Community, Culture, and Conversations in Fingerboarding | S4 E152

This week’s episode is a reflective one. We acknowledge a recent situation that brought up strong feelings within the fingerboarding community and take responsibility for where we fell short. We talk about what we learned, why community trust matters, and how we’re moving forward with more awareness and intention. USAFBL remains committed to supporting fingerboarding through events, media, and consistency, and we appreciate everyone who continues to engage with us in good faith.

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Transcript

speaker-0 (00:00)
I'm thinking that we're officially cancelled.

speaker-1 (00:03)
⁓ officially?

speaker-0 (00:05)
I mean it's fourth or fifth attempt but yeah I think I

speaker-1 (00:08)
Yeah,

I was gonna say, what is this is version, officially canceled version 5.0.

So like, okay, so like we had a weird week last week and some fires were started and you have me on the podcast for the put the fire out podcast and I'm not the guy that puts the fire out Levine. I'm the guy that adds more to the fires.

speaker-0 (00:33)
We

outdid ourselves, and we outdid ourselves in like, the worst way.

speaker-1 (00:36)
I'm not going to say that we made mistakes, but mistakes happened. Let's just put it that way.

speaker-0 (00:41)
Man, no intro, no nothing. We're getting straight into it. We got a whole different.

speaker-1 (00:46)
Welcome to the fingerboard. This is the world dude. Like if you want to know about the scene here we go We're about to talk about

speaker-0 (00:51)
We're getting right into it. right. So welcome to USA FPL fingerboard podcast. As always, Levine Cunningham got Brian O'Neill on the mic this week and it's been a rough six or seven days for the fingerboarding community. are definitely partially responsible for all of that as well. I, got to get into it. Like mistakes have been made.

speaker-1 (01:12)
I don't even know how did we start to get into it, but like.

speaker-0 (01:15)
Man. All right. So last week there is a comment circling around. It's a screenshot. It's a comment. It looks if you know you know I mean this comment looks really bad like really really really bad. So this is a comment that was made by me. It's not a I some people are thinking this AI but it's it's definitely me. take full responsibility for it. It is a comment in a Facebook group where somebody posted

Basically not really wanting to have kids. And I commented, you know, off of that thread saying, yeah, bro, I'm 38. Most of my friends, you know, their kids are legal age now and they're all straight demons. They're out here just straight being diabolical and

speaker-1 (02:02)
No, no, you didn't say they're demons. You used the demon emoji, didn't you?

speaker-0 (02:07)
Yeah, I use the demon emoji. The problem is, you know, I'm getting returned 40 in a couple of months and I'm old. I didn't know that the demon emoji had a secondary meaning. I guess a lot of the emojis have secondary meanings. I personally just did not know it. I thought the demon emoji was the demon emoji. So when I'm talking about demon kids, it's literally just being a, these kids are just hellions, they're demons. And so anybody that's thinking anything differently than that, you know, that's just simply not the

speaker-1 (02:34)
What

do they think it

speaker-0 (02:37)
I

don't even think we can say it because it'll they'll take the video down. So it's it is it looks bad I'm not gonna lie. I'm not even mad for anybody even thinking that you look at it now that I look at it I'm like, dude, this is really really bad, but that's not my intent. We're family people Been married to my wife now for like 16 years my whole wife family my mom's everybody comes on tour Like that's just not who we are. That's not what we're about this

speaker-1 (03:00)
that this has that ⁓ gorilla marketing vibe that we had with with David Jones at one point. It's worse. ⁓

speaker-0 (03:09)
Obviously

worse. There's been lot of things that were put out of context where people are just getting burned at the stake and it's just one of those instances. But that's definitely not who we are. Whether you believe this or not, it's irrelevant. That's the truth and that's all I can tell you guys.

speaker-1 (03:25)
All right. Well, the last week we posted a video of interviewing a person that contacted us about getting interviewed. That was Ryan, right? ⁓ There has been, ⁓ I wouldn't say a tidal wave, but we did hurt some people's feelings. You know, we, we, I think people had other parts of the story that they wanted to add to it. And we're just kind of sitting here like, Hey, we're just talking about finger boarding in the West coast and what's going on in our experience that we had out there.

