Connectivity: Social Media’s Impact

It’s 2020, we’re in the middle (middle? middle-end, hopefully?) of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s an election year. We’re spending a LOT of time on the internet. Some might say the internet is the worst thing ever when it comes to what you see people sharing, some might say it’s the best. It depends on what content you’re consuming, I suppose. For me, historically, the internet has provided me opportunities and experiences that I never would have had without it.

I can go all the way back to 2010-2011 - a decade ago, wow - when I was at my peak of being a skateboarder. I still am a skateboarder at heart, I just don’t get to do it as often or as well anymore. I was shooting skateboard montages with my friends every chance I got. Some of the montages were good, some were not so good. I was hungry for feedback, though, so I reached out on Facebook to any and all skateboard filmmakers I could find. I’m sure most of them don’t remember ever direct messaging with me but I certainly do. People like Jr Venegas, Roger Bagley, Ty Evans, Chris Ray, and more. I was an annoying kid who pestered them for the most I could get out of them at the time, I’ll admit it. Most of them were very responsive and some weren’t at all which is totally fine. I asked them all kinds of questions about things ranging from “what camera do you use/should I get next?” to “will you watch my montage and give me feedback?”

I definitely didn’t and still feel like I don’t deserve the time they took out of their days to watch (or even pretend to watch) my little skate videos. I very much appreciated their kindness, though, and it’s because of them that I kept with the filmmaking dream and am doing the jobs I am today.

Meeting Kelly Hart for the first time in San Diego.

Around the same time I was a daily visitor on a skateboarding website for a skatepark called The Berrics. The name is a combination of co-owners’ names Steve “Berr”a and “Eric” Koston. They have all kinds of different series on the site, all with a military or worldly vibe. One of the series they do is called “United Nations,” a big video they put together with all of the skaters sponsored by whichever company they were highlighting. One of the first ones I watched featured a company called Expedition One. I watched it a thousand times and added every skater in it that I could find as a friend on Facebook. I messaged the living crap out of all of them but the one who I’m still friends with to this day is Kelly Hart. Kelly, according to his own Instagram bio, “like[s] to skateboard and laugh.” That sums him up better than I could ever describe him but I'll just add that he’s the #BestDude. Befriending Kelly has gotten my brother and I access to places like The Berrics that are typically invite-only. Just like with the skate filmers, I still don’t feel like I deserve(d) to be friends with a pro skateboarder turned popular podcast host but, not to put words in his mouth, he has told me that I reminded him of himself when he was my age (at the time) so he continued to sort of mentor me. We’d chatted online for about a year before we finally met at a skatepark in San Diego while I was on a vacation with my family. I valued our friendship tremendously so when he one day pointed out that everything I was posting online was negative and told me that if all I put out was negativity all I would attract was negativity I really took it to heart. I very often tell people, including Kelly, that that exact text from him changed my life. Ever since then I have tried my best to put positivity into the universe.

Years later in 2018, again on Facebook, social media and the internet proved their power to me once again. After being blindsided by a breakup of a relationship for which I had purchased an engagement ring, I decided to do something positive by giving the ring away online to a stranger who deserved the opportunity to give their future forever person the ring they deserved but couldn’t quite afford on their own. To spare you, and myself, the nitty-gritty details by beating a dead horse, I’ll link to the story here where you can watch the NBC Nightly News story about it if you desire to do so. In a nutshell, though, the internet afforded me the opportunity to read nearly 2,000 love stories that restored my faith in love. The viral nature of the story also had a ripple effect resulting in Travelzoo giving the recipient and his fiancée a $5,000 check to put toward their honeymoon.

Reading the results of the race with Travis.

In the summer of 2018 I saw my heroes, action sports legend Travis Pastrana and Phil Smage, posting on Instagram that they were in Virginia Beach to rehab “Smagical” after his accident. Knowing from their posts that they were going to be in town for a month and knowing that Travis can’t turn down a challenge, I messaged Phil on Instagram to challenge Travis to a go-kart race. The catch was there would be a $500 wager that the loser would have to donate to Road2Recovery Foundation, an organization dedicated to making sure injured action sports athletes don’t have to worry about anything except getting better. Travis won by a tenth of a second and I was happy to make a donation to R2R directed at helping Phil in his recovery. The news station where I work has a lifestyle show that did a story on the race which I’m sure resulted in some more donations to Road2Recovery. All of this wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the ability to connect via social media.

In 2019 social media allowed me to connect with others who were experiencing or had experienced testicular cancer. Testicular cancer is a little bit taboo and of course no one thinks it can happen to them so it doesn’t get talked about as much as it should. I, with encouragement from my doctors and nurses, started vlogging my experience with chemo and surgeries with the goal of helping others talk about this cancer and hopefully check themselves regularly so they can catch any abnormalities early. Through Facebook I was able to connect with the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation and the people involved with it and I have an idea that I’m in the process of floating with them to help even more people (if coronavirus levels out then maybe we can finally get to it). This leads me to my final and most recent positive experience with social media.

This year, in developing a project for testicular cancer awareness in conjunction with using my talents as a producer, I reached out to the producer of some of my favorite shows growing up. Shane Nickerson of Superjacket Productions has produced a myriad of projects with Rob Dyrdek such as Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory, and Ridiculousness. All of those shows have a small commonality with the project I’m developing to raise awareness for testicular cancer. I reached out to Shane on Instagram where he permitted me to email him my pitch. I wasn’t looking for anything more than a “yeah that’s a good idea” or a “no that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” What I never in a million years expected was for him to take the serious amount of time to look over Lightship’s website and give me an exceedingly thorough response on not only my project but feedback on the company and advice on being a producer in general.

None of these experiences would have been possible if it weren’t for social media. The importance of social media in 2020 and beyond to be able to connect with anyone in the world at a moment’s notice is unparalleled. This connectivity is important also when owning a business. As a company Lightship Productions loves to help our clients create exceptional videos to reach their audience and create an environment in which their customers are excited to contact them.

-Steven Crocker