Will a cheap record player DESTROY your vinyl?

No.
Important footnotes: (click Show More)
* I am in no way advocating the purchase of Crosley Cruiser record players. They sound terrible and better choices are available in the same price range. I'm just disproving the claim that they will "destroy" or "chew up" records. In normal use and with proper care, your records will be fine.
* BSR record changers were the Crosleys of their day; they were lambasted by audiophiles as "record grinders", because many of them had tracking forces similar to the cheap record players of today -- but yet, if you've ever listened to a used record from the '60s through '80s, chances are it was played on a BSR or similarly crude record player at some point in its life, and yet was not "destroyed".
* I take "destroyed" or "chewed up" to mean a record that has become unplayable and unlistenable due to skipping or extreme distortion; not merely to mean the scratchiness typical of "well-loved" records. When faced with a scratchy record, most people just turn down the tone control and continue to play it.
* The elliptical styli favored by audiophiles will cause excessive record wear at tracking forces much above 3 grams, so 3 to 3.5 grams is frequently cited as the maximum safe tracking force for all turntables. However, the conical or spherical styli used by inexpensive record players and "DJ" cartridges can apply higher tracking forces without any significant risk of excessive wear. When stereo LPs first came out, 5 to 6 grams was cited as the maximum safe tracking force, as compared to the 10 to 12 grams that was typical of older monaural record players!
* As I mentioned in the video, the LP I used for my test has very low groove modulation, causing surface noise to be much more audible. Modern LPs and 12-inch singles are cut much louder, enough to drown out the surface noise of all but the most extreme tracking forces I used during my test.
* Some audiophiles have defended their overblown claims by saying that the damage caused by a cheap record player will only be audible on a "good" turntable, because on a Crosley the fidelity is so low that you wouldn't be able to hear it. But other tests have disproven this; see Record Raid's video "Will cheap turntables damage your records?": • Will cheap turntables ...