One of my friends often says "Yes but the spot is really hard and you need balls to hit it" to justify the fact that he namedrop a spot. I always persist with him on this fact... What do you guys think about that?

Posted by decayed state One of my friends often says "Yes but the spot is really hard and you need balls to hit it" to justify the fact that he namedrop a spot. I always persist with him on this fact... What do you guys think about that?

Just being a showoff whore...
too bad he's not as hard as the sites he's diming out.

Posted by Gamewolf66 Urban exploration becoming popular was not the best thing because now everybody can just go and wreck a site or spray graffiti.

True, although the insistence that "popular = bad" can all too easily manifest itself as an elitist mindset that drives away newer members of the community.
Many younger explorers are turning to Instagram instead of UER, which is an issue that has come up before. I think that this is at the heart of the issue.

Newer members perceive an already-established community as being unwelcoming and elitist, causing them to create their own communities on other platforms. Without the social influence of older members to guide them on how to responsibly explore, many of them make things up on the fly and create their own set of standards that conflict with ours.

I see no harm in exploring becoming popular in and of itself, nor do I see harm in Youtubers making videos. The caveat here is that this is only true so long as they explore responsibly, by protecting locations and being discreet with information. Youtubers who maintain that code of ethics are no more a problem than anyone who posts photos here. It's the explorers who don't maintain that code of ethics who are the problem- being an unethical explorer is not the sole domain of Youtubers.

There's a balance that needs to be struck. Like it or not, social media is here to stay- we only get to decide how we'll adapt to it.