Appetite For Destruction

The Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube has a simple formula. In every video, you know you’re going to see an impassive hydraulic press slowly descend on some random unsuspecting object like a Nokia cell phone, a pineapple, or an Easter basket filled with chocolate cream eggs and bunnies.

A heavily accented Finnish man off-camera will say something as the press comes down and annihilates the objects, followed by a group of men and women — also off-camera — who begin cackling with laughter.

So why is this channel so popular, getting shares and a stream of commentary on sites like Reddit? It combines a number of trends we’re tracking, including its Absurdist, “horror comedy” bent. Instead of blood and guts, for example, we see Cadbury chocolate eggs ooze their innards. But its formula is also strangely soothing in its meditative slowness, revealing a cultural tension between the need for meditative things to soothe us, with the desire to unleash pent up frustration in the form of rage (as we’ve seen in the mashup of yoga and heavy metal). Instead of the soothing tedium of the unboxing video — whose popularity might be equally baffling to the uninitiated — there’s destruction, followed by laughter.