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> 5. Skateboarders, one of the most anti-social hobbies I hear you - skateboarders skating on the street can be a nuisance sometimes, and yes they make a racke
by herodoturtle 4y ago
> 5. Skateboarders, one of the most anti-social hobbies
I hear you - skateboarders skating on the street can be a nuisance sometimes, and yes they make a racket - but that's precisely why skate parks are such a great addition to a community.
That said, calling skateboarding an anti-social hobby is a bit misleading; on the contrary it's a highly social hobby, and in many ways can be socially uplifting.
In the part of town where I grew up, skateboarding gave my friends and I something enjoyable to do, that kept us fit - and crucially - kept us away from other more destructive past-times typically associated with rebellious teenagers (drinking, drugs etc.).
I don't mean to pick a fight here. Just felt it was necessary to better represent skateboarding culture (as a past skateboarder, who owes some of his success to the benefits that hobby provided at a very critical time in my life).
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoChiming in to totally agree. At the start of the year I had no local friends and was just starting to meet people. I matched with someone online who was part of a local queer skater group, and we met and got along. Then suddenly I had a huge group of people where there’s always someone skating Saturday and Sunday every weekend. This made it super easy for me to drop in to a social group any time I wanted, and for months that’s where I was every weekend. The queer skater group is one contingent of a larger group of skaters, so in all there’s usually a good 30 people hanging out and skating together every weekend. It’s a huge new social group for me and they throw events with donations from local skate shops, they do board swaps and clothing swaps, have Instagram groups and photographers. I laughed when I read “anti-social”. The skateboarding group I connected with is the biggest social group I have!
- trgn 4y agoI think that is misreading the original comment. Skateboarding is antisocial because skateboarders are inflicting a noisy hobby on the neighbors. It has nothing to do with whether the skateboarder will make friends or not.
- keerthiko 4y agoUsually the neighbors inflicted things like park closures, "no loitering" near commercial parking lots, and vetoing neighborhood skate parks on the skaters, all of which would be further from resident bedrooms, and much safer for pedestrians, skaters and sleepers. Instead folks seem to hope that by demonizing and inconveniencing a relatively harmless teenage activity that simply requires a bit of outdoor space as "antisocial", skateboarding will just...go away?
- snakeboy 4y agoI'd argue that usually the neighbors are people entirely removed from the skate boarding debate one way or the other. They just don't want excessive noise pollution outside their apartment (be it from skateboarders, mopeds, neighbors with bass-heavy stereos, etc.)
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI mean the group I go to meets at a disused commuter overflow parking lot under a noisy raised train station so they’re quieter than their surroundings and not really bothering anyone. Still it’s wild to call a group anti social when they are in fact a very social gathering.
- kerryoco 4y agoI think (and this is just my intuition over the years) in the UK 'anti social' is used very broadly to mean 'detracting from the public interest', where here in America I've most often heard it to mean someone who shuns the company of others.
- mattmanser 4y agoI meant anti-social to non-skateboarders, as in anti-social behaviour. "Environmental antisocial behaviour is when a person’s actions affect the wider environment, such as public spaces or buildings." https://www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/asb/asb/antisocial-behaviour/what-is-antisocial-behaviour/ https://www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/asb/... We have skate parks, but skateboarders would come and do tricks on our hill while filming themselves, plus there were a few people who used them for commuting at the dead of night. Cities can be surprisingly silent at the dead of night, someone riding along on a skateboard makes a huge amount of noise and as they're going slowly, for quite a long time.
- orangepurple 4y agoWhy would someone commute on a skateboard instead of a longboard? They are both similarly annoying to carry on foot and stow away later.
- watwut 4y agoMaybe they have skateboard and dont have cruiser/longboard. Or they were doing tricks and are coming back on the thing they had with them.
- giantg2 4y ago"Environmental antisocial behaviour is when a person’s actions affect the wider environment, such as public spaces or buildings." With that definition, we could classify just about anything as antisocial.
- ajb 4y agoWithout wishing to get into the argument about skaters- antisocial has a secondary meaning which is not the opposite of 'social'. An antisocial behaviour in this sense is one that offends against the rest of society, even if it is conducted by a social group rather than a solitary individual. English is a muddle.
- samatman 4y agoLet me agree with you while going a bit further: antisocial only means one thing, and it's what you just described. People use 'antisocial' colloquially as a synonym of 'asocial', but this is wrong, and asocial is the actual antonym. Antisocial is no more an antonym of social than antisemitism is an antonym of Judaism.
- wl 4y agoThe primary definition in the Oxford English dictionary is "opposed to sociality, averse to society or companionship." It cites a usage dating to 1797. The secondary definition given, which you claim is the only correct one, similarly cites a usage dating to 1802. If the usage you complained about was ever a mistake, 200 years of usage means it is no longer.
- samatman 4y agoLanguage is a moving target, and like it or not, the term 'antisocial' has developed a decided bias in terms of its meaning, which carries legal and medical weight. You don't want to go describing other people as antisocial when asocial is what you mean, this thread illustrates that. I joke with friends about this in fact, if someone says "ah I'm probably not going I've been feeling kind of antisocial" I'll ask them if they're planning to [redacted comment on America's violent culture in poor taste]. This is magnified by British use of antisocial, see ASBO, it's not worth trying to hold the line for two meanings when asocial is just sitting there being unambiguous.
- wl 4y ago
- emptyfile 4y agoUm what? What do you and the other posters think anti-social means? Is this something native english speakers are confused about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour >Anti-social behaviours are actions that harm or lack consideration for the well-being of others.
- zimpenfish 4y agoThey use the estate square downstairs sometimes. Jumping over the (plastic) bench is a popular exercise - alas, they're mostly not very good at it, hence the curve in the top bar of the bench, but this also means scratter-scratter-scratter-clunk-RESOUNDING-CLUNK-screams-and-shouting, repeat every 60s for 4 hours. My brain was mush at the end of hour one, I'll be honest.