8 ms·

On Labubu and the Hyperreal

90 points by 2earth 4mo ago

yieldcrv 4mo ago
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
- skyyler 4mo ago
  >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.
  - yieldcrv 4mo ago
    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/ 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
- mockerell 4mo ago
  The lack of actual photos of Labubus "in the real" (usually on a keychain at a pant's belt loops) is jarring. The topic of the "performative male" has been regurgitated in social media for quite some time. Still the author ignores that and misses the overall bigger picture. I think any argument made here with regard to Baudrillard's hyperreality could be made about most trends, not only Labubus. Actual insight into the demographic is missing. I prefer the following video which touches on the performative male (it's in German though). Don't get distracted by the title, it's nuanced and offered me some insight into performative behaviors (both the recent manifestation and in general) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFMdKcR824 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFMdKcR824
  - faidit 4mo ago
    Hyperreality is a bogus concept altogether, inasmuch as it's supposed to be something new in human history that only happens because of computers. Prehistoric/ancient humans also had fashion trends and myths and symbols and deep context
    - thin_carapace 4mo ago
      computing merely spurred the conceptualization of hyperreality. the original impetus was more along the lines of societal imagery like media, wax museums, or theme parks (as mentioned in the article). computing is not seen in the seminal definition of a map overflowing its territory. this definition does align with integer overflow/underflow but isn't predicated upon the existence of those concepts. therefore the concept of hyperreality may be embodied in many contexts, both prior to and post the advent of computing.
- 2earth 4mo ago
  Hey, op, thanks for the points - a quick reply here: -I'm very out of date, yes...I wrote a lot of notes ages ago and came around to finishing the article a long time later. I also don't use social media for good reasons so am not aiming to provide info that anyone doesn't already have. The article was mostly an excuse to read Baudrillard, and goddamn that is hard work ;-) -i did not miss the point that being trendy attracts others of the same age. As women account for 80% of sales that is clearly not the key cause of the trend but is relevant for some -agree my 'analysis' is lacking, could have conducted interviews, analysed multiple social media platforms....... -the story of 'i saw this dude in a supermarket' is partly used to create a narrative in the article. And, obviously, I am not going to ask a guy 10 years younger than me why he is wearing a toy! -'does he play with it at home' - how could I have been clearer that I doubt he plays with it and that it's for ornament, and possibly to attract girls.
2agshf 4mo ago
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.
- miladyincontrol 4mo ago
  Huh, most anime cons have horrendous if any marketing. Beyond basic social feeds most of their reach these days are from inviting "influencers" to join in on panels, cosplay judging contests, etc. Which in turn pisses off a lot of the con's main audience as rarely are these influencers sufficiently knowledgable on the topics (ie little knowledge on costume making, barely aware of a given series, etc). Few if any western anime cons have managed to get any sort of meaningful virality in terms of marketing, whether organic or manufactured. And especially little from the labubu type crowd given cons are more male dominated, and labubu far more of a women's interest. The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory.
  - thaumasiotes 4mo ago
    > The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory. I have one friend (Chinese living in China) who is a big fan of popmart products. But Labubu is a secondary thing for her. Her passion is Dimoo. https://www.popmart.com/us/pop-now/set/471 https://www.popmart.com/us/pop-now/set/471 Dimoo comes in figurines that you can display in your home. Or on your desk at work, I guess. You can buy third-party accessories for it; my friend has a hollow cupcake with the text GUPCAKE on the wrapper, for your figurine to look like it's bursting out of a cupcake. Or maybe like it lives in one. Another Chinese friend of mine mentioned to me that Popmart figurines were trendy, and the blind boxes made them more fun to purchase. She objected strongly when I characterized this as 赌博 ("gambling"). All of the appeal of these products is the gambling aspect. Labubu isn't even distinctive except in its foreign news coverage.
alephnerd 4mo ago
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.
- maxbond 4mo ago
