For the latest entry in our Rules of Skateboarding series, Ian Browning spoke with Pedro Delfino about his decision to start a YouTube channel as a professional skater. While it may be easy to slide into “corny” territory doing this, Pedro’s channel has managed to catch and retain our attention, and even possibly convince us that vlog content will soon be a fairly universal content type from the skaters we love. How has Pedro become a YouTuber without becoming a…YouTuber? Ian found out.

The first video on your YouTube account is one of your sister doing a switch boardslide to regular. Do you remember that day?

I do remember. We were living together back home, and we were all skating that spot. Coming up I would post ten second clips—right before Instagram had video clips—of random stuff my friends and I would film.

Pedro’s first Youtube post, entitled *fabi delfino sw boardslide to regs caution ledge*

What made you pull out your camera or your phone and start recording for YouTube?

I feel like a lot of people can relate to this: For the longest time people haven't been using YouTube in that sort of way. You know, like, once Instagram broke out with [being able to post] 15 second clips, or even earlier with Vine, people were just putting all their clips on those platforms. As I started coming up through skating and even pro skating, it was always a medium I neglected. You know, for obvious reasons. Sometimes it can get kind of goofy, but I just thought it was a place that skaters weren't really taking advantage of. That was my motivation when I started posting recently: it was like, 'Dude, I'm over watching these constant feeds of food, blogs, and political assaults. I need to just maybe create my own content, outside Instagram.'

Do you remember what or who got you stoked on YouTube in the first place?

I've always been a YouTube kid. When I started really getting into skating, I was primarily watching videos through YouTube. So I always just always went to YouTube to watch footage.

But as far as the vlog-style content, I got inspired doing that stuff from watching these travel vloggers. They post like hour long videos of them just walking down the street, and they’ll have like billions of views. I was like, ‘Dude, what if I tried that with skating?’

Pedro trying the walking/skating/slamming down the street approach to content creation.

What’s the difference between your YouTube output and your output as a pro skater? A video part is a very different medium than YouTube style video, but there’s overlap in places.

While filming for a traditional skate video, you as a skater don’t have access to your own content. That's pretty much the main difference. It's easy for me to separate what I am putting on my YouTube and what I'm working for on somebody else's project.

When I started doing these YouTube videos, I was starting to question what a professional skater even is. In this day and age with social media, what content do you even really need to put out? At the end of the day, we're influencers. We were probably the first people to do influencing-type content, putting videos of our skating out there.

The lines are getting a little bit blurred. That's sort of been my experiment: let me put out these videos that nobody would expect me to be doing and kind of see the conversation that forms around it. It's been really interesting.

The lines are certainly blurred when a backside 50-50 like this ends up in one of Pedro’s travel vlogs.

I get behind-the-scenes vibes from a lot of your YouTube clips, like the Thrasher’s Secret Terrain video where you guys are approaching a dam spot. As a kid you'd see these crazy full pipe spots in magazines and not really understand that a lot of times you're hopping over a bunch of fences and climbing into a piece of infrastructure to get that shot. Are you being careful to edit to keep nonpublic information out?

Yeah, I'm pretty aware. I tend not to film other people, or if I do, I’ll ask them first. I especially tend to not post skate clips that people working really hard for. I won't post where a spot is—I'm kind of tiptoeing around that—but the behind the scenes stuff is pretty cool. I've noticed that a lot of people in my audience are really hungry to see skate content in a different light. When rough cuts came around, people were really into them, and what I’m doing is kind of like that in a way. But yes, there is a fine line, and I'm still learning it. But I'm pretty aware of what not to put in these things, and I edit heavily.

We agree, the behind-the-scenes stuff is pretty cool

it's like a filmer that avoids having a sign or an address next to a spot in the clip so it doesn't get blown out.

Yes, exactly.

Do you notice a lot of difference between pointing your camera at something and trying to make interesting content for YouTube versus hopping on your board, being filmed, and really only having to worry about whether it looks gnarly enough?

That's a specific dilemma that I've encountered on this road of YouTubership – there is a major difference, and it's really weird. You can almost get the same amount of views as a really good video part without even doing much, it's kind of strange. Then and then you start to feel the pressure of ‘Well, this isn’t gnarly enough when you're filming a normal video, can we even use this?’ I can see why from a company's perspective they really want people to do blogg-y type content because first, it’s cheaper, and you can kind of get the same or more views than a traditional video part. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's really been pretty weird. There's weird incentives that aren't really matching up, and I think people are realizing that now. Obviously, companies are incentivizing skaters who aren't matching that 2000s level of gnarly skating, and so now the gnarly skaters are questioning themselves, thinking ‘I can't just film a slappy grind because it doesn't feel or look gnarly.’ We're in kind of a weird zone in skating right now.

That 2000s level of gnarly skating, from Pedro’s *Road To Nowhere* part

So you've talked a lot about views, and I have to ask, do you make money off of YouTube? Is that a goal? Or is this just a hobby?

It's just a hobby, dude. That old YouTube money doesn't exist anymore. I heard people say that the money was there back in the day, where you could just make a video that got 10,000 views and make some money, but I haven't seen shit. At the end of the day it’s not necessarily monetary for me, it's more like marketing in a way. I feel that we're kind of in an economic downturn. I was filming a video part and was like, ‘What can I do that's shocking to get eyes on me at the same time as this video part?’ It was just one experiment to see what I could do. I’m really not seeing much money off YouTube. It seems really hard to do that.

The YouTube algorithm, unfortunately, only incentivizes corny-ass content. You have to post every single day, and post thumbnails that are pointing at something and like your face has got to be in the picture. It's just so unrealistic for a professional core skater to not be corny but also try to make money on YouTube. It's insane.

Last question for all the kids out there: Do you think being a pro skater or a pro YouTuber is a better career path?

If you're looking to make money out of skating, then you might as well be a YouTuber, or some sort of influencer. Start a brand, sell merch. It's pretty hard. Skating is already kind of convoluted, right? But if you're trying to be a traditional pro skater and be on the teams, and go on trips with cool people then definitely go the normal skate route. But put your footage out on YouTube, for sure. Put your footage on Instagram, wherever. Fuck a sponsor tape.

The Rules of Skateboarding #24: Pedro Delfino