On Labubu and the Hyperreal

it used to coalesce into organized religion and its local institutions. what's new is that those sources of meaning and connection were not explicitly commercial ventures.

My kids never had any interest in Labubu, but have been caught up in other fads like Pokemon cards. My sense is that these kinds of trends are mostly driven by scarcity. If you manage to get your hands on one, then you get the feeling of owning something rare, exclusive, and desirable amongst your peers - which is enough reason on its own to want something. You can also convince yourself that paying the normal MSRP is a smart buy, since normally they are sold by scalpers at inflated prices, even if you have no intention of reselling.

I’m not immune either. They sell Pokemon cards at 7/11 here - typically a store will put out one or two boxes a day - and usually they sell out very quickly. When I see them in stock, I feel an urge to buy them even when I’m not with my kids. Just because I know they will sell out soon.

Labubus have one of the most sophisticated marketing on Twitch and YouTube, by the same people who are paid to promote anime and gaming "conferences".

I agree that reality and fiction unfortunately merges for a subset of the population. The gaming addicted are also most likely to develop an AI addiction, because LLMs and agent setups are basically a computer game.

Trading Card Games (TCG), and generally any item relying on gacha mechanics, are this generation's "scratchers".

It's amazing seeing grown adults who would scoff at their peers buying lotto tickets and scratchers enthusiastically burn cash on TCG without the slightest sense of hypocrisy.

The secret is "social head canon".

"Head canon" is when you fill in the plot holes to make sense of your favorite narratives.

"Social head canon" is the same but for our understanding of society.

When the algorithm feeds children videos of adults opening TCG packs what they see is grown adults, the people who are appear to, and are supposed to, have it all figured out, losing their shit over cardboard and the child fills in the "why" on their own.

But they are wholly ignorant of "gambler's high" so they concoct elaborate narratives for why the adults "love the cards". That "social head canon" is so sticky because it can be anything, infinitely complex, wholly private, and different for every person.

Once that child grows up they learn about "gambler's high" and so seek the same thing, but now for the intended reasons.

Rinse and repeat across generations.

Alternatively - who cares?

If some people feel happy playing with Labubus, mechanical keyboards, or <insert_product_here> why do you care? It's their life and not yours.

Additionally, this article also clearly fails to deep dive into how Pop Mart basically exported Asian style marketing strategies to the West. Back in Asia, conspicuous consumption and quick commerce is not viewed negatively the same way it is amongst Western HN/Redditors, and the "cute marketing" that Pop Mart leveraged is the norm back in Asia.

In that sense, I'd argue Labubu and TikTok are both significant milestones in Chinese IP and cultural exports, as it gave them a Weeabo or Hallyu moment.

Additionally, using Reddit to make qualified judgements on "society at large" is fundamentally flawed.

Labubus are fucking dumb, ugly, and useless. Here, I said it

I couldn't suspend disbelief after the author called Labubu "cute".

My daughter owns one. It's not cute. It's terrifying. It has a monster's grin. It looks like something out of "Child's Play". You know it will murder you in your sleep.

Thankfully, she got bored of it pretty fast, as I suppose do most children (and adults).

extrapolated all of this not only 7 months too late beyond the trend’s implosion,

while missing the way more obvious fact that being trendy attracted women of the same age range

this was also the tail end of the fashion trend based on muting masculinity in favor of catering to the female gaze, an adaptation once again for women’s comfort until women realized they hate feminine men more than they thought they briefly hated masculinity.

You saw the juxtaposition and instead of simply ask, you draw all these completely unrelated lines from what you best understood and are completely wrong about what fuels the adaptations

correlations that have nothing to do with the actual guiding decisions, the simple timeless tale of adults attracting adults. You touch on it briefly though before wondering if the man plays with his labubu at home, which I’m not sure was sarcasm or not, I hope it was because the answer is no he doesn't play with the labubu, its a charm

makes me wonder what my blind spots are, what I’m out of touch about