like the pros I watched. In my mind was doing nothing wrong once it wasn't owned by anyone but a couple of rats living in it.
The interesting thing about riding cars is :
- Cars are untouchables authorities of the street, they rule the streets
- People love their cars more than they are able to love people sometimes
- People think their cars represents their masculinity, it's a symbol of lots of things
When I see a picture of someone ridding a car it causes a feeling of contrast, of rebellion, of the paradigm man vs machine, authority vs art, message vs money, fun over control, and Its because this feeling that comes from contrast I consider this picture art (also one of my favorites SVs) :
Ok, getting back to the history, I came back to my local spot (the parking lot).
Skating with two friends of mine who are now huge YouTubers (they are the biggest skateboarding channel in Brazil: 3sskaters) with 2.3 million followers (and now they are at LBRY too). We had the idea of film what we always do, we rode curbs, ledges, rails and of course the damned abandoned cars. The title had 'cars' and YouTube algorithm send to the front page of automobile fans, some car fanatics declared hate to the channel and people started reacting.
Turns out one of those cars was an iconic one, because it was a hit at 70's and symbol of the militarism and elitism of its time, also a symbol of power and manhood. All pillars of our sexist and capitalist society, in my opinion.
We are not talking about damaging private property, cause the owner never even manifested himself, we are talking about spitting on a flag, a flag that represents power and oppression as we will see in the following examples, we didn't do it to hurt anyone, we didn't know all that energy and value that piece of metal full of dust in the same place for 10 years had to so many people, and I don't need to understand the feeling they have to respect that. I respect the feeling now that I am aware of it, but I am not obligated to agree with its essence. And of course its easy to disagree with that culture that thinks its fair that the proportional take back should be terrifying my family, posting pictures of us with our addresses written in it, being assaulted in the streets because of it. They are putting a price on our knees and heads. And they are doing it in a way they get followers for their shared hate.
The youtube stuff was not the worse they start to make plans in inside groups of automobiles to "teach us a lesson"
(you can imagine what the note says right?)
Those WhatsApp and Telegram groups started sending prints of our parents, as I said it was not about a broken car anymore.
Once we noticed that old car had so much value for some people, and they raise the question if the car had an owner we made a video asking for apologize for anyone we could have hurt. Lots of people proclaimed themselves the owner of the car to get fame. But actually we ourselves found the heir of the car, and he didn't even know anything about it.
The case was growing bigger and then it went to local and national TV, as I am writing (29/07) its streaming on my television. At first, we thought it could help with the death threats because lots of 'fake news' were created around the issue, the reporter was sounded so nice and asked questions that made us think this way, but when it goes to the air they didn't care if we were in danger they made the most sensationalist possible version and put in a show focused on criminals.
The first "crime" that happened was the damage we caused, and then lots of other crimes happened against us, but the interesting for the media is to use the image of the 3Sskaters to profit. To sum up the huge media was replicating the behavior of the youtubers that was trying to grow their car channels through hating us.
At this point, we don't know what is coming next, I was saving money for sometime to go to Canada, it has always been my dream to visit my friends and may be stay there but now I have to pay lawyers and a dead person's car, my family ashamed and terrified and I really don't feel safe going out any more all this has made me neurotic at a point I never experienced, we did a mistake but now there is no safe place for us to redeem ourselves, and the midia does this maintence of hate:
As I said, for me giving another meaning for something that is not usable for what it was built to be is recycling by art. I have no space for argumentation in my country, they won't let my apologize if I hurted someone by this abandoned car that got on TV and be in peace, so the only escape I have is to share my forbidden art with you here at LBRY.
Forbidden Footage
(Its priced 1 LBC for 'security reasons', if you watch the video and don't like it, comment below it and I will send you the same value again in your channel)