  You could apply this same logic to your comment. "If Labubu discourse makes them happy, who cares? It's their life." We should live and let live but that doesn't preclude discussion.
  - alephnerd 4mo ago
    Sure, but the article is going from discourse into direct moral judgement. If you write an entire blogpost making a moral judgement on personal choices yeah I'd flame you.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tolerance 4mo ago
      > I'd argue Labubu and TikTok are both significant milestones in Chinese IP and cultural exports [...] Interpret this article as an attempt at criticizing or curtailing this effect instead.
    - maxbond 4mo ago
      I can imagine someone who xollects Labubus feeling insulted or patronized, but they are not lifting a finger to stop them from buying a Labubu. They are just publishing their thoughts. Their thoughts happen to contain moral judgements, that is not a departure from participating in discourse. Frankly it is ridiculous to suggest discussing morality is not engaging in discourse, and this kind of ontological/categorical argument is a way to sidestep the merits of the argument without engaging with them by just labeling them as illegitimate. Generally, I'm just not buying that only some forms of discourse are legitimate, and again, if this article was illegitimate, your comment would be illegitimate for the same reason, so what are we doing here? But I would agree that people who felt judged, slighted, etc. would be free to respond, "flaming" or otherwise. I see no issue with that. (Flaming is probably not the right way to respond but that's a different question.)
freetime2 4mo ago
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.
- doctorpangloss 4mo ago
  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...
  - john_strinlai 4mo ago
    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.
    - alephnerd 4mo ago
      > 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.
      - john_strinlai 4mo ago
        >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 classified as a fad.
the_af 4mo ago
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).
- akomtu 4mo ago
  The appeal of labubus is simple: they are cute-looking creatures that show their demonic side. Since many people have it, they find labubus cute. Remember the first scene in the movie Constantine, where the woman that's being exorcised looks at her demon in the mirror and finds it cute? That's the same thing.
  - the_af 4mo ago
    Haha, I like your take. But Labubus still give me the creeps. Those teeth are not for smiling!
pokememon 4mo ago
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.
- nippoo 4mo ago
  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...
  - NDlurker 4mo ago
    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
  - pokememon 4mo ago
    Another similarity is the endless line of credulous people who "have a system".
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
iammjm 4mo ago
Labubus are fucking dumb, ugly, and useless. Here, I said it
JMiao 4mo ago
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.
untitled-now 4mo ago
This trend never got me or my kids and i never understood the fuss around it , I mean they are not pretty , they are not playable , or maybe it is because I am just getting old ? Born in 1988 here , maybe I just don't get the new generation .
- lwansbrough 4mo ago
  They are key-chain Furbies.
  - kevindamm 4mo ago
    key chain furby lootboxes
- wincy 4mo ago
  I was born in 1986 and I got excited finding them in stock for retail price at a store before the holidays, my daughter’s favorite color is blue and they joy she had at pulling a blue one then clipping it to her blue backpack and her calling it her “Lablublu” made me really happy. We got another one for my nephew’s girlfriend for Christmas and she called my girls on FaceTime and thanked them for the present. That felt like a good use of $80 in my opinion.
- gwerbin 4mo ago
  Remember Beanie Babies?
- panarky 4mo ago
  > not playable ... My Uber driver, a man about 35 years old, pulled up in a Tesla Model Y with four Lububus superglued to the dash. Seems like some kind of status thing, not a plaything.
- ryanmcbride 4mo ago
  Hey same age as you here. They fill the same slot as like, troll dolls.
- driverdan 4mo ago
wanoir 4mo ago
Once something catches on, jumping on the bandwagon gives people a sense of community. But, the nature of what makes something viral, like how the article mentions pandemic, seems agnostic to what actually becomes viral. Why did labubus go viral and not something else[1]? It’s luck and timing, and we can try to reverse-engineer it, but it’s just being prepared & luck. We’re seeing a survivor bias and thinking the survivor is special inherently. So what enabled Pop Mart to be prepared? [1]Actually, there’s also sneaker hype, meme stocks, etc.
nakedneuron 4mo ago
another example of a fabricated hype. who cares about this?
- squidsoup 4mo ago
