SoleGRIND
| 👟 Sneaker Release Info | |
|---|---|
| Brand | Nike |
| Model | Vans while he did it. Not |
| Colorway | Black, White, Brown |
| Retail Price | $50 |
| Available At | Nike.com |
If you’ve spent any real time on sneaker Instagram, you know the fit pic is sacred. People plan their outfits around their shoes, find the right lighting, angle their feet just right, and post with the confidence that their rare grails will get the likes. So what happens when someone takes those carefully curated fit pics and replaces the heat with Skechers Diameters? That’s the question Nick Turani answered with his @niceskechersdiameters Instagram account in early 2019, and the results were objectively hilarious.
Turani, a West Virginia native who would later go on to become a Barstool Sports personality, started the account as a way to brush up on his Photoshop skills. He told Complex in February 2019 that the idea was simple. Search hashtags like #sneakerhead and #sneakers on Instagram, find people flexing their most expensive pairs, and seamlessly edit a pair of brown leather Skechers Diameters onto their feet. The execution was what made it work. These weren’t sloppy edits. Turani matched the lighting, shadows, and angles so well that you had to look twice before realizing the Yeezys had been replaced with dad shoes.
The Skechers Diameter is the perfect shoe for this joke. It’s a brown or black leather low-top that screams “job interview at a gas station” or “first date at Applebee’s.” There is nothing cool about it. It could never be mistaken for a hype shoe. The dad shoe trend had made chunky sneakers acceptable in sneaker culture, with people unironically wearing Nike Air Monarch IVs and praising Balenciaga Triple S. But the Diameter never got that treatment. It existed completely outside the fashion conversation. And that’s exactly why plastering it over a pair of Off-White x Nike collabs was so funny. The contrast was brutal.
“The main reason I started the account was to brush up on my Photoshop skills. I thought it would not only do that, but be harmless fun in the process,” Turani told Complex. “It all started with me just searching the hashtags #sneakerhead and #sneakers, but it soon evolved into people messaging me wanting to clown one of their friends.” That’s the part that took it from a solo project to a community phenomenon. People started sending Turani photos of their friends’ fit pics specifically so he could Skechers them. It became a prank. A badge of honor, almost.
Not everyone found it funny though. Turani said the very first person he photoshopped reached out pretty annoyed, threatening to report the account. That reaction is part of what makes the whole thing so interesting. Sneaker culture takes footwear seriously, and for good reason. People invest real money and real time into their collections. Having your grails replaced with Skechers in a public post touches a nerve. But Turani was deliberate about keeping it harmless. “I chose sneakerheads because it’s harmless fun,” he said. “I hate when I see accounts clowning people in the gym, or over things people can’t control. This was innocent enough, and sneakerheads are vocal enough to get a fun reaction out of.”
Why the Diameter specifically? Turani had a half-joking, half-philosophical answer for that too. “It may very well be the perfect shoe for any situation. A job interview, first date, jogging, sex, you name it. Pair that with the price tag, and you’ve got a recipe for a good shoe.” He’s not wrong about the price tag. Skechers Diameters retail for around $50 to $75 on Amazon, which is roughly the cost of laces and shipping for some of the shoes he was replacing them with.
The @niceskechersdiameters account was part of a broader tradition in sneaker culture of using humor to puncture the seriousness. The “What Are Those?” meme from 2015 was the precursor, a viral catchphrase that became sneaker culture’s biggest meme moment. Turani’s Skechers project was the next evolution. Instead of just pointing at bad shoes and laughing, he was creating the bad shoes himself, digitally. It was commentary disguised as a joke, or maybe a joke disguised as commentary. Either way, it worked because the Photoshop work was genuinely good and the shoe choice was genuinely terrible.
Turani himself wasn’t a sneaker collector. He told Complex, “I cannot come close to being able to afford a collection. I wish though. For now, I’ll have to settle for my Vans.” There’s something fitting about that. The guy who created one of the funniest sneaker culture memes of 2019 was wearing Vans while he did it. Not Jordans, not Yeezys, not even a hyped Nike collab. Just Vans. The kind of shoe that sits outside the hype cycle entirely, which is probably the healthiest place to be when you’re the one making fun of everyone inside it.
The account eventually faded as all viral memes do, and Turani moved on to Barstool Sports where he continued making content. But for a brief moment in February 2019, the Skechers Diameter was the most talked-about shoe in sneaker culture. Not because it was good. Not because it was limited. Because a guy with Photoshop skills and a sense of humor decided to put it where it didn’t belong. And honestly, that’s more cultural impact than most actual sneaker releases will ever have.
