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Comment by tbrake | Hacker News Reader

Although it's hard to phrase this non-humorously, it is a legitimate question - is anyone else instantly filled with the urge to just Godzilla stomp one of those displays? I wouldn't trust myself within 5 meters of one.

I really don't have many destructive urges outside of this; I mean, why ruin someone's work, right? There's just something about a fragile or delicate construction that makes me want to immediately knock it down.

The same compulsion doesn't occur looking at anything that ostensibly appears sturdy. But put me in front of a beautiful sand sculptures or those delicate stacked chocolate displays and I want to become a literal bull in a china shop.

I wonder if there's a fanciful term for this weird compulsion, like the way we have l'appel du vide for the urge to jump off a cliff or if it's just a generic wicked impulse.

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Could be related to "cuteness aggression", which describes the urge of crushing kitten because of some kind of cuteness overload. The extreme fragility of these structures could be overwhelming in the same kind of way that it would make it unbearable.

Otherwise, I really don't have this urge, so at least we know it's not universal...

I had the exact same thought/impulse when I was looking through the examples of his work. I think the source of it, for me anyway, is understanding that each of these displays is ephemeral. They aren't intended to last long at all, so you know they have to be dismantled. And the quickest/most fun way to dismantle a house of cards is Godzilla. Surely they aren't delicately disassembling these things. It seems prudent for there to even be an honorary Godzilla for each of them...some lucky individual who gets to sprint straight through the display, or chuck a tennis ball into it.

It's not just you. And I know of at least a couple of people that think the same way...[1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5sQqzLGOnA

Having observed my child want to break things since he was only a few months old, I've come to believe it might just be part of human nature to destroy things.

That sounds cynical, but I don't mean it that way. If we didn't continually strive to challenge the limits of our might and power, we probably wouldn't be where we are today.

Part of challenging our limits is precisely empirically evaluating the question "is it within my physical power to break this thing?"

And nature gives us a little kick out of it, to make sure we try.

Walking through the store, they sell these whole, fried corn tortillas. Like, for a tostada. They come in a stack in a bag.

Every time I see one, all I want to do is take one of those stacks and crush it. I haven't ponied up the $3 just to take one home and do it, but the urge is there just the same.

Buy them for a meal, forget them in your pantry, crush them when you remember them and they're already expired. Repeat if you managed to eat them before expiration.

This is how I accidentally fulfilled my childhood dream of crushing an entire bar of sliced bread to its minimum expression.

It's because you anticipate the destruction of the ephemeral object and then until it actually happens you need to store a variable waiting for the outcome to happen. This causes discomfort that can be alleviated if the card tower is knocked over. A part of your brain then attempts to incentivize knocking over the cards yourself by surfacing the childlike fun of throwing yourself into a pile of autumn leaves.

You should consider a career in penetration testing or QA

How can I get started the quickest as a fullstack dev? I got turned down multiple times in job interviews because of “lack of experience”.

Sounds like the beginnings of a specialty service. Order a cardstacker to your house and arrange an on-demand exhibit that you can curb stomp to your desire, with minimal mess. Great for parties!

I don’t relate to the active destruction part but I enjoy looking at the twisted metals and frames of car wrecks and the like. For me it’s the reconstruction of the aftermath

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