Big Brother skateboard magazine was a total disaster. Honestly, that was the entire point. If you grew up skating in the nineties, you didn’t just read Big Brother for the trick tips or the grainy photos of handrails; you read it because it felt like a secret club where the only entry requirement was a complete lack of dignity. It was chaotic. It was often disgusting. It was, for a brief window in time, the most honest reflection of a subculture that hadn't yet been sanitized by the X Games or corporate energy drink sponsors.
Steve Rocco, the mastermind behind World Industries, launched the mag in 1992. He was already the most polarizing figure in skating, famous for his "us against them" mentality. Rocco didn't care about being professional. He wanted to burn the industry down, and Big Brother skateboard magazine was the gasoline. While traditional rags like Thrasher and Transworld Skateboarding were busy documenting the actual sport, Big Brother was busy testing which brand of laxative worked fastest or documenting the editorial staff getting tasered for "research."
It’s hard to overstate how much this magazine shifted the culture. Without Big Brother, there is no Jackass. There is no multimillion-dollar career for Johnny Knoxville or Bam Margera. It was a petri dish for a specific type of DIY idiocy that proved people would pay to see other people fail. It wasn't just about the skating. It was about the lifestyle—the messy, irreverent, and often questionable reality of being a skateboarder when the rest of the world still thought you were a criminal.
The Chaos of the Rocco Era
In the early days, the magazine operated out of a warehouse in El Segundo. It was basically a locker room with printing presses. The staff wasn't composed of journalists; it was a collection of skaters, dropouts, and weirdos who happened to be funny. Jeff Tremaine, Dave Carnie, Rick Kosick, and Chris Pontius weren't trying to win Pulitzers. They were trying to entertain themselves.
The content was legendary for all the wrong reasons. You’d have a legitimate interview with a pro like Guy Mariano or Eric Koston sandwiched between a guide on how to make a fake ID or a feature where the staff drank their own urine to see if they could survive in the desert. It was high-concept stupidity. They once ran a "how-to" on suicide that got them banned from major retailers. They got sued. They got death threats. They loved it.
Why the Industry Hated Them
The established skate industry saw Big Brother as a threat to the legitimacy they had worked so hard to build. During the eighties, skating was trying to become "respectable." Big Brother took that respectability and threw it off a roof.
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- Advertisers fled. Big-name brands didn't want their logos next to photos of Dave Carnie's latest "art project."
- Parents were terrified. The magazine was often bagged in black plastic at skate shops because of the graphic content.
- The "Core" Skaters were split. Some thought it was a mockery of the sport; others realized it was the only magazine that actually spoke their language.
From Print to the Silver Screen
The DNA of Big Brother skateboard magazine eventually mutated into something much bigger. By the late nineties, the staff started producing videos—Number Two, Boob, and Crap. These weren't your standard skate videos with line after line of technical flip tricks. They featured the staff doing the same stunts that filled the magazine pages.
When Jeff Tremaine sent a tape of their antics to a guy named PJ Clapp (who the world now knows as Johnny Knoxville), the trajectory changed forever. Knoxville had already been writing for the mag, notably an article where he tested self-defense equipment—bulletproof vests, pepper spray, and stun guns—on himself. That footage became the foundation for Jackass.
MTV eventually came calling. Suddenly, the weirdos from the El Segundo warehouse were international celebrities. But as the Jackass crew moved toward mainstream fame, the magazine started to lose its edge. The original spirit was hard to maintain when you had lawyers and corporate overlords watching your every move. It’s one thing to be a rebel when you’re broke; it’s another when you have a production budget and a network standards-and-practices department.
The Larry Flynt Years
Perhaps the strangest chapter in the history of Big Brother skateboard magazine was its acquisition by Larry Flynt’s Hustler empire in 1998. It sounds like a joke, but it actually happened. Flynt saw the "rebel" energy and thought it fit his portfolio of counter-culture media.
