But if you hear Lavigne talk about it now, she fixates on the risks she took with the song. It was a risk to sing about a subculture, it was a risk to write it in the third person, it was a risk to throw spelling and grammar out the window by calling it Sk8er Boi. “I wasn’t sure if people would get the ‘8’ thing, but they did,” she has been quoted as saying. “It goes to show that when you take a big creative risk, it can really pay off.”