And it caused a different type of reaction, right?

speaker-0 (04:00)
Yeah, it was a very controversial episode to begin with and then we, we got finessed. I'm not even gonna lie. This is extremely embarrassing. We got played. mean, Ryan reached out to us.

speaker-1 (04:13)
Is finessed or played one of those terms that means something else that we're going to get in trouble for again?

speaker-0 (04:19)
I didn't think about that. might.

speaker-1 (04:21)
shit we gotta look that up we gotta keep like the urban dictionary next to us at all times

speaker-0 (04:25)
We got played. I mean, we just got scammed. It's embarrassing. Honestly, this is really, really embarrassing to even say. We strive on execution. We strive on consistency. We strive on just excellence. Like everything we do, we try to do it at our best abilities. And we made some mistakes. Like we just got scammed. Everybody at some point in their lives gets scammed. We've been doing you as FBL now for six years. And we've been on the pod for 150 something episodes. And we got scammed.

speaker-1 (04:55)
Dude, listen, I think that everybody has a story to tell. Now, I don't think that everybody's story is 100 % accurate. In fact, I think that most people's story is not 100 % accurate. You know what mean? Like everybody's got a side to tell. But we have a job to basically talk to finger boarders in the finger boarding community. Box number one, box number two, box number three is that things that people want to hear about. It checked all the boxes before we put the podcast out.

You know what saying? Like, I'm not making excuses for us. I'm just saying it checked the box.

speaker-0 (05:28)
No, and I feel that and that was where my reasoning was, you I him on tour in 2022 Obviously, there's a four-year gap between there and then you know multi-metal winner, you know, the guy shreds He's a finger boarder. So for me, like he checked off all the right boxes, but yeah, we're we

speaker-1 (05:44)
Before you say anything about him like I'm like saying like It's not our job to be best friends with all these people You know what I'm saying? Like it's not it's if you check the boxes you check the boxes anybody out there can contact us and be like hey I want to be on the podcast because I got something I want to talk about and if you check the boxes we're gonna be like, okay We'll try to figure out how to make that happen,

speaker-0 (06:05)
Yeah, and that's how we pretty much have always been doing it. Most of the people we've been following consistently for, you know, months or even years. And, you know, this one just flew under the radar for us. Like we had no idea the he was basically public enemy number one. That's where, you know, we feel like we got scammed because he had no business reaching out to us. He had no business getting on the pod if he knew that he was going to generate this much hate, this much rioting, this much.

just havoc on the community. Like if you knew that you were that guy, like he had no business being on here.

speaker-1 (06:36)
Well, if you're trying to get back into good graces and stuff like that, it wasn't the right way to do it. But again, like there's people in the community. Our conversation last week was about the West coast finger boarding communities and the West coast is a big thing, but like it was our experience down in California and at the events. And we really did have, ⁓ I don't want to say a negative experience, but we did have.

The vibe was off. We brought that up. We were talking about it. There was a competitiveness that was not ⁓ conducive to promoting finger boarding. Let's just say it that way. There was a competitiveness with the, some of the groups and stuff. And we saw it and we were like, what is this about? And it's like, we wanted to have a conversation about Southern California finger boarding. It's like skateboarding came out of there, everything else finger boarding has been in there longer than anything else. It's like,

It felt weird to us. We go to all these other communities and we didn't have that same experience. So we felt like something was definitely off. And it was the reason why we hadn't been back to Southern California in two and a half years. You know what I mean? So legitimately wanted to get somebody from the area, that fingerboard to talk to us about the risks, the problems and things like that was a legitimate effort on our part to be like,

Is this something we can help figure out? Because we go to a lot of different places in the country. The problem was, is the person that offered or actually contacted us to have that conversation had a, I guess, it's all assumption, had an ulterior motive on his part. You know what I mean? And at the end of the day, he achieved his ulterior motive. And ⁓ I don't really know what we could have done differently. There is nothing that we could have done differently there, but we will say, hey,

If you don't like the guy and you don't get along with him or you even feel like he's threatened you or been in created an environment where you felt threatened or unsafe, it wasn't our intent to platform the guy and make you feel bad or make you feel those things again. You know what I mean?

speaker-0 (08:46)
Yeah, I mean, it brought up a lot of people. I mean, it's a lot of emotions and I didn't understand or even know that these.

