What is the point of buying expensive gizmos just to smash?

[Burst]

Every time something new comes out like a new iPhone or any new console, there always seems to be a mad rush for people to buy it so they can destroy them in creative ways and put it on YouTube. I'll give them a little bit of leeway for the ones that at least show some creativity (such as pouring molten aluminium on an iPhone) but it still seems like a petty waste of $400+ bucks.

And it's always for frankly kind of stupid reasons. Either to try to make a tired statement about consumerist culture, to be 'shocking' and 'edgy' especially if it's the type that will smash them in front of people in to buy it, but the reasons are never really that good.

Are there that many people that have nothing better to do with that much literally disposable income than to make a YouTube video of them destroying something just for the reactions? It's just something I've always found to be incredibly stupid.

[Deleted]

So someone makes a thread about it

[xCompackx]

Yeah, usually it's for attention. Sometimes you'll have places like CNET that do drop tests or something as an informative piece, but aside from that, there's rarely any real purpose.

[Ron Woodsman aka Shempaholic]

"Look at me, I have so much money I can buy expensive things and immediately destroy them! What an asshole I am!"

[DragonMasterP]

Making people that don't look superior.

[Sephiroth]

Anger management?

[aka Cthulhu]

Seems kind of lame to me. Unless somehow they tried to dispose of it via lava. Seriously, watching stuff getting eaten up by lava is cool.

[Malcolm]

Some people just want to watch their money burn.

[FinalGwen]

Presumably the people who upload videos also insert ads and make money from all the outraged views.

[Stu]

We have a local guy who did that with the iPhone and Xbox 0 (or whichever model is currently out). He fried the Xbox in a microwave. But he's a legitimate artist and he puts it all on display in his exhibit, which basically surrounds his home. It's actually pretty cool and he turns it into a huge Christmas spectacle. Google image Kenny Irwin and Palm Springs if you wanna see his work.

[Starshine]

Some of them are admittedly cool. Like the guy who melts his iPhone with gallium.

[Deleted]

I actually didn't know this was a thing people did.

However, the type of people that would do that may have stolen the item, so maybe they aren't wasting their money.