21st Century Potlatch

This past weekend provided local pranksters Ben Lovatt and Victor Moukhortov — the “Smash Our Stuff” guys — with a two-fer, thanks to the near-simultaneous release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii consoles. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, Ben and Victor are well-known in the gadget-o-phile community as those guys who videotape themselves going to electronic stores on the release date of some must-have item, purchasing said item and then smashing it just outside the store.

Their first claim to fame took place in March when they smashed an iPod they just purchased at the Yorkdale Mall Apple Store, an act that got them banned from the mall for a year. Here’s one of their videos, in which they recap their iPod smashing incident and then try to return the smashed unit later.

They’ve also smashed an XBox — here’s the video for that one.

Below is the video in which they smash a PlayStation 3 that they purchased at the new Best Buy across the street from the Eaton Centre. Considering that the PlayStation 3 is being released in very limited quantities, is the most expensive console today (CDN$549 for the 20GB model and CDN$659 for the 60GB model at Best Buy) and is being resold on eBay for an average price of US$2600, one might think that they were risking being beaten up by the people in line — at least until you considered the fact that you’d lose their place in line if you leapt to the defense of the hapless PlayStation 3.

They followed up later that weekend by doing the same thing to a newly-purchased Nintendo Wii outside the Future Shop near Yonge and Sheppard. The onlookers seemed to take it better than those lining up for the PlayStation 3. There are a number of possible reasons for this: the Wii isn’t being released in such limited quantities, doesn’t cost as much (CDN$279.99 at Future Shop), the Nintendo hype isn’t anywhere as intense or perhaps Nintendo people are just more chilled out:

In case you were wondering about the song that they like to use as background music for their videos, the one with these lyrics…

Some say you’re trouble, boy

Just because you like to destroy

All the things that bring the idiots joy

Well, what’s wrong with a little destruction?

…that’s The Fallen by Franz Ferdinand, the opening track from the album You Could Have It So Much Better.

Keep in mind that these guys are going to recoup the money they spent on these smashed devices — they might even make a decent profit — quite easily. They run Google ads on their site, and it would appear that they get a decent amount of traffic.

They refer to what they do as “social experiments” and imply that they’re challenging consumer culture. I’m more inclined to think of them as a couple bored smartasses looking to entertain themselves and get a little fame through shock value. What do you think?