“I built this algorithm brick by brick.”

After poking around, I found Santos Probst, the editor of and second skater in the video. At just 20-years-old, they were quick to open up about how the video came together, and in a series of surprises, it ended up being one of my favorite conversations of the year.

You know, I genuinely haven’t seen a comment section that positive in a while.
It’s insane. There’s a lot of comments from politically right-leaning people or people commenting like, “I’m an old head and I thought I would hate this, but actually loved it.” I don’t know if you’ve seen this one, but there’s this amazing Twitter comment where someone’s like, “Still voting red, but good video” [laughs].

I wanted to make something that wasn’t afraid to scare the normies, but ironically, I feel like that was so refreshing to people that it got less hate than any random given skate video. It’s not like the video did insanely well, but I was expecting it to get 2K views. I was like, “This is going to be really important to 20 gay furries who live in San Francisco.”

“I wanted to make a video where we were the weird thing happening, and it was presented as straightforward and not insecure or ironic as possible.”

Do you think that because you really went for it, that’s kind of why it hit?
I just wanted to make something that was maximalist, but I feel like everything in skating right now that’s maximalist is super ironic or insecure, and then everything that’s not maximalist and traditional is really self-congratulatory.

Skaters have this way of, and I think this is a Strobeck thing, but they’ll film something weird happening on the street and then put it in their video, and it’s looking down on it like, “Oh, look how weird this weird thing is.”But I look at that and I’m like, “You aren’t better than any of those people.” Skaters have a hard time being the butt of the joke, and I wanted to make a video where we were the weird thing happening, and it was presented as straightforward and not insecure or ironic as possible.

How did the Scruff crew originally come about?
Scruff came about out of convenience. I’m a furry and a skateboarder and all my friends are furries and skateboarders and we don’t live very close to each other, so we would meet up at furry conventions. If you go to a furry convention, you’ll meet three new people who you’ve never met before who skate. If you throw down, someone will hear the wheels and come rolling by or something.

Scruff was going to happen no matter what. It’s crazy seeing how many furry skaters there are, and no one was making videos really showing the intersection of the cultures.

So the skaters in this video found each other through going to these furry conventions?
Some of us did, but me, Nicole and Space all met in the Gifted Hater Discord server. We’re all straight out of that ilk, that generation of skaters. There’s a lot of lore, but we’re like Gifted Hater’s children, basically internet babies. All of the Scruff stuff now is in an offshoot Discord server from that. That’s where we talk about the video and plan meetups and stuff.

“We’re like Gifted Hater’s children, basically internet babies.”

I’m amazed you found multiple other furries in this discord chat.
I think it’s just an internet thing. Everyone in those servers are online to a fault. I’m not in any of his servers anymore, but there’s a lot of offshoot communities from his stuff. Scruff is basically just a branch of that tree.

Are a lot of furries this hyper-online type of person?
Yeah, for sure. Like I said earlier, that’s one thing I think is unique about Scruff is most skate teams are just people who skate together in real life and they end up making something because they’re all friends. But none of us met in real life first, really. We just started talking a lot over the internet, and we did that for two years before any of us went out to see each other, and that ended up being at furry conventions because it was a common interest we all had.

Take me back a bit. How did you get involved in the furry community to begin with?
I’ve been an artist since I was a little kid, so since I was 13 or 14 I’ve been drawing anthropomorphic characters that you’d consider to be furry things. I didn’t really get into it until I was 16 or 17 to where I was actually considering myself a furry. It’s just a part of my self-expression now.

Where’s the line? You’re drawing anthropomorphic characters, which a lot of artists do, but they wouldn’t call themselves furries. When do you adopt that term or that title?
The line for me was probably when I started to buy fur suit stuff. I don’t have a full fur suit or anything, but I have three tails and a couple pairs of paws and some ears. It’s kind of like being a skater, you just… Nevermind, that’s stupid… I was going to try and make a skate analogy. I only understand the world through skate analogies [laughs].

Another thing a lot of people would say is [you’re a furry] when you have a fursona, which is yourself as an anthropomorphic character, which I also didn’t immediately have, but I always knew about it and I had friends who were furries. I just wasn’t really that concerned with the culture until later on.

