[remus]

ed: just in case the waters were looking a little too clear, it sounds like he's probably done his midnight project in Switzerland too (this one https://www.instagram.com/p/CtuChLNtivi/). Both likely 9A. Looking forward to hearing more as I midnight sounds like it's been a real journey: tiny holds, very skin intensive, fell off the easy moves at the end last season etc.

Interesting, where are you getting that from Remus? Other than your sixth sense for hard climbing news!

Second hand info via the careless talk discord channel, and some speculation based on the fact he's left switzerland to try burden (would assume he'd hang around switzerland if he was still trying midnight). Nothing confirmed though so could be wrong.

[jwi]

I'm not in a hurry. If someone need a but if time to put an ascent into some form of context for me, I'm all for it.

[Rant]

If I wasn't so busy I would spend an afternoon on creating a news-aggregate site that scrape insta accounts, send posts with enough impact to chat-gpt for light rewriting (and possible translation) and post it on a news site with lots of ads.

I'm pretty sure that most news-aggregation sites can be replaced by a chat-bot, since they basically do the above manually. (Most sites do no attempt at verification by asking belayers/witnesses and do no attempts to analyse performances and put them in context anyway. So marginally better than a robot. If that.)

[/Rant]

[ducko]

The moment one experiences the mental clarity, alignment of natures variables and the physical precision required to execute a series of inconceivable moves can bring one into a euphoric state.
Years of training, commitment and sacrifice can, on occasion, culminate to such a moment for a person.
The emotions linked with an experience such as this are deeply personal and can often be negatively tarnished by the musings of the social media mob.

Time to reflect on the experience and emotions of such a significant life event such as this must be pondered as to not negatively impact one’s experience.
Only then can a person decide on the best approach to break the news to the eager climbing community without causing their own personal experience to be unfavourably altered.

I’m sure more will be unveiled when he is ready.

[tomtom]

I'm lost. What has Aidan done?

Shark, its like 'only fans' (not Makita), but for climbing

[remus]

[Rant]

If I wasn't so busy I would spend an afternoon on creating a news-aggregate site that scrape insta accounts, send posts with enough impact to chat-gpt for light rewriting (and possible translation) and post it on a news site with lots of ads.

I'm pretty sure that most news-aggregation sites can be replaced by a chat-bot, since they basically do the above manually. (Most sites do no attempt at verification by asking belayers/witnesses and do no attempts to analyse performances and put them in context anyway. So marginally better than a robot. If that.)

[/Rant]

Indeed. Being a serial news-watcher you quickly get a sense for which sources put the effort in (grimper, desnivel, fanatic climbing and UKC spring to mind) and those that are all about a quick turn around and low effort content.

[abarro81]

Time to reflect on the experience and emotions of such a significant life event such as this must be pondered as to not negatively impact one’s experience.

For some people I'm sure this is true. Not for others - it's not the universal "must" you make out. For an alternative view on overthinking climbing rocks, see
https://youtu.be/nuDS0jZ3zmk?si=-yduUbHbEq093n4r&t=183

[Wellsy]

It feels a bit pretentious to me but also I'm not going to say how someone should or shouldn't say they've done a climb, really.

[Bradders]

It feels a bit pretentious to me but also I'm not going to say how someone should or shouldn't say they've done a climb, really.

Listen to the podcast and I don't think you could possibly accuse him of being pretentious about it at all. Finding a thing incredibly meaningful and personally impactful and then wanting to take care over how you then discuss it isn't pretentious. If anything, if he'd slapped an Insta post on, big green tick, massive grade and hit UKC up for an interview THAT would be pretentious.

[ducko]

Time to reflect on the experience and emotions of such a significant life event such as this must be pondered as to not negatively impact one’s experience.

For some people I'm sure this is true. Not for others - it's not the universal "must" you make out. For an alternative view on overthinking climbing rocks, see
https://youtu.be/nuDS0jZ3zmk?si=-yduUbHbEq093n4r&t=183

I was replying within the context of this discussion.

