Before YouTube?

Oh, man. Before the internet there were four kinds of knives. Regular pocket knives, lock blades, Army Surplus and Frost Cutlery. Only some of them were good for wrecking stuff. You had to know what was what.
 
To be fair, I remember Greg Walker, editor of Fighting Knives magazine mildly complaining that he'd get articles and sometimes videos from guys wanting to be knife writers doing things like bashing on handle scales with sledge hammers, testing lock strength with sledge hammers, chopping cinder blocks, etc.... back in the 90's. So they were always out there, it just just became easier to publish.

Edit, I also remember mags occasionally publishing letters from young guys looking for knives that could remove an enemy's hand with one slash, etc.... so there were those guys too.
 
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Unfortunately, being in my 30s, I don't have much "pre-internet" personal experience, just memories from when the internet was still new and much less a part of our everyday lives.

But I fondly remember my friends showing me a video on the internet about 15 years ago where a crazy fixed blade with tiger stripe pattern and paracord-wrapped handle was being used to rip into and destroy a car door. Seeing the $300+ prices for Strider knives on their website absolutely crushed my dreams. My best knife at the time was a Gerber Paraframe and I was a broke college kid who's part time paycheck barely covered food and a car payment.

For years Strider knives held a mythical status in my mind because of that silly video.
 
I think if I had a store around as a kid that sold high end knives I would have owned one. The internet was running but you had to dial up with a modem and it occupied a phone line.

There were stores that sold mostly 20-50 dollar knives and multitools, maybe up to a hundred on occasions. I'd buy them, I'd trade them. All the stuff we do now. The difference was it was more in person back then.
 
As several posters have shown, putting knives to uses well beyond what almost everyone does with them has long been staple of the industry. Youtube has put that sort of thing in front of more casual knife people, and of course in pursuit of more views the YouTubers have been trying to one-up each other by doing something crazier than the last guy, but it wasn't invented there.

Cliff Stamp was doing things with knives I will never need to do long before Youtube was popular. When I lived in Indianapolis in the late 90s, Busse would have a table at the gun show and promote their knives by doing wild stuff. Even the ABS Mastersmith test is out there in my view and it has been around a very long time. I doubt I will ever need to chop through a 2x4 twice, then shave, then bend my knife 90 degrees.

On the bright side I think this stuff actually results in our having access to better knives. Many of them are knives that don't fit my needs, but it is good to know they are out there if I ever want one.
 
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Sportmans Guide and Boys Life.

Emerson Knives I remember reading articles about how people used them in some extreme ways in magazines. Like cutting tires off of trucks and shaving cross country skis. Seeing the pictures of a humvee tire wrapped around a soldier after cut off a rim in a knife magazine.
 
Batoning is the thing I've never quite understood. Where am I going to find all these perfectly sawed off 4-inch logs out in the woods to baton in a survival situation? I'll just burn the whole log. And if I need kindling I'll just gather smaller limbs, branches and bark. In a true survival situation, and I hope I never find myself in one, risking a tool as precious as a knife with batoning seems like a bad idea. I camped for years without batoning a single thing.
 
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