Erm. What's with the optimism at the end here? Isn't this the example of the exact opposite? Despite being promised "curated niche interests" somehow these attention algorithms on huge centralized platforms find a way to turn everyone on the platform into a consumer of a particular trendy item?
I find it so disturbing that a lot of "niche interests" on the Internet these days seem very consumer focused.
I don’t know if that exactly explains the short life of the Labubu fad, but I find the disappearance of shared culture quite evident these days.
And on other hand I think cycle of competing products is faster than ever. Get a trend going on and other companies cashing on it will happen very fast. Thus lowering value of original and flooding the market it mad rush.
thats one option. But other companies sometimes choose to keep the scarcity and secrecy for years, even decades, and if they play their cards right it keeps working
Labubus fall is more about its makers decision to increase sales numbers instead of keeping them flat and generating more and more and more hype
Hermes can sell a $15,000 Birkin to everyone, im sure they can figure out the supply chain aspects if they really wanted to. and within a month everyone that wanted one would have one and sales would drop. Hermes will have a spike in sales, followed by a drop
Instead they force you to play years long games with their sales staff to get an opportunity to spend $15,000. And decades later people still opt in to spending thousands of dollars on plates and scarves hoping one day they will be offered one
This is just as true about a $40 Supreme, or Aime Leon Dore T-shirt, than it is for a $15,000 handbag. If you keep the scarcity going just right, it lasts much longer
According to a more fashion and design orientated friend of mine, you can buy knockoffs of Birkin or any other high-end bag. And, guess what? Some of those knockoffs and their manufacturers have developed a certain cachet, and actually sell for quite high prices. So of course, those have spawned knockoffs too.
It's like the bit in Pattern Recognition, isn't it?
It's sad and petty I know, but if I were a billionaire edgelord like Elon Musk, rather than Twitter, I'd buy Hermes and sell their products in supermarkets. All the past limited editions too. Just to fuck with the kind of people who buy them.
Then again Hermes is worth 200 billion and upsetting an oligarch's sidechick might just get me killed so maybe not.
Wait hold on, what?
Like, I get that you were referring to the fact that they keep things scarce even for rich people, but you literally said “everyone”, so I just gotta check: Are you saying that everyday people would be willing and able to spend $15000 on a luxury handbag?
Very little of it is actually good. So what then, if it’s able to spread faster than ever before? It stinks!
It makes any effort to reduce my environmental footprint feel so pointless. Why even bother?
On the other hand, they've only recently penetrated my greater social circle, so I'm not so certain as this author that the trend has ended.
The way I understood is, if you’re hyper-online and very consumerist, you’ll want to onto the train fast, and get off it fast so you would be deemed as a “trend maker” rather than “trend follower”. I’m not sure if I’m making sense, but it’s a bit more visible within Tokyo/Shanghai subcultures. It was less visible to me in Vancouver, where there’s a single main culture (everything outdoor and outdoor related) and not participating is also “not cool”.
I think this might also fall lower in hierarchy, just being seen as early for your friend circle.
Not sure how you could make sense when the topic it self is nonsensical?? Trying to rationalize internet fads just seems as futile as getting involved with the fad itself.
It's no worse than the peacock's tail.
Everything's decentralized, but at the same time, I have my finger on the pulse.
I don't use TikTok or any of the hyperconsumerist social media platforms.
I've seen them around, but they're definitely not popular with anyone I know.
Trust me, it’s over :)
Isn't it weird to describe as a societal or cultural trend something that can be changed with a pull request?
That's how in touch with fashion I am.
(T-shirt punch line: Louboubou. Coming to fast-fashion textile dumps in Lagos soon.)
I only have some vague ideas, not enough to write an article. But if you want to write an analysis, it’s best to come up with something new.
I think it’s not catastrophic, most of this churn is harmless — but it does create noise. The challenge is simply recognizing when a trend is signal vs. when it’s just another iteration of the cycle. A bit more intentionality in how we pick technologies would already go a long way.
Labubus just happened to get a wide appeal and had a moment in the US for some reason..
Basically game lootboxes, but IRL. People like gambling, it seems.
That's not a hobby to me. It's just consuming for consumption's sake.
Also nothing wrong with just having a shelf with things you like to look at.
> Also nothing wrong with just having a shelf with things you like to look at.
I completely disagree.
I think a Labubu novelty was lots of direct sales and a deliberately(?) flaky website that had people frantically strategising for secret methods to get an order placed successfully. When you did, they told you what you got without having to wait for it to arrive for an instant dopamine payout.