To some, climbing is more than meaningless leisure, it supply’s them with meaning that sustains them and drives them to keep pressing forwards, fighting against the limitations of the human form.
To others it’s little more than a day out scaling rocks - this is also fine.

[abarro81]

Listen to the podcast and I don't think you could possibly accuse him of being pretentious about it at all.

I assume Wellsy was referring to Ducko's post, which seems to me to be written in a pretentious style. But that's maybe a side argument about writing style.

Ducko - climbing can give someone meaning and purpose (I suspect it does for Huber given how much of his life has been devoted to it) while they also believe that fundamentally there's nothing special or spiritual about climbing. That was kind of the point of posting Huber - a man who's spent his life climbing rocks - as a counterpoint

Anyway, I think we'd all agreed Aidan can do what he wants and remus or dingdong could have just posted what they knew without worrying about breaking an NDA

[Tony]

if you've had a profound experience and make it public straight away and by the standard soulless channels, your relationship to that experience is irreversibly changed and immediately less 'yours'. And for what, just so the consumers can have their little fix?

Hmmm. In the context of climbing, I'm not sure anyone has ever been forced to discuss any deed, they did not wish to discuss, publicly. Some climbers choose to. Some because they seek to make a living (or augment their living) from the newsworthiness (or saleability) of their feats, some because they are extroverts, some because of both.

If one really wants to prevent one's own personal experience to be unfavourably altered, one could just not publicly unveil it at all. Add it to a new routes book or UKC logbooks or just not. And move on.

If, however, you want to earn some dollar from your feats then, to be frank, you've probably already compromised yourself to some degree. The degree to which you compromise yourself is probably dependent on your place in the pecking order and how bad / how much dollar you want.

All this is fine by me. Just lets not kid ourselves it's something it's not.

[monkoffunk]

In the free pod, 21st Feb, Aidan talks about the commitment a professional athlete has to announce their ascents to keep sponsors happy etc. As he says this you can tell he has a bit of a realisation that he falls into the camp of occasionally not doing this. No idea which ascent he was thinking about but obviously something.

I love watching climbing videos, but I don’t feel like anyone owes me anything. Not saying anyone here fits that bill, but sometimes it really seems like there is a feeling of entitlement to the video, packaged and produced as fast as possible. There is anger if people don’t suggest a grade. There is some really serious anger if someone suggests a down grade for a repeat. That’s whack.

I’m keen to see whatever he has done becuase he is one of those climbers with an other worldly quality. Some of the stuff he does seems inconceivably difficult, and it’s so cool to see. But if he wants to climb alone without a camera, then that would be his business and I’d respect that.

[ferret]

If you are a sponsored athlete your job is literally to get people who buy your sponsors products to pay attention to you.
It's hard to complain when they do or when you are expected to post news/photos/video.
If you don't like it, don't take the money, more than a few top class climbers have chosen not to over the years.

[monkoffunk]

Yeah but that’s a conversation between the climber and their sponsor as to what their expectations are, what are their contractual obligations, what will they get paid for what kind of content. If the sponsor is satisfied they are getting value for money, is it the role of the content consumer to demand more?

[ferret]

Maybe it shouldn't in theory be anything to do with the consumer. That isn't however the reality of being any kind of public figure. The more popular you are the more expectations increase.
I think this is especially true of the younger generation who form many social connections through media and technology. As a result I think they feel a greater connection to folks with an online following.
At some point you've just got to except a certain level of expectation, do something else, or find a way to get a deal with your sponsors that requires less of an online presence lowering that perceived connection and expectation.

[stone]

I celebrate the fact that people go about things differently in achieving great stuff.

People are different from one another. Allowing them the freedom to do what works best for them, ends up being best for all of us IMO.

[andy moles]

Just lets not kid ourselves it's something it's not.

Not sure that I am? I'm just willing to credit someone not wanting to unveil their deeds in the standard way with the possibility that their reasons might not be cynical.

[stone]

If one really wants to prevent one's own personal experience to be unfavourably altered, one could just not publicly unveil it at all. Add it to a new routes book or UKC logbooks or just not. And move on.

