The Russ Report: How Social Media Changed Sneaker Culture for the Better

Did social media really kill the sneaker game? Nope, not quite.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

As of this exact moment (5:34 p.m. on a Thursday) I have 24,097 Twitter followers and 11.9 thousand Instagram followers. I am not saying this to brag. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not much—a drop in the bucket compared to say, Complex proper, which has 640,000 and 389,000 respectively.

But not bad for a 40-something year old dude who mainly takes pictures of sneakers and food. And the immediate feedback is great. It’s a heck of a change from writing for magazines, when reactions came in the form of letters literally months after you’d written whatever story it was. Earlier this week, my colleague Matt Welty made the case that sneaker culture was more fun before social media. Me? I’m not so sure.



DON’T FOLLOW CERTAIN PEOPLE JUST OUT OF SOME ODD SENSE OF OBLIGATION.


I’m not going to go point-by-point and refute everything, in part because I agree with some of Matt’s points. It is cooler to get props for actually wearing something than just posting a photo on Instagram, and the overwhelming surge of would-be resellers can make even the simple act of scrolling through one’s Twitter timeline a chore. But all of this is a two-way street, right? We choose who we follow and who we listen to and what we deem important. Just because the technology has changed doesn’t mean our standards have to as well. The unfollow and the block—and, perhaps most importantly, the mute—buttons are your friends.

Maybe it’s easier for me, seeing that my tastes were pretty well set in stone long before I had a Twitter account or an Instagram. Hell, I didn’t even have e-mail until I was in college, and didn’t use it until after I’d graduated. Maybe things would be different if I was born with a Twitter handle. Instead, I’m an analog person who’s adapted (fairly well, for the most part) to a digital world. Which might be why I appreciate it so much, because I remember what life was like without it. And honestly, it wasn’t all great.

Like digging for sneakers in old sporting goods stores. You know why people did that? Because it was the only way to get old, out-of-production sneakers. Romanticizing it came later, generally by those who never actually had to do it. All in all eBay fees are preferable to spiders, mice, mold and mesothelioma. Trust me. And by now, even if you wanted to do it the old way, you couldn’t. Most of those basement stashes are long gone, either stripmined by those early collectors or sold off on eBay by enterprising shop owners. I should know, I bought a bunch of them that way.

1.

The whole trick with social media is maintaining control and remembering that it’s just a way to see the world, it’s not the world itself. If someone’s presence in your feed isn’t welcome, unfollow, block or mute them. Don’t follow certain people just out of some odd sense of obligation (“but he/she’s an influencer!”) don’t co-sign something you don’t actually like in hopes of becoming more popular. The ultimate irony would be eventually becoming “important” enough to get something for free and having it be something you don’t even like. Then you feel obligated to share it, the cycle continues, and eventually you even want to unfollow yourself. Basically you want to use social media, not let it use you.

Is “sneaker culture” worse off because of social media? Not at all. Not to me, anyway. If anything it’s expanded what the world of sneaker culture is TO the entire world. On any given day I can see what people are wearing in Stockholm, in Paris, in Tokyo, or I can order sneakers from London, from Amsterdam, from Milan. As it’s done for so many things, social media has opened lots of doors. You just need to be selective of who you let in.