The Selective Blockers and the “AI Slop” Celebration: Deeper Hypocrisy in Fingerboarding Facebook Groups

In a previous post we looked at the selective outrage around AI in fingerboarding: loud condemnation of AI ads and marketing, quiet acceptance (or open celebration) when the same tools produce the graphics on the decks people actually buy. This follow-up goes further into the performance that has become common in certain Facebook groups.

A familiar pattern now appears regularly. Someone posts AI-generated imagery. Moderators or regulars move quickly to remove it. The post is labeled "AI slop." Screenshots of the removal circulate with self-congratulatory captions: "Stopped the AI slop again," "Keeping the feed pure," "No AI in this group." The language is moral. The act is framed as defense of authenticity and craft. Then the same people scroll past, like, and buy boards whose graphics were produced by the exact same class of tools.

That is not consistency. It is theater.

Graphics Are Already AI-Saturated

A substantial portion of current fingerboard graphics—especially on the lower- and mid-priced real-wear and plastic decks that make up the bulk of the market—are AI-assisted or fully AI-generated. Some brands are open about it. Many are not. The visual result is often sharp, colorful, and commercially effective. The community consumes it without demanding provenance checks. Yet the moment an AI image appears in a group feed as an advertisement, concept, or illustration, the purity police arrive.

If the standard were applied evenly, large sections of product photography, deck art, and even some obstacle concepts would have to be treated the same way the groups treat "AI slop." They are not. The standard is applied only when it is convenient and when it costs the enforcer nothing.

The Fingerboard Nerd Slop Thought Experiment

Imagine if Skateboarding groups had, years earlier, decided that fingerboarding itself was low-status, niche, or "nerd slop." Imagine they systematically blocked posts about fingerboards, mini obstacles, and related products under the same purity logic now used against AI. The industry would be a fraction of its present size. Far fewer small companies would have survived the early years of visibility and community formation. The United States Fingerboard League and the broader organized scene that grew from online and group activity would have faced a much steeper climb—if it existed at all in its current form.

Fingerboarding expanded because people shared, experimented, and refused to treat the activity as illegitimate simply because it was small or different. The same communities that benefited from that openness now police a newer tool with selective zeal. The irony is not subtle.

Technology Has Always Been Part of the Craft

No serious participant demands that every deck still be shaped by hand from a single piece of wood with 1980s methods. CNC molds, improved plastics, Joycut-style Independent trucks, precision wheels, and modern obstacle manufacturing are accepted as progress. They make better, more consistent, more available product. They are new technology applied to an old activity.

AI image generation is another tool in the same continuum when it is used for graphics, initial concepts, or efficient marketing assets. Refusing it on principle while accepting every other technological advance is not principled. It is aesthetic preference dressed up as ethics.

There is one clear line that should be held: AI should not be used to create deceptive product imagery that makes a board, truck set, or obstacle look materially better, smoother, or more refined than the physical item a customer will receive. Misrepresentation is still misrepresentation whether the image was made by a human, a camera, or a model. That standard is about honesty in commerce, not about the origin of the pixels.

Outside of that, the selective rage is mostly status signaling. Groups that ban AI content while the market is flooded with AI graphics are not protecting craft. They are performing purity for an audience that largely does not apply the same rule to the products they purchase.

3D Printing, Phone Filters, and the Selective Purity Test

3D printing is widely accepted in the fingerboarding scene. Printed obstacles, molds, custom parts, and prototypes appear constantly and are treated as normal progress. It is a relatively new technology. So are the photography filters, beauty modes, and computational photography baked into every phone camera app that people use to shoot their setups and sessions. Almost no one calls those tools "slop" or demands they be banned from group feeds.

You either apply a purity standard consistently or you do not. You cannot happily accept the benefits of earlier new technologies and then suddenly plant a moral flag against the latest one. The double standard is obvious once you look at it.

Like it or not, most people have already seen tens or hundreds of thousands of television and online advertisements that are 100% AI-generated or heavily AI-assisted and never noticed. AI has been embedded in film production for decades and is openly celebrated by fans of Marvel, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Avatar, and the current Star Wars projects. Those industries use the tools at massive scale without the purity theater now common in small Facebook groups.

Fingerboarding is not a large enough industry to sustain this kind of selective virtue signaling—condemning AI when it appears in one narrow context while ignoring the same technology (and earlier technologies) that already shape product design, marketing, media consumption, and daily life. The tools that improved molds, plastics, photography, and visual effects are the same continuum. Pretending only the newest one is contaminating is not principle. It is preference enforced only when it is costless and visible to an audience.

Consistency or Preference

If the anti-AI position is genuine, then apply it across the board: reject AI graphics on decks, avoid brands that use the tools, and accept the smaller, more expensive, slower-moving scene that would result. Most people will not do that, because the practical benefits are too useful. In that case the honest position is simpler: acknowledge the double standard, stop the performative removals, and stop pretending that "AI bad" only applies to content that is not already in your collection.

Fingerboarding has always advanced by adapting useful tools while keeping the physical act of riding at the center. Pretending that one particular tool is uniquely contaminating while every other modern method is fine is not defense of the culture. It is selective gatekeeping.

The difference between a personal standard and a purity campaign enforced only on other people's posts is the difference between consistency and hypocrisy.

The conversation stays useful only when it stays honest. Do we need to burn all boards with AI graphics, 3D printed molds and obstacles?

Photo: Jeremy Canuto