Those soles look like Styrofoam. Rubber does break down over time, so does plastic, but those soles look sus. They appear to be a generic brand too. I believe the manufacturers put together the cheapest shoe possible with 100-1000% mark-up. I’ve had $60 shoes from Kohls have sole failure after being worn 3x because they were made hollow instead of solid.
Yeah they really do
It’s amazing how many of you have dumb shit like multi color computers, dumb little figurines, stupid anime sets, 40k, build your own keyboards, etc.
But the second it’s fashion the nerds go full bore judging the fuck out of people 🤣
My guy, it is not 1970 any more, you can throw that monochrome computer away. I heard they even come with more than 256 colors these days, and some even have more than 640kB RAM!
I don’t own any of the things you listed, and none of the stuff I do own spontaneously explodes into microplastic confetti like these shoes apparently do.
So I guess I’m allowed to shit on this.
Where, exactly, are people doing that?
👍
My mom used to work with this lady who was always seen with dusting shoes because she didn’t like throwing old things away, instead prefering to wear the shoes until they couldn’t be used anymore. So sometimes that woman pulled shoes older than your grandma and put dust all over the office.
While shoes should be cleaned before wearing, she was right. Shoes and clothes in general should be worn until those cant be worn anymore.
Clothes sure, shoes no. Shoes lose the ability to properly support us with time and wear. Unfortunately, like bras, they need to be semi-regularly replaced. The adage is to always spend more on anything that goes between you and the ground (mattress, tires).
My pair of Chuck Taylors had no support when I bought them 25 years ago, and they still don’t have any support today.
Arch support and comfy shoes are a perpetual cycle. You need those shoes because you wore those types of shoes and it made your feet “weak”.
You do understand that people have different feet right? You being a flatfoot doesn’t mean others are
I’m not. The arches are there, and I own work boots with good support and all that. I just don’t where shoes like that all the time, so all the muscles and tendons and ligaments in my feet never got weakened. You weren’t born needing shoes.
I broke my left arm 25 years ago. And it’s still broken today.
Healing bones is a perpetual cycle. You need that arm because you’ve lived with it, it made your limbs weak.
Big shitpost energy, five stars!
It’s not the support, it’s the wear of the sole. They don’t wear down evenly and can eventually negatively affect how you walk and cause issues. Even if you wear flat barefoot shoes. Like usually the inside part of the heel will wear down faster if they are worn down too much it can cause pronation or supination issues in some people.
Doesn’t that usually go together with shoes starting to fall apart as well?
No, as in until they’re the dust of earth. (If you get what I mean… (was the pun good?))
uh, oh. i bought two extra pair when i found some that actually fit and were ‘affordable’. still wearing the first pair, so these other two have yet to be taken out of the bags they came home from the store in. that was almost two years ago.
Might want to cycle through them, but treat the unworn pairs really gently for the first few wears. Msybe they’ll still be ok.
I went on a hike once with timberland boots that had been in a closet for a couple years. The glue dissolved at the destination (freshwater swimming area) and the rubber sole separated from the leather upper. I had to hike back to the car in moccasins.
Almost same thing happened to me, including them being timberland boots.
These things have long been subject to enshittification.
I had some Docs split between lower and mid sole after light wear. I guess there was a reason they got rid of their lifetime warranty.
Supposedly the good ones are Solovair, who made Docs at one point (probably when the warranty was still offered). But I doubt that few, if any shoes are made well anymore.
Timerland boots are anything but good hiking boots.
Not good for any type of boot. I bought a pair on clearance from Sears. Legit wanted a pair of steel toe work boots for yard work and other work around the house. After about 3 years of light wear the soul started to fall away.
I would have been better off with a cheap work boot from Walmart.
On the flip side, i have a pair I bought in 1994 in an outlet mall on a road trip to LA to Vegas (as an Aussie), i still wear them.
On second thought maybe collecting things made of volatile petroleum compounds wasn’t a good investment
lol if that were true why are plastics a long term environmental threat?
Because specific kinds of plastic (like polyurethane) undergo hydrolysis when exposed to moisture, which causes what you see in the op
That’s why I keep a oil reserve in a pit out back. Got my pool guy to line it with concrete. Stable and pure petroleum
And it’s so easy to put on! Just dip your toes in for a second and you’re good to go
Flint Lockwood!
The shoes I’m using are at least 4 years old and they are still rock solid. The memory foam pad behind has disintegrated with all of the abuse I’ve put it through (too lazy to untie & retie the laces everytime) but they are still as solid as they were new.
