Crystal Ault, the stay-at-home mom who went viral last weekend after posting an Instagram video cheerily promoting a pair of Nike Dunk knockoffs made by And1 and bought at Walmart, has been misunderstood.
She began her video by allowing that we all love Nike Dunks, and promised there was a cheat code for anyone who didn’t want to spend $100 on a pair. The perfectly comparable, $23 alternative she offered viewers was the plainly named And1 Low Top Basketball Shoe, a sneaker clearly made to look like those Dunks, sans the Swoosh.
The video from last week is not unlike other Instagram Reels she’s posted, where Ault does quick product reviews and unboxings, often against a Live, Laugh, Love-core backdrop. Most of them generate well below 1,000 views. But her sneaker video took off, ignited by some calculation in an algorithm that decided Instagram users would enjoy (or at least watch and interact with) the content.
Ault is happy to note that the engagement boosted her Instagram profile up over the thousand-follower mark. Otherwise, the results were brutal. The millions of views—the video has been seen 2 million times on her account and another 2.5 million times on the Complex Sneakers account—came with an onslaught of comments from users who were unconvinced that the And1 sneakers were a prudent buy for anyone who valued their image or social standing.
One reposted the video and called for Ault to be taken behind a woodshed and executed. (She reported that one; Instagram took it down.) Others said that the not-quite-Dunks give off school shooter vibes. Ault blocked some commenters, but she is mostly unbothered.
“I can take that kind of stuff,” she insists. “I mean, they don't know me, they're complete strangers, so they're all just making all these assumptions. If you don't like the shoe, you don't agree with it, that's fine.”
Many of those responding jumped to the conclusion that Ault was buying the sneakers for her children in lieu of the Dunks they truly coveted. Her rationale in the video, “I’m not paying $100 for a pair of black and white tennis shoes,” sounds immediately familiar to anyone who had a frugal parent discourage their budding sneaker enthusiasm. But she never actually mentions her children in the video, and the shoes are for her.
She also says she is not morally opposed to name-brand footwear. There are no rules in her household against spending a little bit of money on nice sneakers.
“I would never make my kids wear those type of shoes,” Ault says of the And1s. “My kids get shoes when they pick them out and they want them.”
The video is so triggering because for sneaker collectors, And1’s Dunk wannabe is a shoe of shame and not celebration. It’s a Walmart copy of a model that’s not that rare or expensive in the first place. It’s akin to the shoes that Nike sues brands over because they look a little too much like the Dunk, a basketball sneaker from 1985 that became iconic as a retro in the 21s century.
Nike saturated the market in the past few years with an endless supply of Dunks, making the black and white “Panda” colorway the most accessible. To settle for a cheaper alternative to the “Panda” Dunk, a shoe already seen as extremely basic, is to be painfully uncool in places where sneakers have cultural value. Ault says this is not a risk in rural Illinois, where her family resides.
And not all the responses to her Instagram post have been harsh. Ault says she’s received positive feedback and words of encouragement to ward off the haters.
But pull up the comments section under the clip on her page (or any of the accounts that reposted it) and the most liked ones you’ll find are those clowning on the diet Dunks. There are people warning about the bullying they will inspire and, sure enough, commenters right below them bullying her over the shoes. Ault suspects those users don’t actually have kids themselves or are trying too hard to be mean on the internet for entertainment purposes.
“If I was someone that really cared, this could end badly,” she says. “I don't think people realize. It's like, take five seconds and think about what you're typing and how this could possibly affect the person.”
Complex spoke with Ault about how she stumbled on the infamous And1 sneakers, the dearth of Nikes in Middle America, and why she’s not worried about her kids actually being bullied over their footwear. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When did you realize the video was getting really big?
I think it was, I don't remember if I posted it in the evening or maybe it was the next day and then notifications just kept coming on my phone. I was like, “What the heck? Oh, some people are seeing it.” And then the day went on and my phone will not stop. And I have since turned all the notifications off on my phone because that's all that's on there. I'll close my phone for 30 minutes and when I go back on there, there's 50 more comments and 100 more likes.
I mean people just assume, I guess, that they were for my kids. I made the video so that I could show people a less expensive option [for people] that either can't spend the money for the actual Nikes or that just don't want to. Everyone's saying, “Oh, she's broke, she's cheap, she lives in a trailer.” No, I have three pairs of actual Nikes.
So you've actually bought Nike sneakers before? It's not something you're against.
No. Like, no. I have three pairs of actual Nikes. We are not broke or anything. For that specific style, I just chose not to spend however much they cost, since it was the same look that I found at Walmart.
Did you feel compelled to defend yourself after the video went viral? I saw you were in the comments a little bit.
I wasn't being defensive; it was more when everybody said that kid's gonna be bullied. That's why I said, like, what kid? Because I never once mentioned a kid in the video, and then they're like, you know, your kids are gonna hate you. You're the worst mother ever. And I said my kids don't care what shoes I wear. Like, those were my responses.
There was never nothing trying to defend myself. People are like, just take this down. There were so many comments on there saying just take this down already. Like, why? So then all those people—you know, the people saying your kids are gonna get bullied, the ones that are bullying me—then they'll think, “Oh I got to where I won.” Like, no, you didn't. Hateful comments from strangers do not bother me at all because I'm confident in myself. I'm confident in myself as a wife, as a mom. I know the choices I make, and no, hateful comments from strangers do not bother me at all.
I do think some of them were kind of funny, the bullying aspect aside. The shoe has the nickname of the “Panda” and people were calling them the Panda Express or the Raccoons.
Yeah. I just, honestly, I just laugh at that stuff. And then, like I said, all these hateful comments are just growing my account and helping me out. They are not bothering me or anything. I don't—I'm not humiliated by any of it.
