[alephnerd]

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.

[havblue]

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 have plenty that work fine are a bridge too far though. Because I buy too many of them.

[2earth]

Hey op here. You make a great point regarding marketing and conspicuous consumption - it just wasn't the focus of the article for me to investigate those cultural differences. It would certainly add more context.

I didn't aim to be judgemental and sorry it came off that way, yet, it's difficult to comment on something otherwise (from a personal standpoint). I do think it's wasteful - environment is a focus of my blog.

On using reddit - I don't use any social media, reddit was a quick way to get some pictures to illustrate the points. Obviously, I don't propose this is research grade work.

[maxbond]

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]

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.

[maxbond]

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.)

[Barrin92]

>If you write an entire blogpost making a moral judgement on personal choices

as the article correctly points out the Labubu craze is not a personal choice. It's a social, commercial, public, media driven phenomenon. People didn't organically discover this toy, it's part of a very deliberate marketing and attention effort. And as Ian McGilchrist points out, attention is a moral act:

"Attention is a moral act: it creates, brings aspects of things into being, but in doing so makes others recede. What a thing is depends on who is attending to it, and in what way. The fact that a place is special to some because of its great peace and beauty may, by that very fact, make it for another a resource to exploit, in such a way that its peace and beauty are destroyed. Attention has consequences."

What we as a culture promote, celebrate spend focus, time and resources on, and in turn what we sacrifice for that is an important question and worthy of debate. And thinking it isn't, is literally acting like a child being mad that someone took your toy away.

That we now have a whole array of "disney/labubu adults", perpetually stuck in child-like nostalgia, cozy aesthetics, fleeing from the real world and think that's all beyond criticism and that there's no public dimension to what we consume is just immature.

[eudamoniac]

Well said, and said better than I could have.

[da_tubes]

One out of every 10,000 HN posts is truly enlightening, the other 9999 are just immature drivel that I hate read to pass the time when have insomnia. Today yours is the 10,000th. Very well put.

[tolerance]

> 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.

[nkrisc]

Unfortunately many products that “make people happy” are nothing more than plastic trash pollution. How many resources have been used and how much damage done to ship plastic trash across oceans, that doesn’t even do anything?

> why do you care? It's their life and not yours.

Because ultimately it does affect me, it affects all of us.

[Gigachad]

Consumerism also doesn't really make people happy in the same way alcohol isn't a cure for depression. It's a short term rush that leaves you in a deeper more empty pit after.

[tamimio]

Pretty much, it’s just another form of collecting stuff, this happens to be a trendy thing. Some do with hello kitty, hot wheels, some with music bands, CDs, others with tools, among many, and I am sure who wrote it also collect stuff as well. And yeah, posting few Reddit posts is an indirect way to make fun of something, we all know Reddit is always hyped and cringy about anything, regardless you see it as bad or good, I think the article is trying to portray some picture about who buys or collect X.