6 ms·

The fall of Labubus and the mush of modern internet trends

• rvz 1y ago
  Labubus were always a cringeworthy fad, equivalent to the modern day beanie babies. Zero value, fuelled and pushed by celebrities far and wide and they are not even rare to begin with.
  • MengerSponge 1y ago
    But what if a beanie baby was also a random drop? Then they'd be faddish and addictive!
    • Terr_ 1y ago
      I hope some future society is almost unanimously appalled at what we today treat as "normal" for advertising and gambling dark-patterns.
      • erulabs 1y ago
        "Look how slowly they take from the weak to give to the powerful. Amateurs!"
        • Terr_ 1y ago
          "This is ancient Earth's most foolish program. Why does Ross, the largest Friend, not simply eat the other five?" -- Lurr, Ruler of planet Omicron Perseii 8
  • SchemaLoad 1y ago
    Maybe I wasn't in the circle enough, but I felt like there was never even the pretence of resell value or "investing". But that they were more like wealth flex fashion items.
  • jryle70 1y ago
    So which hobby do you have, and what are you into?
• ginko 1y ago
  > The reality is that the internet has become decentralized; rather than people staying in one gigantic, unified group with shared trends and moments like they used to, users go their separate ways, with social media algorithms providing hyper-curated content that pushes users toward smaller groups with niche shared interests. Huh, this feels exactly backwards. The web used to be WAY more decentralized.
  • bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > Huh, this feels exactly backwards. The web used to be WAY more decentralized 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
    • SchemaLoad 1y ago
      To be fair, the raw feed is absolute slop. If you ever look at youtube without an account or cookies, there's almost nothing worth watching. Youtube has become the biggest social media on the planet by showing people stuff they actually like rather than whats hot. 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.
      • hn_acc1 1y ago
        Agreed on the last paragraph. When I grew up (long time ago), almost everyone saw the most recent <kids show> because there were only 3 or 4 on after school, and generally only one targeted towards each major peer group. 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..
• tofuahdude 1y ago
  > it’s clear that Labubus are on the downswing 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.
  • SchemaLoad 1y ago
    They have just started showing up in stores around me. I can believe they have fallen off social media feeds while still growing in sales silently as people get them to put on bags or gift rather than post on tiktok.
    • lmm 1y ago
      Most sales are made on the way down, that's the case for any trend.
    • conductr 1y ago
      My 7 year old son just recently got a few keychain ones as birthday party favors bag gifts. Basically one of the lowest form of toy for fashion, but very good for consistency in sales. He’s also rolling his eyes at anything “6 7” related after a month or two of leaning in hard on it, the parents ruined that one I think.
  • tokioyoyo 1y ago
    The social commentary i’ve read is that some fast trends are made and followed by the “top trend makers”. Then they fade out in those circles, and dwindle to “common people”. But at that point, it’s not really cool or status symbol. 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”.
    • rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
• tracerbulletx 1y ago
  Maybe things go a little faster now, but doesn't seem too different from Pogs, or Beanie Babies or any other trend in a long line of them.
  • m0llusk 1y ago
    Labubus got extra kick from being gambling also. Many were sold in boxes without labels or with minimal labels that listed possible contents. That makes the actual product into more of a loot box kind of thing. That might have contributed to the speed of the trend passing.
    • firecall 1y ago
      I recently learned that many collectables are sold this way! Labubus just happened to get a wide appeal and had a moment in the US for some reason..
      • tourmalinetaco 1y ago
        They are and I hate it. It‘s bad enough with trading cards, but now every single collectible is employing gacha mechanics and it’s frustrating.
        • throwaway48476 1y ago
          "Everything is gambling now"
          • georgefrowny 1y ago
            Protip: If you call it an investment, it becomes not only respectable but it is in fact the responsible thing to do for your customer's financial security.
        • eru 1y ago
          For eg Magic cards, a secondary market formed very quickly where you could buy exactly what you wanted.
• miladyincontrol 1y ago
  Im not so sure, the big "fall" of labubus so far was for flippers and their profits, Popmart on the other hand has been selling more than ever with their restocks still selling out almost instantly. 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.
• mikepurvis 1y ago
  Adam Conover argued that the craze is an indicator of economic nihilism, that people who can’t afford these things buy them anyways as an expression of hopelessness that they’ll ever have a pathway to legitimately changing their station: https://youtu.be/l1O6bN2zWSM?si=QGd51tfmh8lOjezk https://youtu.be/l1O6bN2zWSM?si=QGd51tfmh8lOjezk
  • quickthrowman 1y ago
    That accurately describes the one person I know in real life who collects Labubu.
• elyobo 1y ago
  They're falling already? Excellent, I was hoping I could get to this point without ever having to figure out exactly what they were.
  • fijiaarone 1y ago
    Do they have real beans in them?
