Don't Blow Up The Swell! Has Surf Forecasting Gone Too Far?

For our younger audience, this may all feel very natural and par for the course. They may even be wondering why can't they just get notified when a set of their liking is literally on the way. Given the evolution of instant gratification culture, and the fact that no groms seem to go to school anymore, their ideal surf scenario may look something like this:

It's Thursday morning and you're deep in a game of Fortnite (or whatever), having just eaten your favorite açai bowl that was delivered by a drone, and your smartwatch pings with a message, "Jimmy, get to Lowers NOW! A set is on the way and one of those waves is exactly how you like it. Hop on your e-bike, you have 12 minutes to paddle out and another 6 minutes to get to the peak. Thanks for subscribing to Surfline Xtra Premium."

Upon completing the wave, the smartwatch pings again, "Ho Jimmy, you rip! The rewind will be automatically posted to your TikTok. Don't forget, for an extra $99 a month, you can get actual satellite footage of your wave courtesy of our partnership with Supreme Cyborg Overlord Musk and xAI. By the way, we noticed your e-bike is battery low (you forgot to charge it, again) so a Tesla Taxi is waiting for you. Blink once and we will bill the credit card on file."

I know I'm not alone here and that many of us out there are thinking the same thing--is all of this really necessary? All the latest updates and optimizing of surf forecasting are cool to an extent; but at what point does it become too much?

Surfline OG Sean Collins would likely roll over in his grave if he knew what was going on. He was, after all, known for intentionally downgrading swell reports for his favorite waves to lessen the crowd. What would Sean Collins do (WWSCD)? He probably wouldn't blow up swells on every available channel.

To be fair, I know the crew at Surfline means well and many are as core-as-they-come, but it seems like the tech-y side of the business is in the driver's seat and hitting the gas pedal until engagement starts to redline.

For better or worse, engagement is the name of the game when you're in the media biz. We're no angels when it comes to pulling on the ol' clickbait strings especially since we have no premium features, just free content--hence the ads you see around this article. Sucks, doesn't it?

Anyways, here's our three bits of unsolicited advice:

1. Keep the incoming swells limited to the app
2. Save Instagram for recaps, rewinds, and all other bits of educational content.
3. Drop all the alert b/s. If people are too lazy to check the app, they don't deserve to score.

When in doubt, ask yourself this, WWSCD?

For what it's worth, Surfline's etiquette series is golden info for all newer surfers. Honestly, it's only downside is that it came out last year, whereas it should have been mandatory viewing for the last 15 years.