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This was lowest common denominator entertainment.

Today's YouTuber stars make a fine living out of smashing stuff up. They know it is lowest common denominator stuff that will find a ready audience.

However, these stunts come to an end, after a while the audience needs something new and not yet another thing smashed up.

The thing with the trains is that they were only good for scrap. Being wrecked made little difference to the resale value, bent bits of tin are still of the same weight as finely engineered bits of tin.

The current trend of wasting stuff for likes rarely involves stuff that is going to be recycled. How many iphone X's does it take to stop a bullet content results in a lot of waste of new stuff with not a lot recycled. This is in contrast to this train wrecking stunt-meme of a century ago.

Although people were killed in the train wrecking stunts people did not go there with that a as premise. Motor racing was about the deadly crashes for most of the last century, if you were a Formula 1 driver then it was a 1 in 3 chance you might not last the season. Spectators went for the chance to see a spectacular crash being part of the entertainment.

Public hangings also used to be popular entertainment. So, all considered, pretty good show.



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