  You don't need to care about the product to find the sociology interesting.
ConanRus 4mo ago
[dead]
userbinator 4mo ago
The name itself, Labubu, is obviously chosen for babyish associations. To me, it sounds Filipino. As for the appearance, I think it's a strange mix between cute and grotesque, like a combination of Japanese and Western styles, which might explain its popularity.
- thenthenthen 4mo ago
  Funny-ugly or (Chou Meng): https://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0627/c90000-20333432.html https://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0627/c90000-20333432.html See also “dried rat”: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSq7mjWCqf4/?igsh=MTc0N2E5amowcWF0Zg== https://www.instagram.com/p/DSq7mjWCqf4/?igsh=MTc0N2E5amowcW... Def. more to it than created fad.
foobar1726 4mo ago
An incredible number of words spent while missing the point completely. Labubu is a child substitute. It's a caricature of a mischievous young toddler. Historically, most people in their mid 20s would have already had at least one child. As parenthood gets pushed further back, people struggle to fill that biological yearning. Scroll through the photos and mentally substituite a child for the doll and it will all make sense. Labubu on a keychain? The toddler is with you everywhere you go. Taking your kid to work. Dressing them up for a wedding. Taking fun selifes, visiting the gym, etc etc. No need to pull in COVID19 or the Baudrillard wankery.
RosaIsela 4mo ago
Block) (:****
arjie 4mo ago
These kinds of things are always full of psychoanalysis that I don't think actually qualifies. We've had beanie babies before. My daughter ran around and played on a large one at Taipei Taoyuan Airport and there were a few of them around. We were walking through Hong Kong when there was a big meetup with a giant inflatable orange, but it turned out to be Mojo Carrot - another plushie merch thing. There were a huge number of people gathered there. And I imagine it's not very much different from Pokemon or baseball cards or what have you. My wife and I have a daughter who enjoys the Mojo Carrot and we plan on having another daughter within the next year. We've got fulfilling social lives at home in San Francisco, and when we stayed in Taiwan and Canada for months we had a wonderful time since walking down the street we'd run into a relative or friend. I only say this because the loneliness function doesn't ring true for me. The whole article has a flavour of the adults saying "When you're kids talk about X they're using a code word for ecstasy and they're on drugs! Which the dealers hide in Halloween candy" or whatever. It's dressed up, but really that's all it is. I think it's much simpler. It's just that humans are pretty good at assigning meaning to inanimate objects. The $30 microfiber fleece I bought at Big Lots in 2012 is just a $30 microfiber fleece I bought at Big Lots in 2012. But in 2026, it's the same $30 microfiber fleece that my daughter sleeps on. And now the fact that it's been with me those 14 years from when I came to America to when my daughter came to America means it represents a constant in my life and for that it's nice: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_Last https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_La...
- pryce 4mo ago
  you're right about psychoanalysis being a stretch, but the article seems to be about the odd popularity among Gen Z, not the younger Gen Alpha. Youngest GenZ is 14yrs old; with a lot of this labubu trend, we're talking teens and upwards, which doesn't often seem to be the case with earlier "crazes" pursuing "cuteness"
  - soco 4mo ago
    I know a few proud Labubu wearers and they are all trendy adults 40+. Focus on "trendy": they liked the surprise of it, the signaling of it, and above all the exclusivity. That was 1-2 years ago. Only nowadays it migrated to younger and kids, and said adults are past their phase while their children asked for Labubu presents (the younger would accept knockoffs as well). So in my experience it was totally a fashion fad. Maybe every group/region/society lived it differently?
graphememes 4mo ago
It's gambling, community, status and fun. Some people find it hard to understand that.
easyIce 4mo ago
The labubu cannot just be considered a beanie baby on steroids. It is at the very least a symbol of generational divide. 'On Labubu and the hyperreal' - well, 'hyperreal' may be a stretch, but it is good to see the spirit of labubu being exorcised, a bit.
sbinnee 4mo ago
I learned about this plush toy recently. I am often confused with something else I cannot name though. In Korea where I live it’s so common to have key rings that sometimes are these types of plushes. I am not into Labubu but one thing I want to confess is that I like buying special anime related key rings. I restrain myself every time as much as possible. But sometimes it’s just a futile effort. I already own several key rings piled up in my closet.

