If you skate alone, then an online skating community can be great to get feedback on your tricks and connect with other skaters at least virtually.
Or maybe you already have local skateboarding friends, but you want some extra skating content in your life. Whatever the reason, joining an online skateboarding forum is a fun thing to do.
Let’s go over the best forums and online communities out there.
Discord’s Skateboarding Community
Frequency of Posting: Too often to count. These people need lives.
Where to Join: Follow this link.
Discord is built for online communities. Each community has different threads for different topics of discussion so you can filter what content you want to engage in or not. There is literally every category you can imagine from gear review to trick tips and even an anime discussion thread.
The Discord skateboarding community has pretty active moderators and the group itself is extremely active. I tried to count and get an estimate for posts per day, but it was simply too many to count. The community is open for anyone to join and you can access it from your computer or from the free Discord app on your phone.
This community actually has connections to Reddit’s /r/skateboarding as it seems there are some shared mods between the groups. Either way, the community seems like a great spot to get some advice, shitpost, or just argue about everything skateboarding-related.
Reddit’s /r/NewSkaters
Frequency of Posting: 100+ Posts a Day (not including comments)
Where to Join: Follow this link.
This is probably the most wholesome online community for skateboarding. It’s choke-full of people posting pathetic ollies and others giving them encouragement and calling them beasts for simply touching a skateboard. I kind of love the vibe honestly.
I personally browse this forum a lot, but usually don’t post here. If you’re a beginner skater, this is the group for you. It’s genuinely motivating to see so many people happily grinding through the brutal early stages of skating. Plus this community is a great place to post a video and get trick tips if you are shy about your skating. Everyone here is obnoxiously nice and positive. They’ll congratulate you for trying and then give you some actual tips.
The community has 158k members, but only a couple thousand might be active at one time. Regardless, there is always new content to engage with.
So, yes, this is Reddit, but imagine if Bob Ross was a skateboarder and there was an online community full of them. You should definitely join this one.
If you want to see the best of dogs skateboarding, then see my silly curated list of skateboarding dogs.
Reddit’s /r/Skateboarding
Frequency of Posting: 30+ Posts a Day (not including comments)
Where to Join: Follow this link.
Reddit’s /r/Skateboarding community is the big brother of /r/NewSkaters and much less friendly. There is still great advice and information to be found here, but if you post you failing at an ollie people won’t tell you good job for trying. They’ll probably tell you to post somewhere else.
The good news about this community is that it is extremely active and you can see some very talented unknown skaters post clips and you can talk to these guys as well.
If you want or need more advanced tips, then this is the community for it. This is also the community for you if you want to stunt on other skaters by posting your sex change late flip into a bank. What is actually better than the amazing skill you’ll see is the raw creativity of so many of the skaters. From 30 variations of boneless to trick combinations that I’ve never seen before, you can find it all in this community.
I am also part of this community, but in true lurker fashion, I never post and only watch videos and read other posts. This community is bigger than /r/NewSkaters and has 408k members with up to a couple thousand active at one time.
Strangely, I think there are fewer posts per day here than /r/NewSkaters despite being a larger community. Maybe because people feel like they need to be good to post. I’m not sure.
Regardless, go and join it.
Facebook’s Beginner Skateboarding Group
Frequency of Posting: 15+ Posts a Day (though there is lots of engagement in the comments)
Where to Join: Follow this link.
Facebook’s Beginner Skateboarding Group is another great place to find all sorts of people trying to learn skating for the first time. People in the group are also pretty friendly here generally and willing to give advice and help, but because this is Facebook, there’s also a load of trolls and weirdly aggressive people.
There are frequently posts accusing everyone of posting and thinking more about skateboarding than actually skateboarding. This is followed by a bunch of other people posting videos of themselves and claiming they are the exception.
Beyond this silliness, the community is solid and you’ll find people posting at all hours and willing to engage and comment with pretty much anything. I prefer to sh*tpost here and I often just respond to posts with complete nonsense.
The actual posts in the group aren’t so many as it hovers around 10-25 posts a day, but members are constantly commenting on older posts so it remains pretty active.
Still, it’s a good one to join especially if you’re also a beginner.
Facebook’s Skateboarding Group
Frequency of Posting: Too Many to Count (though lots of trash)
Where to Join: Follow this link.
This is probably the worst group that I’m going to mention here, but it can be kind of funny.
This online group is enormous and has over 217k members who all seem dedicated to posting dumb things and making awful jokes with each other. Anything goes in this group and it’s full of memes, actual skating videos, links to someone’s blog or YouTube, incomprehensible rants, and simple one-liner posts.
There is a ton of trash in this community, but there can also be some gems hidden in there. This group is really for someone who enjoys sh*tposting and doesn’t want to actually engage with a community in a meaningful way.
I have actually joined this group, but I never post and recently unfollowed it. There is too much trash for it to be on my timeline so now I occasionally head over there if I want some mindless entertainment.
So yeah. Maybe join this one, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about it.
Slap Magazine Forums
Frequency of Posting: 25+ a Day (this is just the number of comments per day)
Where to Join: Follow this link.
These are the message boards for SLAP Magazine. The skate magazine was created in 1992 by the guys who were running Thrasher Magazine at the time. The last issue of SLAP magazine was in 2008, yet somehow there is still an online community on the old domain for the magazine. I don’t really understand it.
The message boards are split into categories such as skate gear, skate questions, videogames, etc. Because the message board is split up it is hard to get an accurate count of the posts per day. Though it seems that there are around 25+ new posts a day in the forum.
I’m not part of this community and I only have an outsider’s view of it. I want to say that it is dying out, but then again it has somehow lasted this long and continues to be active so who knows. I won’t recommend joining this one though.
If you’re interested in getting more skateboard content in your life, check out my breakdown of SK8 The Infinity, the first skateboarding anime.
Conclusion
So those are the best online communities that you can join. There are also loads of other ways to follow and connect with skating online using apps like TikTok or Instagram. There are absolutely communities out there that I haven’t mentioned because that would a very long list indeed.
Of course, it’s best to meet some skater friends locally, but if you want a bit more of the skate community it can be fun to join an online group or chat group. You can really find some unique video clips in these groups that you’d never see promoted by Thrasher or other large skateboard media companies.
What’s your favorite online skateboarding community or forum?
Anyway, thanks for reading, and look out for more content from Board and Wheels.
