There is a website called Wrecked Exotics that features exactly that—expensive cars that have been crashed. There are 46 photos of Bugatti Veyrons alone. And while a simple Google search will bring up tons of Veyron photos, some suitable for framing, there’s just something about a wrecked million-dollar car that makes people want to look.
destroying a pair just to make someone who does care about them feel bad seems particularly cruel.
There’s a reason the site has been around since 2002 and it has nothing to do with their mission “to reduce reckless driving by showing the consequences of speeding.” Everyone knows what can happen when you speed. We just want to see some wrecked expensive shit.
Which brings us to the latest entry in sneaker snuff films, in which skater Piro Sierra destroyed a pair of brand-new Yeezy 350s for Jenkem mag in the name of science. Or YouTube views anyway (a day and a half in those were at 250,000 and counting—compare that to the Brooklyn skate historian vid that has 16,000 views in a month).
This is one of those stomp-in-water Instagram flicks taken to absurd extremes. And for what? We KNOW the Yeezy isn’t going to be a great skate shoe. We KNOW it’s not going to survive long. At least no longer than any other pair of textile shoes. Yet we (well, you maybe) watch anyway. Some of the same people cursing adidas for not making the shoes more readily available eagerly watched a pair get destroyed.
Heck, we even interviewed the guy.
Me? I don’t get it. At all. Why do it at all? Well, they answered that:
To make people remember that these are just shoes. And to make Hypebeasts who are putting them in gold cases feel just a little bit more foolish. So do all of us a favor and send this on to your friend that cares just a little too much about his "dope sneaker collection."
I don’t have a pair of Yeezy Boosts. I don’t particularly want a pair of Yeezy Boosts. But destroying a pair just to make someone who does care about them feel bad seems particularly cruel. It’s destruction for destruction’s sake, even worse than the car crash porn on Wrecked Exotics, seeing that it’s unlikely anyone crashed their Veyron on purpose. (Admittedly, if there was a video of someone taking, say, their Lamborghini Aventador off-road, and driving it over rough terrain at high speeds, I’d probably watch it.)
That would be similar to this, I suppose—using something expressly designed for one thing for another, and then making fun of it for not surviving. Like hitting a bowling ball with a Ming vase.
But, in a sneaker world where deadstock is valued above all and a great deal of sneakers sold to sneakerheads never get worn let alone skated, the very idea of a “grail” shoe being purposefully destroyed is taboo—basically it is porn. And when a new video like this drops, hardly anyone seems to be able to turn away.
Too bad.
Russ Bengtson is a senior editor at Complex. 'The Russ Report' appears every Friday and you can read previous columns here.
