Big Brother magazine — the punk UFO that rewrote skateboarding (and gave birth to Jackass)

For twelve years, an American magazine transformed an already broken sport into global pop culture. That magazine was called Big Brother. It changed everything.

⏱ Reading: 5 min

1992: The Birth of a UFO

We’re in Los Angeles. Skateboarding is just coming out of its 80s hangover. Existing magazines — Thrasher, TransWorld — cover contests, pros, new gear. All good, but very clean. Steve Rocco, founder of World Industries, wants something else. A magazine without a filter. A magazine that looks like the real life of a 19-year-old skater in 1992: the street, warm beers, dumb jokes, photocopied zines.

He puts Jeff Tremaine in charge. The first issue comes out in April 1992. Unusual format, ugly paper, chaotic layout, intentionally blurry photos, crude jokes. The magazine is called Big Brother — a reference to Orwell, but especially to the big brother you never had: the one who shows you forbidden things while laughing.

The Scandal Machine

Big Brother releases stories no one else would dare publish. How to Commit Suicide (parody, in four illustrated methods) — the industry was pissed. Centerfolds with a kickflip broken down frame by frame, or with a cannabis cooking recipe. The magazine gets banned from newsstands in several American states. Walmart refuses to distribute it. Advertisers run away.

That’s exactly what Rocco wanted. The magazine becomes the voice of a generation that grew up with MTV, Bart Simpson, and grunge. The same generation that would film Fully Flared fifteen years later. Big Brother prints a photo of Mark Gonzales pissing on a wall — not a gratuitous provocation, just the raw reality of skateboarding at the time, where Thrasher would put a posed photo with careful lighting.

The magazine’s art was directed by Sean Cliver, who would later design the most iconic graphics for World Industries and Birdhouse. His retrospective book The Disposable Skateboard Bible is today the bible of 90s skateboarding graphics.

Larry Flynt Buys It, Jackass Emerges

1997, a major turning point. Larry Flynt, the controversial publisher of Hustler, buys Big Brother. At first glance, it’s an absolute aberration: the pope of erotic press swallows the punk mag for skaters. In reality, it’s the perfect match. Flynt leaves Tremaine and his team free. The magazine keeps its tone, gains resources.

And that’s when everything changed. Big Brother starts releasing bonus VHS tapes: Number Two, Boob, Crap, Shit. Not skateboarding videos in the classic sense. Compilations of jokes, stupid stunts, people getting hurt for real. Where Video Days codified street skateboarding in 1991, Big Brother videos codified something else: the culture of the filmed prank.

While filming these VHS tapes, Tremaine meets Johnny Knoxville, who wants to test pepper spray on himself. He connects with Bam Margera, a kid from Pennsylvania already filming his friends on his CKY Tapes. He crosses paths with Steve-O, a former circus clown obsessed with his stunt ideas. The cast of Jackass forms within the magazine. In 2000, MTV signs the series. The rest is global pop culture history.

2004, The End. 2026, The Legacy Everywhere.

Big Brother ceases print publication in February 2004. The internet happened, MTV sucked everything up, the team left for Jackass. The mag only existed for twelve years. But what Big Brother planted, we’re still harvesting. All of today’s online skateboarding culture — Thrasher Burn It Down, The Berrics, pro YouTube channels — descends from Big Brother. The irreverent tone, self-deprecation, offbeat « How To » sections, unapologetic inside jokes: that’s Big Brother’s DNA.

In 2026, you watch skaters doing absurd stunts on Instagram, you laugh at reels that mix skateboarding and crude humor, you consume content that embraces its stupidity. All of that already existed in 1995, in poorly cut, stapled pages, signed Big Brother. To dig deeper: the portrait of Gonz, who posed for Big Brother before posing for MoMA, or the VX1000 chronicle about the camera that filmed that entire era.

Big Brother is dead. But when a 14-year-old kid posts a failed trick with a dumb voiceover on TikTok today, he doesn’t know it: he’s continuing the magazine.