90 points by 2earth 4mo ago

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

skyyler 4mo ago
>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.
- yieldcrv 4mo ago
  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/ 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
mockerell 4mo ago
The lack of actual photos of Labubus "in the real" (usually on a keychain at a pant's belt loops) is jarring. The topic of the "performative male" has been regurgitated in social media for quite some time. Still the author ignores that and misses the overall bigger picture. I think any argument made here with regard to Baudrillard's hyperreality could be made about most trends, not only Labubus. Actual insight into the demographic is missing. I prefer the following video which touches on the performative male (it's in German though). Don't get distracted by the title, it's nuanced and offered me some insight into performative behaviors (both the recent manifestation and in general) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFMdKcR824 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFMdKcR824
- faidit 4mo ago
  Hyperreality is a bogus concept altogether, inasmuch as it's supposed to be something new in human history that only happens because of computers. Prehistoric/ancient humans also had fashion trends and myths and symbols and deep context
  - thin_carapace 4mo ago
    computing merely spurred the conceptualization of hyperreality. the original impetus was more along the lines of societal imagery like media, wax museums, or theme parks (as mentioned in the article). computing is not seen in the seminal definition of a map overflowing its territory. this definition does align with integer overflow/underflow but isn't predicated upon the existence of those concepts. therefore the concept of hyperreality may be embodied in many contexts, both prior to and post the advent of computing.
2earth 4mo ago
Hey, op, thanks for the points - a quick reply here: -I'm very out of date, yes...I wrote a lot of notes ages ago and came around to finishing the article a long time later. I also don't use social media for good reasons so am not aiming to provide info that anyone doesn't already have. The article was mostly an excuse to read Baudrillard, and goddamn that is hard work ;-) -i did not miss the point that being trendy attracts others of the same age. As women account for 80% of sales that is clearly not the key cause of the trend but is relevant for some -agree my 'analysis' is lacking, could have conducted interviews, analysed multiple social media platforms....... -the story of 'i saw this dude in a supermarket' is partly used to create a narrative in the article. And, obviously, I am not going to ask a guy 10 years younger than me why he is wearing a toy! -'does he play with it at home' - how could I have been clearer that I doubt he plays with it and that it's for ornament, and possibly to attract girls.

2agshf 4mo ago

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.

miladyincontrol 4mo ago
Huh, most anime cons have horrendous if any marketing. Beyond basic social feeds most of their reach these days are from inviting "influencers" to join in on panels, cosplay judging contests, etc. Which in turn pisses off a lot of the con's main audience as rarely are these influencers sufficiently knowledgable on the topics (ie little knowledge on costume making, barely aware of a given series, etc). Few if any western anime cons have managed to get any sort of meaningful virality in terms of marketing, whether organic or manufactured. And especially little from the labubu type crowd given cons are more male dominated, and labubu far more of a women's interest. The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory.
- thaumasiotes 4mo ago
  > The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory. I have one friend (Chinese living in China) who is a big fan of popmart products. But Labubu is a secondary thing for her. Her passion is Dimoo. https://www.popmart.com/us/pop-now/set/471 https://www.popmart.com/us/pop-now/set/471 Dimoo comes in figurines that you can display in your home. Or on your desk at work, I guess. You can buy third-party accessories for it; my friend has a hollow cupcake with the text GUPCAKE on the wrapper, for your figurine to look like it's bursting out of a cupcake. Or maybe like it lives in one. Another Chinese friend of mine mentioned to me that Popmart figurines were trendy, and the blind boxes made them more fun to purchase. She objected strongly when I characterized this as 赌博 ("gambling"). All of the appeal of these products is the gambling aspect. Labubu isn't even distinctive except in its foreign news coverage.

alephnerd 4mo ago

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.