We're even out there like these emotions were there. The incident even happened. There was just a lot of things that were unknown on our side. Either way, I mean, we, dropped the ball. We fumbled really bad. And so, you know, we apologize for any discrepancies, any, you know, just emotional trauma that this guest or the podcast itself has brought to you guys. And so for that, we're sorry, we're definitely continuing to learn along this journey. We're not perfect by any means. We don't try to be perfect. We don't say that we're perfect.

but all I can tell is that we care and we try and we try very hard.

speaker-1 (09:31)
All right, I don't know dude, like what we feel versus what they feel versus what everybody feels. I don't, I guess the question that I would have is if we platform somebody, there's a certain responsibility on our side for who we platform. I agree with that, right? But prior to us interviewing them, there were literally no indicators that there was gonna be a problem. There were no indicators that he had a problem.

speaker-0 (09:48)
Yeah, I agree with that as well.

speaker-1 (09:58)
He obviously was part of a problem, but as he presented it to us, he was part of a problem that somebody else created. And I think that's the way a lot of people feel whenever they're in the middle of a conflict. They're like, I didn't cause this conflict. They don't take responsibility for how they participated in the problem. You know what I mean? You don't come out the other side of it going, OK, here's what I could have done better.

Most people don't anyways. They either say, f**k that guy or screw that person or they basically blacklisted me or whatever it is, you know, and then you move on with your life. And that's the way 99 % of every human being out there does things.

speaker-0 (10:39)
Yeah, no, and I, I agree. It's mistakes were done on all behalf. I mean, there's just, like I said, we, we, we're doing our best. We're not out here trying to disrupt the community. We're trying to bring a little bit of insight. There are some real issues in the community. There's a lot of tough conversations that need to be had within the community. There's a lot of things that are happening that people know about, but they're afraid to talk up on. you know, we, so

speaker-1 (11:07)
Do we be those

people or no? do we just say, it, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, the conversations aren't worth having if everybody wants to lose their mind and start throwing death threats at my buddy Levine here.

speaker-0 (11:18)
That's a deeper conversation that the community is going to need to either be for or against. Do you want us to use that platform to really start scratching some of the surfaces of lot of the issues that we have within the community? Our community is a fun community, especially from the consumer standpoint, but what gets murky is more or less on the business side of things.

Some, if not most of the problems kind of lie. And we see it all the time with a number of different topics, a lot of different things that are happening, stuff like that. Everybody knows at least three or four things that they absolutely don't like about the community, but they also have 10 things that they do like about the community. Do you want us to talk about the good things? Do you want us to talk about the bad things or only good? mean, we can sprinkle everything or not, but I mean, like we also got the ability in the platform to be able to have those conversations. So if you want those conversations to happen, let us know in the comments.

speaker-1 (12:09)
Yeah, but let's not sugarcoat it dude. there's like we know what USAFBL is to a lot of people, right? And we also know that some people have negative feelings about what we're doing, what you're doing. It's not a lot. There's a few people out there that are like, oh, these guys are money grabbing whores. By the way, you can get your money grabbing whore t-shirt at USAFBL.com. There's a perception and then there's a reality.

USA FBL has been, you have been busting your butt for almost six years now. You've been doing competitions. You've been doing ⁓ prizes. You've been doing, you know, pro finger boarding events. You've been making pro finger boarders relevant to the rest of the country, the world. ⁓ we're going to fast fingers fast. Do you have the dates on that? Fast fingers 22. We're to fast fingers 22. And, ⁓ taking three of the top finger boarders in the country with us and, ⁓ you know,

speaker-0 (13:01)
You

speaker-1 (13:08)
Some people love that stuff. And I think the majority of people that are engaged with this are like, yeah, hell yeah, this is awesome. There's some people that are like, nah, dude, that takes away from the culture of finger boarding. That takes away from what real finger boarding is. Listen, both of you are right. Hear me out. Old poser Brian is telling you right now.

Both of you are right. If you think fingerboarding just needs to be in the community, in your city, in your group of fingerboarders, and what you guys do matter and nobody else in the rest of the world matter, you're right. Good for you. You got your clique. You got your club, right? We ain't mad at you for that. And if you want to call us out for being money grabbing whores and ⁓ doing the thing that we're doing, go for it. Like we're good. Good for you. That's great.

