Teen who destroyed his iPad with a baseball bat: ‘I love Apple’

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(Because of rough language, we can’t link directly to the above YouTube video, which is called ‘Brand new iPad getting smashed by a baseball bat.’)

Justin Kocott took a novel approach to iPad release weekend. Instead of rushing home with his brand-new, $499 toy to download dozens of apps and tweet about how cool it was, he decided to destroy it with a baseball bat. And make a video of it.

The clip quickly became one of Sunday’s most viewed YouTube videos, scoring 180,000 views in less than 12 hours. Whether you think the video is a delicious bit of countercultural anti-hype or more evidence of the dissolution of suburban youth, its success suggests that if nothing else, they were thinking different.

We caught up with Kocott, a 19-year-old Pittsburgh high school student, to ask him about the ‘project.’

What gave you the idea for the video?

Pretty much that I’ve seen people smash Wiis and Playstation 3s and stuff, so this was something new. I wanted to be the first one to do it before other people did it. It was just something to do.

I knew some people would hate it, but I didn’t think that many people would hate it. A lot of people are leaving really bad comments.

Like what?

Some people are saying I should’ve donated the money instead of wasting it. But my family donates money all the time. Last year we gave $10-15,000 to the Make a Wish Foundation (my little sister is sick). It’s not like we’re greedy, it’s not like we did it to rub it in and say, ‘We have the money, oh look at us.’

Are you glad you did it?

I love that I did it. I did it with my money. And we actually ended up buying two more iPads that we kept. The one that I bought was the 16Gb. I had to save up a bit to get it, I don’t just walk around with $500 in my pocket. But the fact that so many people hate it -- I don’t want to say I love that, but it’s funny.

Who were all the guys in the video?

The one person that drops it, that’s my friend Rocko. The guy in the green is my other brother. I’m the one in the white shirt who hit it with the baseball bat first. And then there’s a store manager from the Best Buy.

The manager from Best Buy was there watching?!

Yeah, we did it outside the Best Buy. We didn’t even play with it first or anything, we just took it straight out of the box. I actually asked the manager if he wanted to come watch. He didn’t believe us, so he decided to come along. Then afterward he said, ‘I really honestly didn’t think you were going to do that.’

Are you trying to become a YouTube star or something?

I make a lot of videos, but it’s messing around, I never really take them seriously. I’m not trying to make a career on it or anything. Anybody would like it if their video got a bunch of views.

So does this mean you’re not an Apple fan, or what?

People are saying I must hate Apple for doing this. Not even. We still have two other iPads, plus my family has iPhones, Macs and iPods. I do not at all hate Apple. I love Apple, actually.

Any more plans for gadget bashing?

After everyone said how much they hated watching this, I was talking about maybe wanting to break a 3-D TV.-- David Sarno