The Importance of Consistency in the Sneaker Industry
There are a bunch of different things that we do from a content standpoint. When you’re talking content, there’s a type of very elevated, longer or shorter long-form video that you can do that might end up on YouTube. There are live broadcasts that you could publish out through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other similar service.
Most of the time, people want to have a better look at product. So, sometimes, it takes the form of an unboxing video where you’re showing someone a shoe that might be coming out next week. It might have come out last week. It’s pretty time-sensitive. Again, it comes back to being human, taking people through the product, giving people a little bit more information than they would get through other channels.
This has an influence in the sneaker world that changed how it used to be. In the ’90s, it was pro athletes doing the influencing. Just take a look at like Michael Jordan back in the day. Everyone always cared about what he was wearing on the court. Then, it used to be something like rap album covers. Those would influence people as well.
But now in the digital age, it’s kind of changed. Anybody can really have any influence on someone. It could be a 16-year-old kid in Dubai who just wants to start his own clothing brand, and he has millions of followers. Or it can be a writer, for example, like Russ or Joe who have seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of things within their industry. People want to see what they’re wearing. They know that what they’re wearing is what’s hot right now.
The spectrum is really widened from just entertainers and athletes. Through social media, anybody can have an influence on someone. This is especially important when it comes to sneaker education.
For today’s crop of sneaker influencers, there’s a kind of a fascination with younger kids who have a lot of money. It’s like the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Growing up, a lot of people always wanted to be rich. As a kid, not maybe as an adult, but in their youth, they wish they had had unlimited money. Younger kids are a little more forthcoming with their needs and desires.
So, you see these kids spending their money on things that an adult, who has the same amount of money, normally wouldn’t spend their money on, whether it’s Benjamin Kicks taking his Mercedes truck and making it look like a Virgil Air Jordan 1 or Money Kicks taking his father’s Ferrari and wrapping it to look like Supreme x Louis Vuitton.
It’s almost like a voyeuristic element to see what the lives of these über-rich, young, sneaker-head kids are really like. We’re never going to live that lifestyle, so we want to see what it’s really like.
The key to any industry, not just social media, is consistency. That’s an important lesson in your online sneaker education. The sneaker media personalities have become big names because they’ve remained consistent in who they are, whether it’s an act for the camera or not. They continually update and live this life as a certain persona. So, it becomes real even if that’s not who they were at first. They’ve made the world believe that that’s who they are, and that’s who they’ve created their social media personality behind.
Just being charismatic is another thing that really helps these people stick out. Sneaker YouTube and social media as a whole kind of has the flair for being overdramatic and doing stuff over the top. So, these guys have done over-the-top things on their social media accounts, which is going to get more attention than people who just keep it really simple. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be yourself. But any big YouTuber right now who has a huge following is typically doing ridiculous things.
A hypebeast is someone who tailors their purchasing habits around perceived hype or the perceived resale value. In sneaker culture, it’s typically associated with people who may want a very limited sneaker collaboration, or they may want a pair of Kanye West sneakers. Maybe they want a Babe hoodie or a Supreme T-shirt just because they know that a lot of other people want them.
Liking those items in their own is not bad, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed to like a pair of GCs or a Supreme hoodie just because it’s trendy. But hypebeasts are generally associated with teenage boys who are dressing based on internet trends and want to show the world they have all the cool stuff without really developing their own unique personal style yet. They kind of just throw it all together, and it can look very awkward because they’re generally awkward at that age as well.
In summary, that’s what a hypebeast signifies. It’s just someone who’s chasing the most sought-after items without any sort of rhyme or reason other than the fact that other people think they look cool.
