Photo: Middle Age Shred

Just when you thought that The Telegraph couldn’t troll humanity any harder, they manage it. It’s been a stellar fortnight for their idiocy, with Midlife crisis? Time to get a skateboard, gentlemen, and Generation Yawn: today’s 20-somethings don’t know how to let their hair down bringing on a chronic bought of trichotillomania for all right-thinking people.

First they set their sights on cyclists, simultaneously championing the sport while publishing opinion pieces by those who hate bikes. Now they clearly want to destroy fun as we know it. We understand that this is a publication with a readership that are on the verge of death*, but surely it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, people are so sick of this rubbish that the skateboarding journalists I contacted for quotes didn’t want to respond for fear of feeding the troll’s belly. Unfortunately, I’m too pissed off to have integrity like that.

Generation Yawn we may be, but that’s probably the fault of those who proceeded us. We can’t afford to ‘let our hair down’ like our forefathers because we’re all poor as hell.

And yet, publications insist on demonising an activity that is incredibly cheap, good for our health, and social at its core. Laughing at middle-aged people who skate is patronising to them, and the middle-aged skateboarders of tomorrow. Telling kids that it’s immature to enjoy skateboarding is damaging, because said kids have been robbed of every other immature thing they can do by the lack of cash available for recreational narcotics and going to punk shows. Why can people not understand that this sport is beneficial?

And even when a commentator grudgingly admits that skateboarding dads are highly preferable to those spending thousands on Ferraris, the vocabulary is so cringeworthy that it’s enough to make anyone lay down their board for good. The phrase ‘pathetic mid-life crisis dads, in their baggy strides, yelling “stoked!” as they attempt a McTwist 540′ is used. Shudder.

Trying to kill off active, fun-loving dads might not kill off active, fun-loving kids – but it won’t exactly encourage them. Super responsible dudes. And one article on the ‘pro skategeezers’ side isn’t going to redress the balance either. Because having a giggle is the nation’s default reaction to seeing older people on skateboards. That can’t be challenged unless commentary in opposition to it is the norm.

And what about the mums? Do they not exist? Read our article on whether Mums should stay out of the skatepark, since no major news outlets are going to publish anything like it any time soon.

*Also known as ‘moderately older than the audience of other publications’. I’m in the mood for hyperbole.