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On Labubu and the Hyperreal

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Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#31

Post by yieldcrv »

skyyler wrote: post #19
yieldcrv wrote: post #2

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…

>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. Am I missing something? They're cute little dolls.

yes, here is San Francisco’s “Performative Male” contest. With the publication SF Standard directly mentioning labubu charms in the caption

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNrxS2ZXCBW/

that year old contest itself being a satire on a played out fashion trend and archetype that everyone is already mocking

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#32

Post by pretzellogician »

alephnerd wrote: post #16
john_strinlai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Y'all are boomers. i am! but i see a fair amount of people just starting their careers, students, etc. as well. and, based on some of the comments ive seen, i think there is a lot of young folk. most of my students are active, or at least browse, HN. they are mostly 18-20. i took a wild guess that ~30 would be the average. maybe 35-40 is closer. either way, i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be cla…

> i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad. Yep! Completely agree! I'm not that much older than Pokemon, and most of my peers have been influenced by it heavily and their kids will be influenced by it as well. If Pokemon is a fad, so are smartphones. In classic HN fashion, I decided to kvetch about something completely irrelevant to the larger convo ;)

:-)

In that case, I'll kvetch about the "boomer" term (Baby Boomers are ~61+ years old), as I think you're conflating it with Generation X (45 - 61 years old)

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#33

Post by coldtea »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #10
freetime2 wrote: post #5

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 i…

Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years...

Well, they have all the characteristics of a fad (driven by imitation, viral adoption, unserious, novelty over substance) aside from short lifespan.

There are fad diets that have been around for 50 years after all...

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#34

Post by [deleted] »

havblue wrote: post #25
alephnerd wrote: post #4

Alternatively - who cares? If some people feel happy playing with Labubus, mechanical keyboards, or 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,…

Discussing the nature of hyperreal consumer products is similar to art criticism. You think about the intent of the item and how it affects the recipient. It isn't just being a jerk about it that is, since you can gain insight into societal trends by asking, "why the heck are people taking weird pictures of Donnie Darko stuffed animals and posting them online." Discussions of buying new mechanical keyboards when you…

[deleted]

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#35

Post by dvt »

freetime2 wrote: post #15
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years...

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. I…

> I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after some YouTuber paid millions for a rare card

Objectively untrue boomer take. Pokemon cards have been popular & have been traded since I was in middle school and I'm 40 now lol. Even without ever collecting them I know how cool having a Holo Charizard was.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#36

Post by john_strinlai »

freetime2 wrote: post #15
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years...

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. I…

>I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021.

the cards have been popular for significantly longer than 5 years.

my kid's entire class (the entire school, really) brought their binders of pokemon cards to school every day in ~2002 until the school banned pokemon cards on premise because they were such a distraction and causing issues (kids crying about unfair trades, etc.)

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#37

Post by Nursie »

alephnerd wrote: post #12
john_strinlai wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, i always understood a "fad" to mean some short-lived trend. meanwhile, pokemon is probably around the same age as the average HN user.

> probably around the same age as the average HN user. Based on the references and speech patterns I've seen on HN, I think the average HNers is at least a decade older than Pokemon. The first Pokemon videogame only came out in 1996. Y'all are boomers - nothing wrong with that, but HN has become an older monoculture.

10 years older than pokemon isn’t even Gen X, it’s millennial…

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#38

Post by resonious »

buildbot wrote: post #27
freetime2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. I…

This was true over 20 years ago when I was in elementary school - I don’t know anyone who really played the game, most people just collected the cards. Magic the Gathering was always both though, you collected good/rare cards & played the game with them!

Yes I remember having a hard time finding other kids who wanted to actually play the pokemon card game. And even when I could find someone, they didn't care about the rules/energy costs. This was in elementary school though to be fair.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#39

Post by freetime2 »

dvt wrote: post #35
freetime2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. I…

> I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after some YouTuber paid millions for a rare card Objectively untrue boomer take. Pokemon cards have been popular & have been traded since I was in middle school and I'm 40 now lol. Even without ever collecting them I know how cool having a Holo Charizard was.

If you look at Google Trends you can see that interest in Pokemon Cards was mostly flat until 2021 when Logan Paul made headlines for spending $5m on a card. It spiked again in late 2024 and has remained high when they released an app for trading cards digitally.

Before 2019 they printed fewer than 2 billion cards per year [1]. Since 2021 they are printing 9 billion cards per year, and 12 billion in 2024 since they released the app. And release 7 new sets a year. And they are still selling out as soon as they hit store shelves [2].

The popularity you experienced in grade school is nothing like the revenous demand today. I suspect you might be the one who has fallen behind the times.

[1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi...

[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p...

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#40

Post by NDlurker »

nippoo wrote: post #30
pokememon wrote: post #22

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. "Soci…

Except scratch cards are a guaranteed statistical loss. Trading cards, if you're skilled and know what you're doing, can be a sensible side-income. It's the difference between poker and roulette...

You can pretty much be guaranteed to break even if you check the odds of scratch tickets and buy enough of them. You can check how many tickets are left and which prizes are left for a particular game. That's what we did when I went in on a bunch of tickets with some friends.

Speaking of trading cards as a side hustle, a couple of my friends used to drive around the region buying boxes of baseball cards. They'd weigh them to figure out if some specific special cards was in it, return the light boxes, and throw out most of the other cards from the boxes they opened. Now that same card series has unopened boxes going for like $2k

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