Consumer culture is the only culture
On "Interview with the Sneakerhead" and digital media's perpetual one-step-forward, two-steps-back
Every few months, one of the imperious journalism nonprofits — CJR, or Nieman Lab, or Study Hall — checks in with the Defector crew, and the wider commentariat proclaims a viable path forward for digital media. In a May 30 dispatch, CJR’s Danny Funt descended upon Defector’s co-working space, describing a scrappy startup outfitted in frat-house luxe. There’s an obligatory recap of the site’s righteous origins, the staff’s disdain for cheap web traffic, and fundraising efforts reminiscent of an overzealous PTA. The article takes Defector’s tagline, “The last good website,” as its own; the accompanying graphic frames the words “media industry paycheck that’s not ethically compromised” within a browser’s searchbar.
The Times’s Mike Isaac echoed the reception on Twitter: “Super proud of my friends at Defector for building an independent media company from near-scratch.” This is where they lose me. Defector is a micro-victory for labor, a middle finger to the private-equity ghouls who gobble up beloved media properties for reasons even they can’t explain. It’s a feel-good story, and a site I regularly enjoy; a world in which David Roth gets paid to blog about Chris Christie is better than a world in which David Roth has to write ad copy for Chevrolet.
The Defector guys read the moment and nailed the execution, forgoing banner ads and rinsing the stink of A.J. Daulerio. I don’t think it’s reason for hope, or a replicable model. Petchesky, Burneko, Magary, and Ley had cultivated a decade’s goodwill writing for a well-heeled publishing company, such that they were able to sustain a readership without the support of a well-heeled publishing company. Nick Denton established digital media’s cool kids table at Gawker Media: the Defector guys haven’t sold readers on a new model so much as their enduring celebrity.
What I’m suggesting is: this could only have happened to these specific internet darlings, under these specific circumstances. Great Hill Partners’ takeover of Deadspin was a flagrant violation led by a villainous buffoon, which mobilized a loyal readership. As the peremptory CJR reporter, Funt all but tips his hand: the Defector guys are writing the same blogs, with the same jokes, for the same audience as in the Deadspin days. At risk of betraying an outside-looking-in bitterness — the Defector staff isn’t elevating any voices besides its own. Who can blame them?
But if the lesson here is start your own shit, I have to laugh. None of these parachutes — Substack, co-ops, crypto-blockchain newsrooms — have unlocked new audiences or revenue streams. The entire premise of Substack was that you could take your hard-earned Twitter following and repurpose it somewhere else. Oops! These spaces are a grandfather clause for the most successful internet writers of the 2010s; their reliance upon decaying infrastructure results in the usual gatekeeping. How am I supposed to be an entrepreneur when Elon Musk throttles all my bylines, when even the upstart underdogs are 45-year-olds with industry sinecures dating back to Gawker Media?
The inverse of this equation is Discourse Blog, a Substack publication founded by ex-Splinter bloggers who suffered a similar layoff (at the hands of the same corporate parent that nuked Deadspin) and are already moving onto other endeavors. They tried the Defector thing: it’s stalling out, and posts are becoming infrequent. Discourse Blog has great writers, and they’ve published great stuff, but the market, it seems, will bear only one worker-owned co-op staffed by former employees of Gizmodo Media Group.
On May 26, Discourse Blog published a Q&A with a friend-of-the-blog titled “Interview with the Sneakerhead.” Samantha Grasso’s feature profiles a young man (her husband, as it happens) who bought 200 pairs of sneakers and, in the process, found himself. An avid Complex reader and NBA 2K gamer, the titular sneakerhead recounts his triumphs on reseller apps, likening sneaker drops to Ticketmaster lotteries. His collection includes everything from limited brand collaborations to skateboarding shoes to pink Andre Agassis, some third of which he’s never worn.
As a man with more sneakers than a size-twelve foot and a studio apartment make advisable, I have skin in the game. I like Air Max Pennys, Saucony Originals, Reebok Classics, and Fila’s ‘90s basketball models. I do not wear Air Max 90s, because I am not in a frat; I do not wear Sambas, because I am not on a U-12 travel soccer team; I do not wear Air Force 1s, because I am not anybody’s uncle; I do not wear Vans or Chuck Taylors, for the same reason I do not wear denim vests with safety pins. I buy performance shoes to exercise in, and only to exercise in: athletic technology has come a long way, and modern training shoes look dumb with jeans. I do not wear high-tops with shorts.