Surprisingly, this was actually a period of relative stability for the mag. Flynt’s money allowed them to increase production value and pay the staff actual salaries. It also gave them a weird kind of protection. If anyone knew how to handle a lawsuit or a First Amendment battle, it was the Hustler legal team.
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However, the Flynt era also marked the beginning of the end. The internet was starting to eat the lunch of every print publication. Skateboarding was moving toward the digital age, where videos were uploaded to sites like 411VM and later YouTube. The shock value that Big Brother relied on was becoming commonplace online. You didn't need to wait a month for a magazine to see someone do something stupid; you could find it in seconds on the web.
Why We Still Talk About Big Brother Today
You can't look at modern skate media without seeing the fingerprints of Big Brother. The conversational, often self-deprecating tone of sites like Jenkem Magazine or the raw, unfiltered vibe of Thrasher’s "King of the Road" series both owe a debt to the Big Brother blueprint.
It taught the industry that skaters are more than just athletes. They are personalities. Before Big Brother, most pros were just names on a board. After Big Brother, you knew what kind of beer they drank, what kind of music they hated, and exactly how much they could handle their liquor. It humanized the gods of the skate park, even if that meant showing them at their absolute worst.
The Misconceptions
A common mistake people make is thinking Big Brother was only about shock value. If you look past the gross-out stunts, the magazine actually had some of the best skate photography of the era. Rick Kosick and Dimitry Elyashkevich were incredibly talented photographers who captured the grit of nineties street skating better than almost anyone else. They documented the rise of the Girl and Chocolate era, the technical revolution of the mid-nineties, and the transition from vert to street dominance.
It was also a pioneer in satire. They mocked the "jock-ification" of skating long before it became a popular sentiment. They poked fun at the ridiculous fashion trends—the massive "raver" pants, the tiny wheels, the over-designed tech shoes. They were the court jesters of the skate world, making sure nobody took themselves too seriously.
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The Actionable Legacy of Big Brother
If you're a creator, a skater, or just someone interested in how subcultures evolve, there are actual lessons to be pulled from the wreckage of Big Brother.
- Authenticity beats polish. People craved Big Brother because it felt real. It wasn't curated by a marketing team. If a trick was sketchy, they said it was sketchy. If a pro was a jerk, they let you know. In a world of filtered social media, that raw honesty is more valuable than ever.
- Community is built on shared jokes. The magazine felt like a giant inside joke. That sense of belonging is what kept readers coming back. Building a brand or a community requires creating a culture that people want to be part of, not just a product they want to buy.
- Know when to break the rules. The Big Brother staff didn't follow the "rules" of journalism. They didn't follow the "rules" of the skate industry. They identified what was boring and did the opposite.
The magazine officially folded in 2004, but its ghost is everywhere. You see it in every viral fail video and every "day in the life" vlog. It was a chaotic, beautiful mess that defined a decade and changed the way we look at action sports forever. It reminded us that at its core, skateboarding is supposed to be fun, slightly dangerous, and completely ridiculous.
To really understand the impact, you have to track down the old issues. Digital archives exist, and a few documentary projects have tried to capture the madness, but nothing beats holding a physical copy of an old issue and wondering how on earth it ever made it past the printers.
Next Steps for the Interested Reader:
- Watch "Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine." This documentary (available on various streaming platforms) features interviews with the original staff and provides the definitive visual history of the publication's rise and fall.
- Source old issues on the secondary market. Sites like eBay or specialized skate memorabilia groups often have copies. Look for the "Guide to Suicide" issue or the "Redneck" issue for a true taste of the era's controversy.
- Explore the early Jackass archives. Much of the footage in the first season of the MTV show was repurposed from Big Brother video projects. Comparing the two shows the direct line from skate subculture to mainstream entertainment.
- Support independent skate media. Publications like Jenkem or Solo carry the torch of independent, personality-driven skate journalism today. Supporting them ensures that the "Big Brother" spirit of questioning the status quo stays alive in the digital age.