Mr Pepinillos - Steve Vanderhoek's Latest Creation

I totally agree with you. I think you're getting to the other part of the chart which is "external authentication of identity" (rather than "internal formulation of identity"). (I'm not clear on where the boundary lies). 

We judge people's authenticity based on certain scores. Chromag ownership is a great one (even if functionally a Growler would be fine for most). Car to bike value is a great one. How bald do they let their tires get? Do they bleed brakes in their kitchen? Can they consistently do tubeless tires setups with a 15 year old lezyne hand pump? 

That said, I've lived in places where all you need to do to be perceived as "the most cyclist" in a room is own the most expensive bike (in a literal vacuum of information, that person may also come from money and have horribly set up suspension). That's a stark contrast with the north shore where the teenager or parent with a jank wagon that rides daily or the semi pro shredder with a fancy bike and a day job who crankflips dice roll are equally "the most cyclist" (even if one is clearly "the better cyclist"). And I think that is pretty cool.

Also I'm glad you like my bike! I think the story of how that bike came to be may surprise you. XT 2 piston brakes and a Fox 34 were never my first choice, but financial constraints won. It has Ohlins and Saints now.

This is a good point - the more authentic a culture gets the more authenticity you need to demonstrate to be deemed as such. Around some of my non bike friends I feel almost insecure about telling them the value of my bike so I'll usually say 2-3 thousand or so, to which I'll get eye rolls or faces of prices. "3 thousand... for a bike? that's crazy!". 

But then there's other publics like after work at a bike shop that you need to know everything about how the bike works and how to put it together to gain respect or to be regarded as 'the bike guy'. But in the first group of people all it took was buying a bike. 

In a similar sense I've had steel hardtails with Deore, Bomber Z1, non series 4 piston brakes and off the shelf rims and ones that had WR1's, Zeb, Magura MT7's, and ya know what, they facilitated a grin when riding all the same.

I agree that media has a responsibility to be carriers of the culture they exist in. I may be an outlier in that I tend to pay little attention to gear, particularly from the latest and great flashy advertising perspective. If I need something I'll go with what I know, and if it's outside that boundary I'll check reviews in a few places to see what's up. I think there is a lack of quality, artful inspired work in the mtb realm and feel that relates to the advertising/marketing direction. That said I'm not a media junkie so don't see it all, but I find I tend to be more meh than wow when it comes to media. 

Re having a spectrum is necessary for growth I totally agree with that, but I genuinely question how much more growth can we have or do we even need? We saw the outcome of that in free skiing with the quest to drop the biggest cliff and people eventually dying. In that mix there is always the question of how much of that progression is purely the athlete's desire to push the boundaries and how much of it is influence by sponsorship income, popularity and staying relevant? Mike raised that question a few weeks back in his Rise Of The Death Lemmings article.

I have never met Steve so I have no idea what's in his head or what motivates him to ride so my previous thoughts should definitely not be taken as any sort of indictment. Have I like some of his riding and clips from the past? For sure! Will I like more in the future? Most likely. WRT Steve's vid I can look at it and understand the build effort, the clip effort and the riding prowess, but it just falls flat for me. While I'm not crazy about the stunt itself, I also think the clip could have been executed better. That's just my thoughts tho and there are people that really liked it. Not everyone is going to like the same things.

You asked a question of why it was getting no love here and I think you got some fair answers. I think people are just responding with what they'd be more interested in seeing, and in a way by not responding at all. There was a link on the forums a little while back, Too Far to Turn Around, a great article that I would absolutely love to see similar work of here on NSMB. While both Steve's clip and that article contain elements of danger, one is far more inspiring and actually wants to make me do the thing they're sharing, ie relatable.