‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus
‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus
Wolfram Schultz demonstrated in the 80s that incorrectly predicting a reward stimulates dopamine.
It's the science or neurochemistry underlying bullshit gambling machines, gacha games, and... well... loads of things really.
The sad thing is not people getting addicted. As you said, it's just neurochemistry. You wouldn't blame someone for getting addicted to cigarettes. The sad thing is that people get addicted to idiotic things by mindlessly following celebrities and influencers. "My favorite singer is smoking (carrying a labubu). It's so cool, I have do the same!".
Not quite sure what you're getting at.
Seeing someone you love addicted to something harmful is very sad.
Being addicted to cigarettes or any substance isn't really relevant here.
The point I was trying to make, is that these sales tactics exploit a feature hominids have developed which would have been critical for survival. In situations where a reward is uncertain (hunting) a gland in our brain releases a stimulant to help us stay focused and look for opportunities to improve the outcome.
It's easier to avoid a trap when you know how it works.
Yes I do blame them for their addictions. It's amazing to me how modern young folks can just pass every ounce of blame off into some other problem.
I have to buy the pre processed garbage and walk past the produce section that would make a 1900s king jealous.
It's Amazons fault for selling all this shit and I just couldn't help myself.
The la bubu people made me spend thousands of dollars buying toys.
All of it is just excuses.
It's a loot box, but in reality - instead of digital. Fuck loot boxes and the jerks that try to sell that crap.
If they're reasonably priced, I don't see a problem. Especially to get rid of older merch, or just swag. But turning it into a business for profit is disgusting and screams ripping off the buyer.
I haven't seen or looked into them in a long time, but someone had a shirt, stickers, merch, lanyards, etc, for like $15. I think it was a YouTuber or something, not a subscription bullshit model. Seemed reasonable if it was something you really liked and wanted to support.
I don't get the appeal of digital lootboxes, but physical ones are even worse! Now I need to find space for this useless tat?
I remember getting caught up in the trap of buying shark cards for GTA Online back in the early 2010s, I spent about a thousand SEK on them every month for a few months.
Then I got more and more pissed off, as I realized what a ripoff it was, and one day I uninstalled that shit, I was angry and am so glad that GTA uses soo much space that it takes a long time to download so it was easy to step away.
If it was a phone app that could be reinstalled in 10 sec, I could see myself being stuck for longer
Blaming individuals for systemic issues does not solve systemic issues, it's a way to shift blame away from those in power.
"The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons."
George Orwell, 1984
But it's a conservation worth having to understand how corporations are manipulating the human psyche to identify "whales" and get them to buy this crap.
I'm sorry, but this is a silly take.
This is an issue with choices that individuals are making..
There are so so so many different ways to fuck up your life and they are not all because of "the system".
I could see the argument that underfunding education has led to there being a greater number of people who make poor choices... But that's about it.
Any issue where the answer is "every single individual doing that just needs to do the right thing" is not a valuable take when it comes to actually fixing those systemic issues.
Of course the problem would be solved if people all stopped doing it, we could end all war today if everyone just decided it was bad and refused, but that kind of thinking is never going to fix it because that's not how people work. They respond to the environment, and only by changing that environment can we make people choose differently on an individual level.
I love not spending money on trash.
Amen
This shit should be illegal, same as loot boxes, fifa ultimate team and everything that's in the same vein. No, even more, because it only goes into the landfill and is a waste of everyones ressources.
Baby steps. I just wish sports betting/online gambling were illegal again so maybe I could see a commercial for Doritos or literally anything other than sports betting, insurance, and pharmaceuticals during my football games.
Everyone saying loot box toys should be illegal should ask themselves if Magic: The Gathering should be illegal too. Or baseball cards. "Blind box"/"blind packs" have existed for decades. It's only a problem now because they're toys instead of cards? Or were they always a problem? Please clarify.
