PlasteredDragon
Elite Member
I've watched a number of beach detectorist YouTubers and I really enjoy watching them make finds. And on rare occasions a beautiful woman in a bikini happens to wander through a shot which is always a nice bonus. 
But the point of the videos is the beach hunting and recovery of targets.
The other day I stumbled across a YouTuber who basically spends about 10 seconds retrieving a target, and then spends long stretches of time just filming women in bikinis out enjoying the beach. These aren't separate clips filmed in different contexts, he's just standing out there in the water with a detector, a scoop, and a go-pro staring at women, zooming in, taking his time.
I understand there's nothing illegal about this, and I like babes in bikinis as much as anyone, but it seems something like this could give detectorists a bad name, and could turn into an excuse to run us off of public beaches (especially if we shoot videos of digs and finds). We get enough hassles as it is from busybodies, bored cops, and paranoid people who think we are going to "destroy the lawn". Something like this adds "creeper" and "perv" to the list.
Before anyone accuses me of it: I'm NOT "freaking out", or calling for any sort of boycott or public castigation/shaming of this YouTuber, it just made me feel the need to reiterate that we are all ambassadors for the hobby, and to me this really isn't cool. IMO, if you want to go to the beach and enjoy the scenery, more power to you, but leave your detector at home. If you want to detect, it's to your benefit (and the benefit of other detectorists) to appear to be disinterested in the beachgoers and just focus on detecting.
What do other people think?
But the point of the videos is the beach hunting and recovery of targets.The other day I stumbled across a YouTuber who basically spends about 10 seconds retrieving a target, and then spends long stretches of time just filming women in bikinis out enjoying the beach. These aren't separate clips filmed in different contexts, he's just standing out there in the water with a detector, a scoop, and a go-pro staring at women, zooming in, taking his time.
I understand there's nothing illegal about this, and I like babes in bikinis as much as anyone, but it seems something like this could give detectorists a bad name, and could turn into an excuse to run us off of public beaches (especially if we shoot videos of digs and finds). We get enough hassles as it is from busybodies, bored cops, and paranoid people who think we are going to "destroy the lawn". Something like this adds "creeper" and "perv" to the list.
Before anyone accuses me of it: I'm NOT "freaking out", or calling for any sort of boycott or public castigation/shaming of this YouTuber, it just made me feel the need to reiterate that we are all ambassadors for the hobby, and to me this really isn't cool. IMO, if you want to go to the beach and enjoy the scenery, more power to you, but leave your detector at home. If you want to detect, it's to your benefit (and the benefit of other detectorists) to appear to be disinterested in the beachgoers and just focus on detecting.
What do other people think?