I'm totally at ease with the fact that for some (most) people the experience of communicating their climbing endeavours to other people is part and parcel of it all. That's part of the joy, part of what gets them psyched.

I feel we do us all a disservice if we don't embrace the fact that people want to go about that in a wide variety of ways. For some people it may involve acing the monetisation (as with eg Bonnington or whoever). Great if that's their thing. For others it may involve cryptic slow reveals, or secrecy, or no frills documentation. Again, each to their own.

[Dingdong]

Listen to the podcast and I don't think you could possibly accuse him of being pretentious about it at all.

Anyway, I think we'd all agreed Aidan can do what he wants and remus or dingdong could have just posted what they knew without worrying about breaking an NDA

I wasn’t trying to break any NDA  I just wanted people to sign up for their patreon and anywho I pretty much explained what the new podcast talked about in a brief summary I’m just not gonna type out a 30 minute transcript am I ahah

[Tony]

I'm totally at ease with the fact that for some (most) people the experience of communicating their climbing endeavours to other people is part and parcel of it all.

For others it may involve cryptic slow reveals, or secrecy, or no frills documentation. Again, each to their own.

I think this is where social media blurs lines. There is a difference to chatting to your mates about what you’ve been up to and publishing this information. As I wrote, it’s all fine by me, though I don’t think I need embrace anything I don’t wish to; embrace that!

Ultimately, as others have pointed out or alluded to, if you seek to make money from sponsorship/patronage then you will be forced down the route of doing what sells but, to what extent very much depends on the saleability of the feats (encompassing the saleability of the person) and how much you want the money.

[stone]

As I wrote, it’s all fine by me, though I don’t think I need embrace anything I don’t wish to; embrace that!

I guess what I'm saying is that I think our world is diminished or enriched depending on the extent to which we embrace human diversity. That's true for this as much as for much else IMO. I do see your point that people having a mission to enforce social conformity are also part of human diversity. It's a tension to be navigated.

[Tony]

Just lets not kid ourselves it's something it's not.

Not sure that I am? I'm just willing to credit someone not wanting to unveil their deeds in the standard way with the possibility that their reasons might not be cynical.

I think one rapidly loses credibility on this front as soon as monetisation or selection of audience comes into it. That’s not to say that I think money or self-interest was a deliberate aim in this case, but that it is a general side-effect of how sponsorship works these days.

[Tony]

I guess what I'm saying is that I think our world is diminished or enriched depending on the extent to which we embrace human diversity.

I do agree with this in general, though - I think - loss of diversity in how people promote themselves beyond just their actions would, perhaps, not be such a great loss.

[edit: sp]

[stone]

I think one rapidly loses credibility on this front as soon as monetisation or selection of audience comes into it. That’s not to say that I think money or self-interest was a deliberate aim in this case, but that it is a general side-effect of how sponsorship works these days.

I'm fine with professionalisation of sport or other things.

With some sports (eg Rugby, athletics), enforced amateurism has been a way to keep those sports socially exclusionary.

I'm not generally a fan of the "Thought for the day" BBC R4 item -but I liked it today. It was about someone bringing professionalisation to quizzing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0hpk11m

[Andy W]

Like many I’m intrigued by the ‘non news’ or the lack of news of a ‘significant ascent’. However aside from the news or non news aspects, what interests me is how Aiden (and others) are grappling with how their bouldering ‘experiences)’ are represented. 

I wrote an article for UKC a few months ago….”Today’s Climbing Media Output Rarely Conveys Depth of Experience” and a PhD ‘THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTING THE ‘BOULDERING' EXPERIENCE AS IT EXCEEDS CONVENTIONAL FORMS OF REPRESENTATION.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/todays_climbing_media_output_rarely_conveys_depth_of_experience-15372

https://independent.academia.edu/AndyWhall?utm_content=link1&utm_campaign=articles_id_15372&utm_medium=articles_post&utm_source=ukclimbing