• hustwindmaple 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • sho_hn 1y ago
    Why does it matter that it's Chinese? The designer, BTW, was born in Hong Kong long before it was handed back to the CCP, spent his childhood from age 6 onward in the Netherlands, and now lives in Belgium. It was originally sold by a Hong Kong company in Taiwan before the product line moved to China's Pop Mart. The character is inspired by Northern mythology illustration books he read as a kid. I'm not into Labubu and don't buy stuff like that, but that a global fad has thoroughly blended West/East origins seems rather appropriate and very fine.
• morkalork 1y ago
  Didn't even make it to the holiday season boxing day shopping rush, talk about lack of stamina smh
  • Propelloni 1y ago
    I never even heard of them, which I take for a good sign.
• dluan 1y ago
  As a subculture dedicated to being in the know on certain things, HN commenters purposely showing theyre being out of touch on this specific subculture is pretty funny. 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.
  • mc32 1y ago
    The source of the story isn't HN commenters though and it expresses the same sentiment. So, you want to lay blame blame the non-HN publication.
• danielodievich 1y ago
  This summer I walked main Newbury street (one of main shopping street in Boston) and parked on it was a sweet, sweet looking brand new McLaren (had to go on their web site to identify from my picture, I think it was an Artura Spider) in a very classy matte-black paint, with custom license plates saying LABUBU. A very incongruous combination between what that car is and the plates it was sporting. I did not observe a labubu hanging on the rear view mirror which I expected should have been present.
  • Avicebron 1y ago
    First time running into a Chinese undergrad?
  • jacquesm 1y ago
    I don't think that is incongruous at all.
  • PaulRobinson 1y ago
    And yet here you are talking about it. And I'm sure if I go digging into Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, reddit, whatever, I'm going to find photos, videos, discussion, reactions. Have you noticed that most adverts are a bit weird? They have some absurdist element to them, to make them more memorable, to hold a little more space in your brain. At the simplest level it's a jingle. At the most nuanced it's two relatable people sat in a kitchen talking about life insurance in a way that never happens in real life. A car with a meme license plate sits on that spectrum. It's all about attention, and here we are, proving it works.
  • rsynnott 1y ago
    Clearly that car simply belonged to the CEO of Pop Mart.
• conductr 1y ago
  I think this speaks more to using the trending TikToks of the world as a gauge for what is popular. It’s not a great gauge. Just because the trend there is waning, IRL this toy/brand has a huge opportunity to stick around for awhile. It’s still selling plenty, has a platform to do more, etc. Just because people aren’t posting it, or because the algorithm isn’t surfacing those posts, doesn’t mean the trend is dead.
  • fijiaarone 1y ago
    When a trend only reaches mainstream awareness as a mockery, like labubu, it’s not destined to last long.
    • randerson 1y ago
      And yet, Sony Pictures is working on a Labubu movie. The meme-fuelled peak may be over, but the final death of the labubu is a long way in the future.
      • bcoates 1y ago
        Sony released an angry birds movie more than 5 years after peak interest, they're a trailing indicator
    • conductr 1y ago
      I think that’s how it reached mainstream awareness for adults. Kids still are into it to some degree. I’m not sure how much staying power it has, I just know it’s not really dead.
• yanhangyhy 1y ago
  It feels like the article doesn’t really say anything. The popularity of Labubu is something worth analyzing, and many similar phenomena have existed in the past or will appear in the future. But Labubu also has its unique aspects; it’s just that the article’s author wasn’t capable of properly studying what makes Labubu distinctive. 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.
• shmatt 1y ago
  Labubus peaking and falling doesnt really say much about scarcity and trends. Labubu is made by a public company, who's stock skyrocketed, and essentially decided to go all in and mass produce to meet the popularity 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
  • f33d5173 1y ago
    That might be true of handbags, I am doubtful it is true of dolls. A handbag is a necessary accessory and has been for decades. The popular brands grew their way there slowly over many years. A company that explodes into popularity suddenly for a product people never knew they needed is likely to only stay in the spotlight for a short while and is best served taking advantage as best they can.
    • takinola 1y ago
      I agree that cashing in quickly before the fad faded was probably the right move for Labubu. However, there’s no world where Birkins (or other designer handbags) are a “necessary accessory”.
      • f33d5173 1y ago
        A handbag is necessary for many people to carry their thing. Whether they choose a more or less expensive item to fulfill that function is a separate question.
• ndespres 1y ago
  The article is too optimistic in its view of how short-form video allows everyone to partake in these trends. In an attention-driven culture where nothing cool can be kept a secret, as the very essence of coolness would be defined not by the thing itself but by how many people watched your tiktok about it, you end up with these nonsense low-quality “viral trends” that everyone is talking about because everyone is talking about it. Very little of it is actually good. So what then, if it’s able to spread faster than ever before? It stinks!
• protocolture 1y ago
  Thats interesting if true, but my cause to doubt it is that I have seen shops catering to the labubu format, that is the expensive mystery box toy, popping up with heaps of varied stock. In fact they dont even seem to center the labubus. Labubu might go away but I think its cultural significance of tiktok 200 dollar toy unboxing is going the distance.