“I’ve always had a sub-human feeling. If you’re imagining a pyramid of identity, I’m at the bottom level.”

When you adopt your fursona, are you no longer yourself? Is this a version of escapism?
It’s a lot of different things for a lot of people. The thing that I identified most about it, which a lot of furries won’t say this at all, but I’ve always had a sub-human feeling. If you’re imagining a pyramid of identity, I’m at the bottom level. That’s the main thing that made me identify with having a fursona. I don’t really go into fursona mode, or live action role play, when I’m dressed up as a furry. I just am myself. But that’s completely different for a lot of people. Space, who’s the first part in the video, is a therian. You can look that up I guess [laughs].

When you meet someone new at the skate park, do you bring up that you’re a furry?
No, I’m pretty self-conscious. I don’t think most people would be able to tell that I’m a furry without me telling them.

Do you think people were surprised by the level of skating in the video? Nicole’s part is so good.
Nicole’s cracked, actually. That’s not even how good she is. Just wait. But yeah, I feel like people were probably surprised. Nicole really inspires the whole team as far as having a really high standard, like actual professional etiquette about skateboarding. Sometimes I feel like most pro skaters are not professional people.

Why did you leave so many unlanded clips in the edit?
I was more thinking about how the clip looks overall. It didn’t really matter to me whether the trick was landed or not. If I was sponsored or something, then I would’ve gone back to try and land all the tricks.

Some of my favorite parts are a bunch of not landed tricks. Stu Kirst’s 917 part is a classic one. If someone asked me who my favorite skater was for a long time, I would say Stu Kirst. It’s an ethos thing, I guess. I feel like a lot of people who liked my part liked it because I’m not the most skilled skater, but I tried really hard.

People are often critical of queer skating because they say the skill level isn’t high enough for who gets hooked up. What’s your thoughts on that?
I don’t think skill matters really. Other than people being fucking homophobic, which is its own issue, to me it’s an effort thing. People don’t like to see people get an opportunity and then not fully go for it. This is literally no shade to anybody, but I think people just want to see people try, especially people that are really good.

There’s an obvious reasonable amount of extra credit you get given for being the people who pave the way of doing something because that’s insanely hard to do. So it’s not unjustified, but I don’t know, it’s just getting to a point where people are tired of it, and this doesn’t even just apply to queer skaters.

Some say skateboarding needs to fully die to get better. Do you agree with that sentiment?
Yeah. Accelerationism. I’m an accelerationist skateboarder. I made this video to further the degeneracy in skateboarding so that society collapses faster and then skateboarding will be reborn like a phoenix from the ashes [laughs]. I don’t know. I think skateboarding is never going to die, it’s just really corporate right now.

“I made this video to further the degeneracy in skateboarding so that society collapses faster…”

[laughs]. That’s funny, I’ve never heard of accelerationism. Must have missed that class.
Skaters just need to stop being so insecure. They need to stop trying to pander to mainstream culture, which is an impossible task because then no one’s going to be making money and the economy’s already bad as it is.

Who out of all the professional skaters out there would make the best furry?
Probably Ben Kadow. That’s the obvious answer. He already dresses really weird. I could see him wearing a tail. He wears pants with tassels on it, and we love him. We make baby girl edits of him [laughs].

Is none of this furry love ironic to you?
There’s no such thing as irony. Some very based man said this at some point. If you’re consuming it, that means you like it at some level. So irony is not really real. The really bad thing that irony does is it makes people make things that are bad on purpose. People will just make something that’s supposed to be a parody of another kind of thing, and then it just ends up being a bad version of that thing.

Did skateboarding need a video like this?
There’s been videos almost exactly like it in the past. Giant Spider Skates to Rave by Matt King is pretty much the Scruff video, it’s just 12 years older and 10 times better. While I was editing it, I was like, “There’s only one correct way to edit this or to think about this.” It felt like the next natural progression of everything I like. Everything I’ve ever consumed as a skateboarder and as a furry, just one step forward is what I was trying to make it.

Interview and intro by: Ben Komins
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