So Long, And Thanks For All The Fun.
So this is goodbye, or maybe more a see you later.
After almost 3 years to the day of knocking out consistent articles and interviews, the flame has burnt low. We had a good run, did some good work, missed the mark a few times, made people happy and sad, and then hopefully happy again.
Despite the accusations metered out both publicly and privately, Infoamed was never about generating clicks. I gave up looking at the metrics after the first few weeks. I was going to write no matter what, so why worry about who was reading? I have no idea if 5 or 500 people read each article. Maybe I voiced what people were thinking, maybe I was hugely off the mark, but for all its lumps and warts, I’d like to think that Infoamed was at least authentic. We didn’t pander to the industry in the hopes of securing free product or advertising revenue, we called a spade a spade and sometimes burnt bridges as we went.
We got to tell some amazing stories and dig into the background of some interesting topics. One of the wonderful things about the boogieverse is that you can make your mark if you really want to. I’m a middle aged never was who only ever surfs with my mates who got to get into a scrap with Stab mag, belittle a world famous rapper, call out sexism in surfing, and have dialogue with some of the greats of the bodyboarding world all because we decided to start a little blog.
The boogin’ community truly is a wonderful group. Almost to a man and woman, anyone that I hit up with a request for a chat, information or opinion responded and responded kindly. Special thanks to Pierre Louis, Josh Kirkman and Stu Boogie (@fixwinebar) in the early days for your enthusiasm and guidance, and all of you who took the time to write down your thoughts or answer questions for an article that we published.
Thanks to all of the “inside” sources who fed me intel and gossip through the back channels over the years. Huge thanks to all of our loyal readers including Jabbatheskuxx, Jorge Ferreir Pechs, Chris Frape, Cerven, Andrew Rams, Paul VDB, Troy Taylor and a host of others who regularly gave me feedback and advice, your enthusiasm and stoke on what we did kept me going for long stretches.
I’m most proud of our two fundraising ventures, helping to get Kayla Pisani and Lilly Pollard over to the 2022 Pipe comp and Lids For Lismore raising funds to help those boogers who lost some or all in the devastating Lismore floods last year. Neither of those endevours would have been possible without the generosity of the boogin’ community. To Johnny at D5, Dez at Emerald, Ben at Inverted, Reon at Action sports, Alex at Severn clothing, Kyle at Inspired BB clothing and anyone who donated to those two worthy causes you are all legends.
On the shop floor, giant thanks to Dallas Singer for keeping the backend of the website running and putting up with my technological deficiencies and lack of knowledge, and to my right hand man in Infoamed Billy for all of the fantastic design work, support and ideas over the years. To all of the crew in the Infoamed group chat for your comedic talents and ideas that can never see the light of day publicly but are hands down the highlight of my interneting each day you’re a mostly negative but always funny bunch of legends!
The Podcast with Nath, Reece and I will continue because they are a hell of a lot of fun to make, so you’ll still be able to hear uninformed opinions out of the Infoamed brand, just verbally now, and I’ll still throw a few stones over at @boogwatch. Fuck, lets be honest, I’ll probably write something next week if a big “kick me” topic presents itself, or we might back in a few months, but right now it feels like a good time to lay the written part of Infoamed to bed.
So long and thanks for all the fun,
Dan.
