In the cover photo: Manuel Lezcano, who was one of the surfers of the day at Quemao, is barely seen in the 60 seconds of highlight. Photo Quemao Class

I'm extremely busy, it's the end of the year, we have to meet the closing notes for 2021, the end of the month with the brands, and with the family and children, right? It is with them that we have to share these beautiful days of sharing love and affection, of celebrating!

But I find myself once again faced with this pitiful nonsense of ruining surfing communication to adapt to social media. It lights up the fire in me to express myself, to say, let's stop this nonsense once and for all!

Don't get me wrong: I'm the first beast who is constantly feeding DUKE's Instagram feed, in less than four years I have 6365 posts. If I add to those the 2950 I made on @Surflineenespanol, I'm approaching 10.000 posts only on the Insta feed in about seven years.

What I mean is that I know very well how important social media is, it is vital for my children's food and I am not a hypocrite who says that he turns off his cell phone on the weekends, hahaha. No! Of course not!

Now, we must know how to use them in the formats that serve surfing: Vertical shots in surfing that is “horizontal”, one-minute videos in surfing that has hours of sessions, a splash of maneuvers when what matters is seeing the succession of maneuvers… Enough!

I've seen the famous Reels, which are IG's creation to compete with the pathetic TikTok, missing key parts of a wave, just because it's a reel and it's going to get more views because IG gives it more exposure than a normal post.

Today I was watching a clip of one of the best championships of the year, El Quemao Class, the waves were EPIC. There were 150 tubes, high scores, brave people who risked their lives and the memories of their families to get a tube. The pure essence of surfing in a championship, the most wonderful essence of surfing, a violent and perfect sea, square, on a day of surfing... In one minute?

The highlight lasts one minute.

Don't get me wrong part 2: I understand that people at the event want to adapt to the networks, but I think it's time for the networks and algorithms to adapt to us.

One minute is not enough to show what happened in one day. Natxo's wave, between tube 1 and 2, accelerates at a frightening rate, in a wave that is the magic of surfing, a wave that we want to see in real time, to experience it as it was experienced from the beach.

From there, two or three more flash waves and that was it. That was day 1.

Immediacy does not rule.

The example of Quemao is one of thousands, and I apologize to my Canarian friends for using them as an example. But they are a wonderful example, because all that magic wasted in ONE MINUTE! No!

There are millions of us who want to see that highlight for 5 or 10 minutes. And, in fact, we are seeing more and more long productions, of 5, 10, 20 and 30. YouTubers, who are making a lot of money, have this premise of being long so that they get more ads and they do well (it is true that many times they bore people - balance is always everything).

It is an example of how people convince themselves that the social media algorithm rules and everyone must lose so that there are more likes.

Maybe we need to change it so that the algorithm changes.

I'm going for it. One of the best events in the world mustn't die in a minute, boy!

These are my humble two cents, please change the algorithm based on what we are suggesting.

Below: The highlight minute of today's Quemao Class:

Natxo's entire frame-by-frame amazing wave filmed in real time takes 20 seconds, the clip of the event used 9 seconds. Something's not right.