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Time to be grownups and say:
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Lincoln Knowles. Stop it, don’t be a dumba**. We should not, as a community, be ‘letting kids be kids’ on this one. Stuff like this is going to threaten access more than any mining company. If droves of kids start peeling off routes…or even if only the public perception is that droves of kids are peeling off routes…stuff will get more and more regulated and shut down, insurance companies will start paying closer attention. It will overall make life harder for all…oh yeah…and more stupid kids will suffer life changing injuries or die. Edit: I’m more talking about being irresponsible on social media and creating false perceptions than about free soloing. Public relations matter. Even if the number of people ‘taking their last fall’ hasn’t meaningfully changed, a significant PR problem can still cause a world of new headaches that add fuel to existing ones - like anti-climbing conservationists, commercial exploitation, mining, whatever. |
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I think the dude is a little brain dead. He sounds like he did 100 too many whippits. This is unfortunately the new acceptance of the younger generation of climbers who cant survive without instagram. They dont see the peripheral issues that surround this dudes whole schema. I honestly think its bullshit and hes just saying things about a "harder route a day till i fall" for the following. Which is this problem these days. Climbers just doing things for followers. My prediction is that he will stage a fall from like 10 feet up on a route with a low crux to be like, well it happened and i lived and now i have xxxx thousand followers. Instagram is ruining climbing. |
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How is it any different than that free solo movie you all love? |
Eric Mosswrote: The differences of short form mass video virality are many, poorly understood and appear to have widespread consequences. You’re trolling, but it’s actually a good question. Do you have an answer? |
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“Kids” and young adults (LK is 21 years old) get busted up and killed riding motos and mtbs too. Much of this activity takes place on public land too. People die hiking and climbing up in the mountains and nearly all of this activity occurs on public land. I have not seen much concern from land managers about these activities. You’re free to curtail the actions of your own children (if you have any) but as far as others go, it’s “their body, their choice”. Freedom to do risky stuff is sometimes risky. |
Eric Mosswrote:  |
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On this episode watch as Mr. Beast dies while free soloing! I don’t wish the guy ill, I just don’t care. The objectives are fairly interesting because I can actually free them (unlike most Honnold solos), but the messenger is unwatchable for me since I’m a boomer and watching screechy young dudes isn’t my sweet spot. |
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There’s always someone like Lincoln Knowles in climbing - this is nothing new. Droves of kids aren’t about to start peeling off routes. I’m personally more concerned about the mining companies and land developers. |
Eric Mosswrote: Your trolling is so low effort. Though I guess to troll you'd have to have even some familiarity with who this guy is and have watched Free Solo. With a fair amount of confidence I'm going to say one or both of those is not the case because if you did, the differences are stark and it's laughable to try and throw out a false equivalence like you're doing. |
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I think the kid is a tool, but nobody has the right to tell someone how to live. Who cares. Stop watching his shit.
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He is trying to stir the pot and get views, threads like this only further his cause, this is exactly what he wants. If you really care about his wellbeing, best thing is to ignore him. Who knows if he is soloing for “the right reasons” or how solid he actually is, only he knows, and he probably doesnt know either. |
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This is a self-limiting phenomenon that isn't worth the skivvy-twisting that it is creating. Find something else to worry about. |
Tone Loc wrote: Fascinating to discover the Alex Honnold, the most famous, most photographed, most filmed, most promoted, most financially compensated soloist ever by magnitudes only did it for "deeply personal reasons" and is able to immediately discern that this guy is doing it for all the wrong reasons. |
Tone Loc wrote: This trend is unlikely to be long lived. |
Tone Loc wrote: Really thoughtfully written article. I appreciated that they interviewed him directly, and that he drops the character for the interview and gives some honest reflection on his own climbing, his online content/persona, and what it all means to him. I still don't really like the guy, or the channel, but I kinda sucked when I was that age, too. |
Tone Loc wrote: I’d speculate that the massive increase in the overall number of climbers is the reason accidents seem to be increasing. A wide and diverse spectrum of individuals will include both the “highly experienced and careful“(Derek Heresey, Jon Bachar et al), and ”inexperienced keyboard heroes”. If you don’t understand or accept the risk involved with soloing, that’s okay, but it seems to be a weird axe for you to grind considering most climbing related accidents have nothing to do with soloing. |
B Ywrote: That already happened. He fell off of green adjective 5 or 10 feet up a few months ago and kept the series going. Also, daily reminder that this guy is a guide and is (allegedly) unlicensed. |
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Climbing an ultimate expression of freedom. We don't need a governing body telling us if we can do something dangerous or not. Besides, how can you really stop someone that wants to do it? Free solo away. |
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I think it's naive to think Instagram hasn't changed our sport. Climbers have been taking photos since the invention of the camera, but 99.9% of the time those photos were for the individual, and to occasionally show friends and family. Climbers pushing the boundaries of the sport would of course attract--and try to attract--media attention, but that attention was curated by the gatekeepers themselves. Now there are no gatekeepers, and Instagram is the stage, for which people perform. This Knowles kid is doing just that, with the purpose of growing an audience. When you're a nobody and want to become a somebody, you can do that through risky or outrageous acts on camera, because that's what attracts an audience. Indeed, social media drives the entire climbing ecosystem these days. The difference between Honnold and this kid is that Honnold was soloing the climbs by himself and later publicizing the fact. No different than Balin Miller soloing Reality Bath for its second ascent (which of course he reported via Instagram). Knowles is filming the act as a performance. It's a subtle difference but an important one. Of course that too is nothing new (hello Dan Osman), but most who partook in that form of performance had already established themselves. Nowadays the performance is seen as the route to establishment. I think Shively is right that the massive overall increase in climbers likely has pushed up the number of soloing accidents. But I also think that young ambitious climbers who see Knowles getting attention for his stunts may be more likely to try similar things to get attention for themselves. |
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Young males have been doing stupid shit to try to impress someone throughout the evolution of Homo sapiens. A bunch of ‘enlightened’ hand-wringing on the internet is not going to change that. This said, all of this fretting nicely serves the purpose of this guy‘s attention seeking behaviors. |