maxbond 4mo ago
You could apply this same logic to your comment. "If Labubu discourse makes them happy, who cares? It's their life." We should live and let live but that doesn't preclude discussion.
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  Sure, but the article is going from discourse into direct moral judgement. If you write an entire blogpost making a moral judgement on personal choices yeah I'd flame you.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tolerance 4mo ago
    > I'd argue Labubu and TikTok are both significant milestones in Chinese IP and cultural exports [...] Interpret this article as an attempt at criticizing or curtailing this effect instead.
  - maxbond 4mo ago
    I can imagine someone who xollects Labubus feeling insulted or patronized, but they are not lifting a finger to stop them from buying a Labubu. They are just publishing their thoughts. Their thoughts happen to contain moral judgements, that is not a departure from participating in discourse. Frankly it is ridiculous to suggest discussing morality is not engaging in discourse, and this kind of ontological/categorical argument is a way to sidestep the merits of the argument without engaging with them by just labeling them as illegitimate. Generally, I'm just not buying that only some forms of discourse are legitimate, and again, if this article was illegitimate, your comment would be illegitimate for the same reason, so what are we doing here? But I would agree that people who felt judged, slighted, etc. would be free to respond, "flaming" or otherwise. I see no issue with that. (Flaming is probably not the right way to respond but that's a different question.)

freetime2 4mo ago

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.

doctorpangloss 4mo ago
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...
- john_strinlai 4mo ago
  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.
  - alephnerd 4mo ago
    > 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.
    - john_strinlai 4mo ago
      >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 classified as a fad.

the_af 4mo ago

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).

akomtu 4mo ago
The appeal of labubus is simple: they are cute-looking creatures that show their demonic side. Since many people have it, they find labubus cute. Remember the first scene in the movie Constantine, where the woman that's being exorcised looks at her demon in the mirror and finds it cute? That's the same thing.
- the_af 4mo ago
  Haha, I like your take. But Labubus still give me the creeps. Those teeth are not for smiling!

pokememon 4mo ago

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.

nippoo 4mo ago
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...
- NDlurker 4mo ago
  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
- pokememon 4mo ago
  Another similarity is the endless line of credulous people who "have a system".

deleted 4mo ago

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iammjm 4mo ago

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

JMiao 4mo ago

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.

untitled-now 4mo ago

This trend never got me or my kids and i never understood the fuss around it , I mean they are not pretty , they are not playable , or maybe it is because I am just getting old ? Born in 1988 here , maybe I just don't get the new generation .

lwansbrough 4mo ago
They are key-chain Furbies.
- kevindamm 4mo ago
  key chain furby lootboxes
wincy 4mo ago
I was born in 1986 and I got excited finding them in stock for retail price at a store before the holidays, my daughter’s favorite color is blue and they joy she had at pulling a blue one then clipping it to her blue backpack and her calling it her “Lablublu” made me really happy. We got another one for my nephew’s girlfriend for Christmas and she called my girls on FaceTime and thanked them for the present. That felt like a good use of $80 in my opinion.
gwerbin 4mo ago
Remember Beanie Babies?
panarky 4mo ago
> not playable ... My Uber driver, a man about 35 years old, pulled up in a Tesla Model Y with four Lububus superglued to the dash. Seems like some kind of status thing, not a plaything.
ryanmcbride 4mo ago
Hey same age as you here. They fill the same slot as like, troll dolls.
driverdan 4mo ago

wanoir 4mo ago

Once something catches on, jumping on the bandwagon gives people a sense of community. But, the nature of what makes something viral, like how the article mentions pandemic, seems agnostic to what actually becomes viral. Why did labubus go viral and not something else[1]? It’s luck and timing, and we can try to reverse-engineer it, but it’s just being prepared & luck. We’re seeing a survivor bias and thinking the survivor is special inherently. So what enabled Pop Mart to be prepared? [1]Actually, there’s also sneaker hype, meme stocks, etc.

nakedneuron 4mo ago

another example of a fabricated hype. who cares about this?

squidsoup 4mo ago
You don't need to care about the product to find the sociology interesting.