I suspect if the website worked very predicably and you could easily and calmly reserve what you wanted, even with the gacha mechanism, it would not have been such a frenzy.
but I would content it was not an example of irrational exuberance
labubu’s are part of a flooded market as well, but there was never anything to suggest it wouldnt be flooded only an expectation for demand to keep up longer than just half of this year
Them being accessible and there being supply for much demand is having hit equilibrium. Give it another year or two before grave dancing. Many are still just only buying them now with them being accessible.
It's not that serious, I promise. When you were a kid you probably also had beany babies, furbies, crazy bones, magic cards, tamagotchis, tech decks, steel bearing yo-yos, or whatever else thing was a fad. Guess what, those were all made in China too.
Huh, this feels exactly backwards. The web used to be WAY more decentralized.
So there is larger centralized culture that reacts to trends like Labubus or Dubai Chocolate. And then there are smaller niche communities that don't really go outside their own.
Being chronically online doesn't make you part of a special group anymore. It's just how everyone lives their lives. There are no inside jokes, no nerd lingo. Even memes are basically dead now.
What has been lost is gathering a random sample of people in the same city and them all being on roughly the same page about culture.
Sure, but those aren't internet culture. The internet is barely a hobby/interest any more, it's just part of the infrastructure of every hobby/interest.
That was a surprise to the architects of Facebook's original infrastructure. Facebook started in 2004 as a service for college students. Most traffic was expected to be with people at the same college, or at least in the same region. So the servers were regional, with relatively weak long-distance connections. As Facebook grew, the load was nothing like that. They had to redesign the system completely.
if things were decentralized there'd be tons of ongoing fads that tiny groups would get excited about but they'd never get to the scale that would cause shortages and price spikes
kids have always had slang, but i don't remember there being news reports about it in the past.
and i think the difference now is that parents get freaked out when some new slang takes over seemingly out of nowhere.
in the past, adults were aware of the media their kids were consuming. they overheard them talking on the phone with their friends. they saw kids hanging out together in real world physical spaces.
but now? kids an entire social life and media ecosystem is private and inside their phone. parents don't have visibility into "kid world" the way they used and it freaks them out.
they worry about bad things happening, but mostly they just worry that their kid has a whole private life that they don't know anything about and they're not part of it.
Here's a fun example from the early nineties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
Are you sure you haven't just gotten old enough that you're now in the target demographic for "here's what the kids are saying" stories? :)
i had a whole other life my parents knew nothing about, and this was way before unsocial media. the fact that we're willing to call "friends" online a social life is yet another example of modern times. so again, having "secret" lives from parents isn't new to being online. it's teens looking to push the boundaries, explore, and just do things different from the parental units. nothing about "kids today" is really different. Boomers had that damn rock-n-roll and hippies as an example. It's more of the same in a different shape.
Maybe I'm just black, but there's absolutely nothing new about "bet." Unless you mean last 50 years new maybe (I can only vouch for 50 years.)
Still goes to your point, though. The kids are just imitating black people like their parents, their parents parents, and their parents parents parents, and their parents parents parents parents, and their parents parents parents parents parents. The desire of the kids to repeat things that they heard black people say is at least 150 years old at this point if the cakewalk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk) is a good spot to date it from.
Two users on TikTok are seeing entirely different trends and creators.
I think you're referring to something different than the article
I agree with you the web used to be more decentralized in terms of unique websites, blogs, communities, etc. It is much more homogenous now, with majority of traffic and community forming on a few social networks instead of across hundreds of sites and forums
However, within the social media sites users have become much more siloed than they used to be. Algorithms are trying to isolate us into our own personal echo chambers rather than just giving us the raw feed and letting us navigate it
Youtube will show me an in depth technical video from 3 years ago over the latest MrBeast slop even if the MrBeast video is getting far better numbers.
I do feel like _something_ has been lost by the lack of monoculture though. It's been most evident in music where there almost is no pop music anymore. There is nothing everyone knows and generally likes. DJs either have to play highly targeted events or pop music from 2012.
Sure, you can now choose from 27 different shows in each genre (comedy, drama, romance, business, cops, medical dramas, etc), each with many seasons to watch/stream/binge, but odds that your friend saw the same episode last night? Approximately zero. Whereas, "must see tv", as trite as it was, almost always gave you something to talk about the next day.. "No soup for you!" was huge in my circles for quite some time, for example.
And the less someone shares with you in terms of background, the easier it is to withdraw into your own bubble, and watch more shows alone, and become more isolated..
Zero value, fuelled and pushed by celebrities far and wide and they are not even rare to begin with.
-- Lurr, Ruler of planet Omicron Perseii 8