I share this because I like to think it conveys coherent taste: muted colorways, subtle-if-chunky silhouettes, nostalgia for an era I associate with great art and pop culture. (I follow some retro sneaker accounts on Instagram, and I’ve been delighted to learn that many of my favorite models, across brands, were conceived by the same handful of designers as works-for-hire.) There are no Yeezys, Rosches, or New Balances in my closet; everything can be had for under $75, at least where I shop. I wear all of my sneakers, because that, as I understood it, was the point. I don’t buy books or records just to have around.
I grew up in the age of disaffected masculinity, when drawing attention to your appearance earned you a one-way ticket to Swirly-town. To be a try-hard was the antithesis of being cool. In that context, sneakers were a way — perhaps the only way — for straight men to preen before other straight men without being called runway queens. This ugly detente was the product of an uglier history. Sneaker culture’s intersection with hip-hop and basketball occurred during a period of rapid disinvestment in American cities. Hustlers and gang members wore pristine, eye-catching athletic shoes as a recruiting tool, flashing disposable income while still fitting the government’s definition of poor. If you could wear Air Revolutions without getting them snatched, it spoke volumes.
For decades, Nike has been accused of gouging low-income communities. In 2015, GQ estimated that 1,200 Americans are killed for their sneakers each year. But when Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal, and Stephon Marbury marketed affordable alternatives to the premium models, they were derided both on and off the hardwood. (The most 2008 anecdote ever: Our starting two-guard neglected to pack his Jumpmans for an away game in Milford, and wound up taking the court in somebody’s scuffed Starburys. The Friday night crowd chanted “STEVE AND BAR-RY’S!” every time he touched the ball.) In years since, the shoe companies have inflated their prices, curbed production, and created a false sense of scarcity.
Consider the Jordan I. For most of my life, it was broadly unloved: a boxy no-man’s-land between the Dunk and the Air Force 2. The best-selling Jordan models — the combat-styled VIII, the patent-leather XI, the maximalist XIII — were evocative silhouettes devised by Nike’s in-house designer Tinker Hatfield. About five years ago, Nike flooded the market with variations on the Jordan I, limiting subsequent models to periodic retro promotions. In Nike’s case, the supply is the demand.
The effect has been stifling. They’ve been making Air Jordans for forty years, and each model had a distinct following; the market’s been siloed such that Jordan Is are synonymous with high fashion. Sometime during the pandemic, men decided that pairing suits with dress shoes was stuffy and overly formal, so now even middle-aged Republicans wear Jordan Is with Joseph A. Bank suits. It looks awful.
The striking thing about “Interview with the Sneakerhead” is I have no idea what this guy actually likes. I’m not sure he does either. For him, sneakers are another investment commodity, like Bitcoins or NFTs or unearthed Basquiats. At the end of the interview, he’s prompted to “score brands popular in sneaker culture.” Crocs, Asics, and Hokas receive the highest marks, an unintelligible statement. He rates Skechers as “fine.” I concede things have changed since I was last in a varsity football locker room, but they haven’t changed that much. If you wear Skechers into any male space, you will get fried. They have an entire ad campaign about this!
Until recently, I thought I was into sneakers for the vainest possible reason: because I want to look cool. As a white guy in New York, I’m signaling affinity and respect toward a group to whom I do not belong. This is appropriation, and vulturine, and corny, and problematic, but my dude, the alternative is Allbirds. Fashion theorists could tell you about non-statements and anti-statements, but you need to wear shoes, and every shoe makes a statement, so it might as well be a good one. Ideally, my shoes communicate that I’m not a skinhead or a brother of Pi Kappa Alpha.
These commodity-trader sneakerheads are somehow worse. By approaching sneakers as affectless property, they’ve severed a fraught cultural object from its context. If Jordans are precious capital, then Skechers and Air Monarchs — until recently, shoes worn exclusively by Trekkies and dads doing yardwork — might be, too. There’s no reason to do your homework, no way to cultivate a style of your own. Money’s the only barrier, and there’s no other way in.