ConanRus 4mo ago

[dead]

userbinator 4mo ago

The name itself, Labubu, is obviously chosen for babyish associations. To me, it sounds Filipino. As for the appearance, I think it's a strange mix between cute and grotesque, like a combination of Japanese and Western styles, which might explain its popularity.

thenthenthen 4mo ago
Funny-ugly or (Chou Meng): https://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0627/c90000-20333432.html https://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0627/c90000-20333432.html See also “dried rat”: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSq7mjWCqf4/?igsh=MTc0N2E5amowcWF0Zg== https://www.instagram.com/p/DSq7mjWCqf4/?igsh=MTc0N2E5amowcW... Def. more to it than created fad.

foobar1726 4mo ago

An incredible number of words spent while missing the point completely. Labubu is a child substitute. It's a caricature of a mischievous young toddler. Historically, most people in their mid 20s would have already had at least one child. As parenthood gets pushed further back, people struggle to fill that biological yearning. Scroll through the photos and mentally substituite a child for the doll and it will all make sense. Labubu on a keychain? The toddler is with you everywhere you go. Taking your kid to work. Dressing them up for a wedding. Taking fun selifes, visiting the gym, etc etc. No need to pull in COVID19 or the Baudrillard wankery.

RosaIsela 4mo ago

Block) (:****

arjie 4mo ago

These kinds of things are always full of psychoanalysis that I don't think actually qualifies. We've had beanie babies before. My daughter ran around and played on a large one at Taipei Taoyuan Airport and there were a few of them around. We were walking through Hong Kong when there was a big meetup with a giant inflatable orange, but it turned out to be Mojo Carrot - another plushie merch thing. There were a huge number of people gathered there. And I imagine it's not very much different from Pokemon or baseball cards or what have you. My wife and I have a daughter who enjoys the Mojo Carrot and we plan on having another daughter within the next year. We've got fulfilling social lives at home in San Francisco, and when we stayed in Taiwan and Canada for months we had a wonderful time since walking down the street we'd run into a relative or friend. I only say this because the loneliness function doesn't ring true for me. The whole article has a flavour of the adults saying "When you're kids talk about X they're using a code word for ecstasy and they're on drugs! Which the dealers hide in Halloween candy" or whatever. It's dressed up, but really that's all it is. I think it's much simpler. It's just that humans are pretty good at assigning meaning to inanimate objects. The $30 microfiber fleece I bought at Big Lots in 2012 is just a $30 microfiber fleece I bought at Big Lots in 2012. But in 2026, it's the same $30 microfiber fleece that my daughter sleeps on. And now the fact that it's been with me those 14 years from when I came to America to when my daughter came to America means it represents a constant in my life and for that it's nice: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_Last https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_La...

pryce 4mo ago
you're right about psychoanalysis being a stretch, but the article seems to be about the odd popularity among Gen Z, not the younger Gen Alpha. Youngest GenZ is 14yrs old; with a lot of this labubu trend, we're talking teens and upwards, which doesn't often seem to be the case with earlier "crazes" pursuing "cuteness"
- soco 4mo ago
  I know a few proud Labubu wearers and they are all trendy adults 40+. Focus on "trendy": they liked the surprise of it, the signaling of it, and above all the exclusivity. That was 1-2 years ago. Only nowadays it migrated to younger and kids, and said adults are past their phase while their children asked for Labubu presents (the younger would accept knockoffs as well). So in my experience it was totally a fashion fad. Maybe every group/region/society lived it differently?

graphememes 4mo ago

It's gambling, community, status and fun. Some people find it hard to understand that.

easyIce 4mo ago

The labubu cannot just be considered a beanie baby on steroids. It is at the very least a symbol of generational divide. 'On Labubu and the hyperreal' - well, 'hyperreal' may be a stretch, but it is good to see the spirit of labubu being exorcised, a bit.

sbinnee 4mo ago

I learned about this plush toy recently. I am often confused with something else I cannot name though. In Korea where I live it’s so common to have key rings that sometimes are these types of plushes. I am not into Labubu but one thing I want to confess is that I like buying special anime related key rings. I restrain myself every time as much as possible. But sometimes it’s just a futile effort. I already own several key rings piled up in my closet.