Nah I saw this on reddit a while ago when I opened it by accident. It’s a stolen image of someone’s cheap shoes that disintegrated on first wear.
The guy claiming it had the receipts and posted the image like 3 months earlier.
Nah, I think I saw this on threads a bit more while ago :)
Wearing your shoes actually helps prevent this. Basically every sneaker collector has (or knows someone who has) a story like this. The soles get brittle over time, and will fall apart if they have sat for too long. But if you wear them, it helps avoid that from happening. The natural flexing when you walk helps the sole stay flexible. If it has sat for years, it will shatter into dust as soon as you try to flex it.
Sort of like how cast metal is more brittle than forged metal. Because when you cast metal, it hardens in random or crystalline molecular patterns. So there is very little actually holding the individual molecules together, because every join where two crystals meet is a potential fracture point. But forging it into shape with a hammer will create a more sturdy piece, because the hot hammering forces the molecules out of those natural crystal patterns. By moving the metal around, the molecules are able to form much stronger bonds with their neighbors.
Anyone who has accidentally shattered a cast iron skillet by dropping it knows what I’m talking about. People expect metal to bend, because they’re used to thinking of forged metals that have been mechanically shaped while it was hot. But cast iron will shatter like glass, because it is just poured into a mold and the molecules stay wherever they were when the molten metal cooled, even if they don’t have strong bonds with their neighbors.
Hmm this might explain why the soles fell off my nice dress shoes after the second time ever wearing them.
your explanation is actually backwards, metals are counter intuitive at the molecular scale
Forging does not align the molecules, it actually mixes them up, and removes carbon.
Cast iron is brittle for 2 reasons. when cooling from molten the molecules are able to align into large crystals, and where these crystals meet is a boundary where cracks can start and easily propogate. And carbon in the mix makes it much more difficult for the molecules to “slip” past each other.
My grandma once gave me a pair of “new shoes”. They fell apart in the middle of an all-day track in the Alps (big mountains). Turns out she bought them for my aunt years ago and then forgot about them.
I used to dry my shoes in the microwave as it had a 10% setting.
Once on holiday I did that but the microwave was a bit more ambitious and affected the glue. Half the sole came loose on a walk
Got home fine by tying the laces around and under the shoe.
PS had a mug of water in the microwave for ballast.
Great, now when I’m on vacation I have to worry about some goblin that put their dirty shoes in the microwave. What the fuck? That’s a good surface other people share with you.
Are you not using a plate in the microwave?
Ah, the classic water glass ballast, for when you want to do microwave shenanigans, but not 800W worth of shenanigans
I bet that smelled fucking amazing
I’m more curious about wtf is up with that leg. It somehow looks like a forearm but also not, and like they only have half their foot left. How is it so thick and the foot so small? And the dotted pattern on the skin. Very odd.
Edema legs
It just looks weird because of the perspective. The camera is basically next to their knee, aimed down the leg and their toes are pointed as well. That “dotted pattern” is just hair folicles.
I’ve had that happen to some hiking boots once - one day their soles just turned to powder - but that was 2 decades after I got them and they had seen heavy use before that.
You forgot to check whether or not the shoes are cake before putting them on.
Always give your shoes a solid nom before wearing, to be sure they aren’t cake.
A couple of months ago I was invited to go hiking with some friends. When preparing, since I didn’t have some hiking boots, I saw my boots that I got in my military service. That was a great idea because they were already broken in and all of that stuff.
After around 3/4 of the almost 15km hike, I lost the sole on the first boot and a km after that the other side. Had to finish the hike on both without a sole.
Well, they were standing around for like 10 years so I am not surprised that they failed and that the whole stuff between sole and shoe Desintegrated but still.
10 years without being oiled, i guess. The leather would dessicate, maybe?
My soles have a cork layer that seems like it would crumble even if well treated.
Most likely they were stored in a warm and humid place. Polyurethane foam can get something called hydrolysis, where moisture breaks down the polymers in the foam.
The leather was fine. The part between the rubber sole and the leather shoe (I think it is called midsole?) just disintegrated.
The were stored in my shoe rack. I wouldn’t say that it is particularly humid there but it would be warm-ish (depending on the weather).
I wasn’t particularly shocked by this since they were simply lying around for that long. Maybe active use would have extended their life a bit more.
But maybe I can give them to someone that can add a new midsole so that they can be used again.
