Reading into It

A recent survey suggests that upwards of 70% of all practicing Christians in the United States admit to not having read the Bible. I'd guess that even if most of those people were forced to sit down and read the thing from beginning to end, it wouldn't mean much of anything to them anyway. Or would it? The parables and stories are so general, so ambiguous, that they can literally refer to everyone and no one at the same time. The point of telling such a broad-based story is to ensure that anyone who chooses to do so can identify with it. Parables travel well; their very ambiguity enables people to insert their own meaning. No doubt, that's one of the Bible's timeless literary appeals. Try hard enough and you can make scripture say whatever you want it to say.

Me

Egotistical folks are especially dangerous in this regard. They tend to personalize any message within the Bible. You've seen it plenty. The world's going to end tomorrow, they claim! No one else knows these things! No one else has ever read the Bible, or thought about its meaning, or made the same mistake of reading into it some prophecy meant especially for them. It's sad, really, that people take themselves so damned seriously that they manage to edit their own personal circumstances into every parable, hymn, and psalm of the Bible as though it was written with them specifically in mind. I mean, where do they get the ego?

I'm sure that creating an analogy between the Daily Coiler and the Bible is enough to ensure my eternal damnation, if it comes to that, but let's run with it anyway. If nothing else, we seek to emulate the Bible's allegorical appeal. We don't use anyone's real name, for instance, not so much to protect the guilty but so that people can insert themselves into the story. We like the imaginative quality of skating: the anonymous skate spots shown here could be anywhere, including your town, and geeking out on some pool on line, we hope, will inspire you to go see what you can find around the next corner. We also like to play with all the stereotypical skateboarding archetypes. You know, the collectors, barneys, and insiders who've decided they know what skating's about more so than anyone else.

In so doing, of course, we're inviting our audience to "read into it." And, if reader responses are any measure, they've done so in two ways. One, we get accused--a lot--of writing about specific people. We're said to have targeted people's web sites (we haven't), magazines (ok, we have) or actions (not usually) in our little interview skits. But of course, those skits are intended to be ironical! The point is that you can only see yourself in their content if you choose to identify with the stereotype they're parodying. Taking offense to such stereotypes really only reinforces them. Two, people accuse us--a lot--of stealing their ideas. I'm especially disappointed in this, since I never dreamed that our content was in fact that bad. And here I thought some of the stuff we did was actually funny!

But rest assured, the Coiler's content is not intended to be about you specifically. Last time I checked, the world was still a big place, with a lot of ideas and people bumping around in it. If you're seeing yourself or your ideas represented here, you may be reading into it a bit much: you're not the only one who skates, or has made a funny about it, or at least tried to. Moreover, you're not the skateboarding police (we are!). But, if you insist on seeing yourself being targeted here it may be because you've set yourself up as some sort of authority on the subject. Relax, the content here is intended to parody all of us and, if you fail to see the humor in that, fine, but when skateboarding and everything that goes with it no longer impresses you as fun, you need to understand that the problem's yours, not mine.