Lauren Conrad stirs up readers' outrage with book-destroying video

After protests, reality star Lauren Conrad took down a video in which she cut up books to make a storage box.

Lauren Conrad took down the Crafty Creations video demonstrating how to create a book box yesterday.

Mark./PR Newswire

August 17, 2012

Former “The Hills” star Lauren Conrad faced a backlash after she posted a video of a do-it-yourself craft project which involved destroying books.

Conrad has been posting a video series on her website titled Crafty Creations in which she shows viewers how to make objects such as a ribbon headband. Last week, the new segment aimed to demonstrate how to create a storage box using books by ripping out the pages and attaching the covers to the sides of a box.

Conrad removed the video yesterday after news articles, including one on Gawker, were posted critiquing it.

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“Last Thursday, she destroyed books to the soothing sounds of gentle guitar, and a box occurred,” Gawker writer Caity Weaver wrote.

Because the novel being cut into pieces in the video was a "Series of Unfortunate Events" title, the website Slate reached out to the series’ author, Lemony Snicket, for his opinion on the video.

Snicket appeared to take the incident in stride.

“It has always been my belief that people who spend too much time with my work end up as lost souls, drained of reason, who lead lives of raving emptiness and occasional lunatic violence,” Snicket said. “What a relief it is to see this documented.”

Other commenters, however, were more outraged by Conrad’s crafty actions.

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“There are people out there who do really creative and useful things with old unwanted books, which gives them a new life and purpose,” one commenter wrote on Buzzfeed. “This is not one of those things. This is heinous.”