Hacker News Reader

Comment by trgn | Hacker News Reader

I think that is misreading the original comment.

Skateboarding is antisocial because skateboarders are inflicting a noisy hobby on the neighbors. It has nothing to do with whether the skateboarder will make friends or not.

View on HN

Usually the neighbors inflicted things like park closures, "no loitering" near commercial parking lots, and vetoing neighborhood skate parks on the skaters, all of which would be further from resident bedrooms, and much safer for pedestrians, skaters and sleepers.

Instead folks seem to hope that by demonizing and inconveniencing a relatively harmless teenage activity that simply requires a bit of outdoor space as "antisocial", skateboarding will just...go away?

I'd argue that usually the neighbors are people entirely removed from the skate boarding debate one way or the other. They just don't want excessive noise pollution outside their apartment (be it from skateboarders, mopeds, neighbors with bass-heavy stereos, etc.)

I think (and this is just my intuition over the years) in the UK 'anti social' is used very broadly to mean 'detracting from the public interest', where here in America I've most often heard it to mean someone who shuns the company of others.

I mean the group I go to meets at a disused commuter overflow parking lot under a noisy raised train station so they’re quieter than their surroundings and not really bothering anyone. Still it’s wild to call a group anti social when they are in fact a very social gathering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com