Were you seeking out that alternative, or you just saw those at Walmart and realized that it was based on a Nike shoe?
Actually, I think, like, last year—I mean, it's been a long time ago. These shoes have been at Walmart forever, and I have seen other influencers share them at the time. I just didn't buy them because I thought, “Oh, there's other things that I can spend money on”—you know, bills, or my kids, or whatever—and they just weren't a necessity for me to have yet another pair of shoes, because I have a lot of them.
How many pairs?
I mean, I would say I probably have 15 to 20 pairs of shoes, and not all tennis shoes. But, like, everyone in my family has Hey Dudes, so I do buy the name-brand shoes. It was just those specific ones that I said, I don't need the actual Nikes. I'm happy with these from Walmart.
And this wasn't a thing of your kids asking you for Nike Dunks. I think that's what a lot of people assumed.
Yeah, I know. Everyone just assumed that they were for my kids. No, they were for me. I put a story on there, and my 13-year-old daughter, she likes them, so she wore them to school. One of her best friends has the exact same shoe, but the actual Nike one, and they wore them. All her friends said, “Oh, those are cute.” They know me. I am a bargain shopper. So, I mean, no one bullied her. No one said, “Oh, those aren't the real ones.”
Her best friend did not think any less of her. And I get that it does happen in schools, I'm not completely oblivious to that, but we live in a small town, and a lot of our town, no one has money. So not everyone's going to be wearing name-brand shoes. So that's just something people don't care about. I asked my 10-year-old son, I said, “Have you seen bullying from kids at school?”
And he said, “Mom, kids don't care what kind of shoes you wear.” But, like I said, we live in a small town. That's not a priority. They don't care about that here.
So you'd buy them all over again if given the chance, the Walmart shoes.
Yeah. And I'll probably repost them again in the story. I mean, that was literally the point, to show a less expensive shoe. And Walmart now, they have, I think, five colors of them, and they have a hot-pink one. So I'm gonna buy that one, and I'm gonna make a post about that one.
Are there cool sneaker stores in town or places where you can buy limited-edition Nikes?
No.
So it's just not a thing.
No, it's not a thing. I mean, if you want a Nike shoe, you have to drive 45 minutes to an hour. There's nowhere close. We have, within 10 minutes for me, we have Walmart, we have a Marshall's, and I mean, they do sometimes have those. We don't have a mall or anything, or we don't have a Nike outlet. Our Nike outlet was probably 30 minutes away, and it closed, I think, four years ago.
Which Nike models do you have? You said you have a couple of pairs?
So I have two pair of Air Max and I have the Legacy ones. The ones with little brown trim at the bottom. And those are my three pairs.
Do you remember how much they were?
I think I paid…well, my Legacies are kids’, so I can fit into kids’ size. So that’s why I buy a lot.
Save a little bit of money there.
Yes. And my Air Maxes. I know one pair was about $50. They were on clearance at Kohl's. Like I said, I'm a bargain shopper. And my other pair are the leopard pair, and I think I did spend, like, $70 or $80 because I love the style of them. I love the leopard on them.
I don't have a problem paying $100 for a pair of shoes. Just for that style, I chose not to. And so I thought, I'm gonna post this because not everybody does want to pay that amount of money. To me that's a basic shoe, black and white is the basic.
But did you know that that shoe is a meme and a status item, that black and white pair in particular?
No, but like I said, I'm a country girl that lives on the farm; I'm not a sneaker buff. Everybody's like, “Oh, she's just doing this for attention and likes.” No, I honestly posted it because it was a less expensive option.
That's why I posted it, in case there was someone that said, “Hey, I like the black and white Nike Dunks, but I can't afford it or I don't want the same look.” And so that's what I was going for, and everybody spun it the wrong way.
It's a funny one because for people who are super obsessed with sneakers, that is such a baseline shoe. And it may sound crazy, but people like me are willing to pay hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars on the resale market for sneakers. Are you aware of the resale market for sneakers?
Yeah, I actually am a reseller. I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I am a reseller. I do the thing on Instagram and TikTok now. And so, I mean, I do.
What are you reselling? Are you on the Stanley Cup hustle?
No, I don't own a Stanley Cup. My 13-year-old daughter has three Stanley Cups because they were gifts from her friends and her boyfriend. I don't own one because I don't wanna pay $45 for a cup. Now, does that mean that my cabinet is not full of a whole bunch of dupes? I mean, yeah, I have a whole bunch of them.
Like, you mean fake Stanley Cups?
That's a thing—like, Simple Modern cups.
I have to say now, we're in a world I know nothing about. Would you ever consider getting the dupes or the replicas of a Nike shoe, or you'd rather just have the knockoff version?
I don't care about the symbol, the Swoosh on the side.
Doesn't mean anything to you.
No, if I could have found the leopard Air Max without it, I would have bought it. I just, I don't care about name brands that much. So, I mean, that's why I bought those.
A lot of those responses on social media were warnings that your kids were gonna get bullied for having this Dunk lookalike. Were you worried about that at all?
No, not my kids. My daughter, for one, has never been bullied. I mean, she's in seventh grade, but it's because she's a good kid. She has good friends. Like I said, we're from a small town; kids at school just don't do that. Bullying is not a big issue in our school. My 10-year-old son got bullied last year because the kid said he didn't know enough about farming.
Wow. This is a totally different world than the one where people would be bullied over sneakers. You're getting bullied because you don't know enough about agriculture.
And, I mean, that even was a way off-base allegation. Like, it was just a kid.
He does actually know about farming.
Yes. I mean, we live on a farm.
