Think carefully – what’s the most extreme reaction you’ve ever had towards Matthew McConaughey? A yawn? A twitch? An imperceptible shrug?

Not if you’re a surfer. Surfers see Matthew McConaughey as their hero, their dim mahogany idol. And if you mess with Matthew McConaughey you mess with the entire surfer community, as a group of paparazzi found out in June when the surfers rounded on them for taking pictures of McConaughey and shoved them around a bit.

Now two surfers have been charged for the McConaughey paparazzi flare-up. But that’s not important. What’s important are the names of the people involved in the scuffle, because they’re so stupid it’s impossible not to find the whole thing hilarious. Spoiler alert – one of them’s called Skylar.

There’s been a long history of tribal conflicts on beaches – Vikings Vs Saxons, Mods Vs Rockers, Nazis Vs Non-Nazis, whoever it was in the last scene of The Warriors – but none have been quite as upsetting as the Surfers Vs Paparazzi Malibu beach clash of June 2008.

It was an epic battle the likes of which Malibu residents haven’t seen since someone gave Mel Gibson a bottle of tequila and a photo of Woody Allen two years ago. It was the sort of day that witnesses will one eventually tell their children about – the day that some photographers strolled onto a beach and started talking pictures of Matthew McConaughey, and only stopped when some surfers sort of started effetely pushing them around and whooping and whatnot.

Worst of all were the harrowing, primal exchanges between the surfers and the paparazzi, which will chill our very souls until the day we die. Exchanges like:

Surfer: “Get a job!”

Paparazzo: “This is a job, what do you do?”

Surfer: “I fucking drink beer and party! Woohoohoohoo!”

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that two surfers have been charged with this incident, getting hit with one misdemenour count of battery each. One of the surfers is called Philip John Hildebrand, which is fine, but the other one is called Skylar Martin Peak. Skylar, for christ’s sake. No wonder he’s so angry.

And don’t think we’re letting the paparazzi off either. The photographer who Skylar and Skylar’s friend attacked was called Richid Altmbareckouhammou, which is less of a name and more of the noise you make when you’re tickling an adorable puppy’s tum-tum. Reuters reports:

Officials claim the two men threw Altmbareckouhammou into the water from where he was taking pictures on the beach. Each faces up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

We’re sure Skylar and Skylar’s friend feel pretty crap about the possibility of spending six months in jail. Worse still – it’s six months in jail for protecting Matthew McConaughey.

Seriously, if Skylar and Skylar’s friend do get sent down for this, they may as well just wear T-shirts reading ‘Please Bum me To Smithereens’ to save them the effort of explaining what they’re in for to their cellmates.

Admit it – if you ever saw Matthew McConaughey in any kind of physical peril, you'd leave him to it, perhaps silently rooting for the physical peril.

And that, people, is because you're not surfers. Surfers, you see, love Matthew McConaughey. To them, he's like a shining example of what a surfer can become with nothing more than a handful of abnormally dreadful romcom scripts, some sort of baldness-reversing procedure and a string of girlfriends who don't really seem all that convincing.

And that's why, when a crowd of surfers saw a paparazzo taking pictures of Matthew McConaughey, they apparently beat him up and threw him into the sea. Proof, if proof was needed, that Fool's Gold might actually seem good if you've smacked yourself in the head with resin-coated Polyurethane enough times.

Everyone knows that the biggest plague affecting celebrities today is the paparazzi. They're always there, sneaking around, secretly validating the celebrity's overinflated sense of self-worth and simultaneously acting as impromptu carpark wrestling partners at the drop of a hat. Urgh, they make us sick.

Especially since it's not just big stars who get hounded by the paparazzi. Really crap stars who've never made a movie you've willingly paid to see are also plagued by them too, by which we obviously mean Matthew McConaughey and nobody else.

Sure, Matthew McConaughey might have, on occasion, done the odd thing to prompt the curiosity of the paparazzi – like not being gay and nothing else – but that doesn't mean that people can go around taking photos of him whenever they want to. And if they do, they'll have to be prepared to incur the wrath of a handful of soggy topless men who all speak like Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Which is to say that a bunch of surfers basically attacked a photographer for looking at Matthew McConaughey this weekend. The Los Angeles Times reports:

A paparazzo trying to photograph and videotape actor Matthew McConaughey at the beach Saturday told police he was attacked by a mob of surfers. "They formed a semicircle in front of his camera and they said they didn't want him to film," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore. "They got into an argument, and he indicated that he received injuries." 

TMZ has got a video of the incident, which is worth watching for this exchange alone:

Surfer: "Get a job!"

Paparazzo: "This is a job, what do you do?"

Surfer: "I fucking drink beer and party! Woohoohoohoo!"

Seriously, Matthew McConaughey, a paparazzo and a gang of deeply unpleasant-seeming surfers, and not a single frenzied attack by a swarm of maneating seals. We're disappointed in you, seals. No wonder you get clubbed so much.