The people that want to be in what we're doing want to be in what they're doing and they want to be in it hard because you had so many wonderful in this fallout of our last podcast. You had so many wonderful from positive, you know, things being said about you, Levine. I just want to point it out. Like it's easy to look at the four or five comments that really kind of threaten you or

tell you what you're doing doesn't have validity or tell you, you know, whatever they want to say about you. But the 90 % or 95 % of the rest of them that say exactly what we've been working towards and working hard to accomplish with the magazine and the podcasts and the events. ⁓ It's sometimes it's easy to forget about all the positive stuff and just focusing on the negative.

speaker-0 (14:46)
Yeah, and I want to thank all the people too that have messaged me, DM'd me, you know, just being-

speaker-1 (14:52)
Learn how to say Nick's last name finally or no?

speaker-0 (14:56)
I if I say it again and I butcher it, can never forgive myself. So next episode. Deemer. Deemer? Nick. I know this. Subconsciously I know this. But yeah, he made a couple posts. A few other people made some posts. There's a lot of people that you know, they know what we're about. They love what we do and I appreciate all of you guys. I love all of our USPL followers. And then Nick.

speaker-1 (15:02)
Deemer.

Nick's a great example of that. I got to tell you something here. Okay. Cause I made the assumption like the internet, when we only see a small piece of what a person is or doing, we assume like we know what they are. Right? You know what I mean? Like Nick had the interesting little smile and the wink and that kind of stuff. And he was kind of goofy and like all that kind of stuff. was like, okay, I get what this guy is. Dude, Nick's a real one. Like, I mean it, like, I mean it a hundred percent. Rick's Nick's a real one. If you're listening, dude, I'm a fan.

period, end of story, you know, and not because you stood up for my buddy, Levine. It's because you took, you didn't have to do that. You didn't have to do anything. You know what mean? You could have just watched the bullshit happen and you you chose to, you know, say your piece in front of everybody. And that's a real one. And I just want to shout them out for that.

speaker-0 (16:07)
Yeah, was been a, it's been a very eyeopening weekend, just knowing like, you know, who's got your back mixed in with literal death threats from people from the community, which is pretty wild to me. Like I know we've done this episode didn't do anybody any real harm or justice, but the fact that I've got, you know, a dozen death threats from different people, you know, it definitely pains me in a way where I'm just like, is anything that anyone does in this community worth

threatening their lives over. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation within themselves. Obviously, you know, we didn't do the best thing, but I don't think it's warranted for death threats. I think that, you know, healthy debates, things of that nature are definitely, you know, what needs to happen. I think that everything escalated so fast last week that it's

speaker-1 (16:57)
to come back from. I'm gonna say hey if you all want to throw that kind of vitriol ⁓

speaker-0 (17:03)
It was tough, was tough reading through all that stuff, was tough looking through-

speaker-1 (17:06)
Don't be attacking my buddy Levine. Those that know know what he's done for the community. Those that don't know have opinions and you're welcome to your opinions, but you want to come like that at my boy? That's a non-starter. You're done.

speaker-0 (17:22)
Man, but we're still moving forward. We are.

I know, I'm just like, what? What? But no, we got, we got a lot of stuff lined up for you guys. We're still business as usual. We made a couple of mistakes last week. We learned some valuable lessons. We've hurt some people in the community. We acknowledge that we were super sorry for all of that. That was not our intentions, but we're still moving forward with everything that's happening. We've got King of the Plies that's coming up here in the next couple of months. We're still sending out three national champions to Fast Fingers 22.

We're still going to be doing Cody and Lodi this fall, thousand dollars cash for pretty much both of them. We're going to try to bump up Lodi this year as well. We've got sanctioned events. We got events happening on our side as well. There's just a lot going on. We got projects we haven't even launched or we might even leak some, but this is probably not the episode to do so, but we got a lot of projects happening, lots of things going on and all of these, these are for the community. None of this stuff benefits us at all. This all costs us time, money and energy. So everything we do, we're still community driven. We're still community focused.

and we're going to continue being that way. Just because we made a mistake, hope that, you know, that doesn't hurt what we have done up to this point, but we're going to continue to do better and be better and we're going to come back 2026 stronger than ever.

speaker-1 (18:39)
But if you throw us death threats, we're gonna f***ing come at you.

speaker-0 (18:42)
that too. Till next time.

speaker-1 (18:45)
See you guys.

speaker-0 (19:09)
Take tight, I'm soaring like a bird Every trick or story, every slotted word Climbing on the edge, I'm pretty old Fingerboardin' stink of boredom

speaker-1 (19:15)
in the mo- dreams with the wading go- goals they scream- ⁓

Skatepark uptown my

as they scream in this finger-boding

speaker-0 (19:58)
I'm flying free With every flick I'll write my story On this board I'm never alone In the skate park I found my home Fingerboard and feel the thrill Chase and feel it's an everlasting will