• ImPleadThe5th 1y ago
  > The reality is that the internet has become decentralized; rather than people staying in one gigantic, unified group with shared trends and moments like they used to, users go their separate ways, with social media algorithms providing hyper- curated content that pushes users toward smaller groups with niche shared interests. 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.
  • darthoctopus 1y ago
    Indeed, I find it very hard to take the article seriously given that every one of the notionally decentralised trends it's described has propagated on a very small handful of highly centralised platforms. For that matter, it's very difficult for me to imagine how these trends might have spread in the first place without access to large-audience virality directed by algorithmic recommendations precisely enabled by such severe centralisation.
  • emblaegh 1y ago
    The point the article is trying to make is that Labubus were an abnormally short lived fad, and that’s their attempt at an explanation. 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.
    • Ekaros 1y ago
      I think viral marketing has limits. There is only so many times you want to see the same thing. 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.
    • rsynnott 1y ago
      > The point the article is trying to make is that Labubus were an abnormally short lived fad Is that actually true, though? I feel like furbies, say, were if anything a bit shorter. Possibly people were expecting Labubus to be like beanie babies, but really beanie babies were the exception in lasting abnormally long for a toy fad.
• dreamcompiler 1y ago
  I started seeing the word "Labubus" everywhere a few months ago and thought "Are we still talking about those red-soled high heels? Weren't they popular like 10 years ago?" That's how in touch with fashion I am.
  • Freak_NL 1y ago
    A Labubu in Louboutin heels sounds just like the kind of mash-up which would at least sell a couple of T-shirts. (T-shirt punch line: Louboubou. Coming to fast-fashion textile dumps in Lagos soon.)
• oytis 1y ago
  > The reality is that the internet has become decentralized; rather than people staying in one gigantic, unified group with shared trends and moments like they used to, users go their separate ways, with social media algorithms providing hyper-curated content that pushes users toward smaller groups with niche shared interests. Isn't it weird to describe as a societal or cultural trend something that can be changed with a pull request?
• ensocode 1y ago
  It feels like the article’s point about the “mush” of modern internet trends maps surprisingly well to the IT world. We see the same dynamic with tech stacks: rapid micro-trends, constant novelty, and a tendency to adopt tools because they’re circulating in the feed rather than because they solve a real problem. 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.
• nicbou 1y ago
  I found the whole thing so depressing from an environmental perspective. A completely pointless and manufactured hype cycle to push something with no utility whatsoever. Now some factories in China are pumping out labubu clones that will end up in the bargain bin of a dollar store. It makes any effort to reduce my environmental footprint feel so pointless. Why even bother?
  • Tarsul 1y ago
    Don't do it for the world. Do it for your own clear conscience. That way you can always say to yourself: At least I did my part (even though it's clear everyone can do more, but perfectionism doesn't help either. Personally I am content if my climate impact is better than 70-80% of my cohort.).
    • piyuv 1y ago
      Also good for your overall mental health. Consumerism is a disease. Only way to beat the hedonic treadmill is to step off it.
• toto 1y ago
  Pokémon is also a high volume business but is reaching 30 years in 2026. Keeping alive a trend for so long is impressive. Jean-Claude Biver (watch personality) famously said: « people want exclusivity, so you must always keep the customer hungry and frustrated ».
  • brazzy 1y ago
    Pokémon is not a trend, it's a franchise. PARTS of it were at one point or another a trend.
• st0ffregen 1y ago
  somebody wants to buy my labubu? I'm giving a 20% discount. Anyone? Please?
• Havoc 1y ago
  Don’t really care for it. Bit like the Stanley cup craze. But if it makes someone happy then sure whatever. Crazes like this have been a thing for centuries and wouldn’t treat too much into it re internet
• fhennig 1y ago
  > And yet, as cringeworthy as the modern internet may be, it will never go back to the way it was before. Interesting take. What exactly is meant with "the way it was before", and when was that?
• benbojangles 1y ago
  It talks about decentralization as though all those cookies/trackers/analytics & data care one hoof about which website you think you are decentralizing yourself from the next one. THEY ALL KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND THEY ARE ALL STEERING YOU
• misja111 1y ago
  The writing style of the article reeks of AI. It seems to tell a lot at first but at closer inspection tells almost nothing.
  • RobotToaster 1y ago
    That's just how modern journalists write, they need a minimum word count to insert ads, the AI probably learnt it from them.
  • zonghao 1y ago
    agree
• serf 1y ago
  Labubu , to me, was nothing more than a consumer spending false-scarcity based trend exactly like Beanie Babies, but even more short-lived. It told me nothing unique about humans or internet trends -- these kind of things seem to pop up regardless of the favored media at the moment.
• lbu 1y ago
  I had no idea what a Labubus was before I came to this article, and I still don’t.
• stopthe 1y ago
  The author (if there was any) stops short of admitting that it is yet another product that was heavily promoted via so-called influencers and failed to reach escape velocity and sell on itself. Like, nobody remembered Clubhouse already in 2021.
• JohnMakin 1y ago
  Looks like it's just an opportunity to buy! /s
• BDMug 1y ago
  [dead]