"Why yes, my overpriced fake leather nostolgiabait shoes that have nothing in it, dont come in wide, and gives people pla tar fasciitis is muxh better than the other overpriced fake leather hipsterbait shoe!!!!"
And then kids will literally screech in the damn store if they dont get their shitty nike shoe, becayse its about the NAME of the BRAND!!!
Sorry I grew up with a single mother and we could only afford Payless shoes and then getting teased by idiots throughout my school years for wearing no-name shoe brands.
I can count on one or two fingers the amount of times I've looked at someone's shoes and cared about the style or brand.
Fuck Phil Knight and Michael Jordan.
"Republicans buy shoes too" a quote from Jordan.
I don't care what he did on the basketball court, he's lucky he won between the competitive 80s and dodged the big centers of the 90s. Give me Kareem or LeBron as GOATs in the basketball conversation for not being total knobs.
So I am an autistic person and really love wearing stuff with pikachu on it. Like obsessively. Most of the shoes with them on it are super expensive short runs that are like a billion dollars on ebay. Which super bums me out! There is one exception to this and its crocs which also happen to be comfy.
I have a tangential bone to pick with people who worship brands like Nike and get their magnifying glass out if they suspect something is a "knockoff" or whatever.
If you have to inspect it that closely, count the stitches or whatever the fuck. It just is literally the same shoe my guy.
I don't care who made it it's a gucci nike whatever.
If you argue with me about this you're admitting that there's literally nothing special about (brand) products. It's so blatantly classist that at no point it occurs to them that if it takes that level of investigation to figure it out, they're the same shoe in any meaningful way.
The poorest kid in our neighborhood ended up craziest shoe collection I've ever seen. He didn't spend a dime. In fact he got paid.
His dad worked at a tire shop and got talking to a customer who was an exec with the Clippers (this when they played at the sports arena. Worst team in the league). Instead of paying for 4 new tires he got his kid a job as a ball boy. After every game he came home with a player's shoes, usually autographed. He also had access to free tickets, which made him very popular.
Nah, but I get it too. I'm not the type to care about brands or creasing and what not. But the sneakerhead culture has pretty much fucked things up badly. Anything that gets hype starts to get subsequent release with artificial scarcity to drive up prices so that people that really just want to wear the sneakers are priced out.
Fuck, look at what happened with yeezys. Some adidas exec was crying about sitting on something like a billion dollars worth of stock and they're still doing limited releases while trying to get rid of stock. They've held onto some for so long that some people received moldy sneakers.
Counterfeits are so good these days that you can post them on r/sneakers and they’ll all compliment it or say it’s legit. Then as soon as you reveal it’s fake or they find out you post in fashionreps they’ll perma ban you lol. There’s no reason to buy “real” sneakers when 80% of the time the fake ones are made right next door and sold for 10% of the price
i love my sneakerhead friends who get irate with me whenever I open their closet and ask them if they've ever worn half of the shit they have sitting in the original boxes.
"yeah i've worn them once or twice" only once or twice?? they were $350 why not wear them tonight to the bar
"ABC don't fucking start you know they'll get ruined by someone dropping a cocktail on them and I'll wind up losing my fucking mind"
I just want shoes that don't fall apart if I walk a lot in them. It seems like most of the popular brands have garbage quality, they start falling apart after just a few months of regular use.
I wear good quality shoes that are deliberately solid hard and flat for long term health and while they were fairly expensive they have lasted me years of constant use.
Whatever sneakerheads are doing is just throwing money away for status. Performative consumerist peacocking.
I like fake rolexes. I feel like it is a power move to tell people your watch is fake. I try not to pay more than 10$ for them. But I have bad luck breaking watches at work
I always thought it was weird but funny that sneaker heads would be aghast that you dare wear the shoes you bought, or at least use them for you know, normal shoe situations which is everything.
Don’t get me wrong, I have like at least 6 different pairs of shoes, I am not immune to sneaker propaganda, but at least I USE them rather than speculate with them.
It's just cargocult stuff, but for some reason I get liking nice clothes or whatever, but I fucking hate sneaker culture. I really do understand wanting to dress nice and being proud or glad of a piece of dress you own, I think most of us do. I'm sure we've all also spent an outsized part of our budget on some really nice piece of clothing once - I bought an expensive pair of winter booths some years ago, that I still adore.
But sneaker-culture just makes me mad, hypebeastism in general does it, which is how I tell myself I'm not just being reactionairy for hating it.
I guess it's because the cargo-aspect is just the brand and not the presentation that the cult identifies with. I do also feel justified disliking it, because every single sneaker head I know vehemently defended Yeesys well until (and for some past) Kanyes antisemitism. Also defended his dogshit designs as "brilliant".
If Kanye is at the top of your cargocult it's just shitty, sorry.
And I get wanting to take care of your clothes. I once got a tailor-sewed suit for free, and I love that suit, I do my best to take care of it. I still use it, it still gets worn down. Someone here once linked an essay about using nice stuff instead of saving it for later, I think that might have something to do with it.
I get wanting to keep your shoe clean, but frantically avoiding creases? Like they're afraid of getting creases! It's a shoe! Wear leather boots then.
It's got vibes without being about games.
I have one solitary exception and that is the MOKBA Adidas sneaker from the Olympics in the USSR. If I had the money I would consider buying those, or a good knock-off. They're a really cool piece of history to me and I love that sorta stuff. Got cookbooks from the 1800's and a set of wineglasses from an old palace from around the same time as well. It's neat!
i bought my first pair of goodyear welted shoes. can get them resoled and can maintain them and theyll last a long time. downside is theyre leather but they will last the rest of my life with proper care.
Youtube's algo decided to show me sneaker reseller content and now I understand the people who insist on walking barefoot everywhere.
They're basically ticket scalpers except professional ticket scalpers don't loudly brag about what they do to the point of having ticket scalping conventions.
Wear minimalist sandals or go barefoot if you can. Why sweat in socks and worry about getting your shoes dirty, when your feet can temperature regulate in the air, you can wash them off when you get home, and your skin naturally repairs itself from microscopic abrasion unlike shoes? You will build up your foot muscles and protect your joints long term by learning how to properly walk. It's cheaper and it feels better.
I just like my outfits not looking like garbage and some of my taste overlaps with whats cool right now. I thought dunks were cool before I knew they were expensive.