I personally think Labubus are fucking ugly as hell. But we have blind bags in the anime fandom, pretty much any big franchise gets them. SPYxFAMILY, My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man... probably Dandadan and Demon Slayer, though I haven't seen those yet. Anyway, you buy a bag and there's a figure inside. The one you probably want is rare. It's nice with SPYxFAMILY because Yor (the mother) is the rare one, not Anya (sort of the mascot of the show, the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old telepath with the pink hair and horns who is just so friggin' cute). If they made Anya rare, the fans might be in trouble, but it's just the ones horny for Yor that end up wading through a pile of Loid (the dad), Anya, and Becky (the friend) to get to the one hot chick they want. And that's what it seems to be, the hot chick the horny young guys are after is the rare one. If you like the cute character or one of the guys, you'll probably get your figure or you can trade for it, or buy it off someone who doesn't want it. Then again, if you're horny and not dumb, you can spend the money you're spending on blind bags on a figure that has more detail.
But again: baseball cards have existed for decades. Where was the outrage then? And baseball is just as dumb to a lot of Labubu fans as Labubu is to jocks. What's the diff?
Yeah, Japanese media really goes hard into this blind box merch. Be it these Figurines, Gachapon machines or the new years tradition of Fukubukuro, buying without knowing what you'll get is culturally much more normalized there.
It's all unregulated gambling as far as I care, ban it all. Be it from there or homegrown, preying on the gambling addicts is just scummy.
it’s all gambling and slot machines, roulette, and the lottery are all legal - probably far more damaging too
To me, it is a false equivalence. Sport cards are based on people. Though I'd give you, they could just be bound by team and year instead of being random. But like, when Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card came out, no one could have guessed what would happen there.
And MTG is a game that's constantly evolving. Here, I think the randomness was a planned mechanic that helps keep the game balanced and interesting (or it did like 30 years ago when I played). Might be a different story now, but doing a broken meta deck just was far less likely. Getting an assortment of colors encourages, especially new players, to try different approaches since each color (again, at least in my day) plays very differently.
But these blind box things are largely made to just be a fad. They're created, hoping they'll catch on with a demographic, to generate money... and landfill waste. You can go into a card shop and buy/trade/sell sports cards, or game cards (MTG/Pokemon). After the hype for these blind box toys, there's no more demand. They create scarcity for the sake of driving sales. They employ psychologists for this type of stuff. These aren't like the coin machines back in the day, where you could actually see the toys. They know that if you could see what was there, sales would tank.
Sports cards are a piece of history, a physical note of what was for a given player at a specific time. MTG/Pokemon are games. In both cases, you could just collect, but there's more to them. But with the blind box toys, they're just physical loot boxes. They exist only to be collected. Much like Beanie Babies back in the day. Or literally anything that's ever called it's a collector's item or an investment... It's just garbage. But now, they add in a known addiction mechanic to it, and target kids and AGGRESSIVELY advertise. You can call them all dumb, sure, that's fine, I haven't collected MTG or baseball cards in 30 years because I share a similar sentiment. And I'm not ignoring the tactics, the card games, or sports cards also employ... I do think they could change, and should change, but they won't. But I believe they are less predatory, but not above criticism or review themselves.
In 5 years, is anyone going to care about a Lububu? No. Does anyone care about the crap my mom collected in her youth, no. But the things she liked to collect, when she walked into a shop, she could see what they had and buy exactly what she wanted. No tactics, just dumb things she liked. Same when I collected Amiibo. I could see what I was buying.
I'm hoping I'm making sense. Just because one thing is kinda sketchy, doesn't mean it's fine for another thing to be completely sketchy because "people are just having fun". It's not fun when someone goes into financial ruin and you pivot to "well, that was your choice," because that's now how addiction works.
Labubus make as much sense as crypto currency.
Alright so because my only-fans revolves around jerking off on a figurine of an innocent assassin-milf suddenly I deserve to be economically exploited? Try not to yuck any more yums on your way out.
Also, yeah fuck loot boxes I don't dance that jig.
I think this every time with gaming lootbox regulations as well. Like honestly, yes regulate it but where's the age check for buying pokemon cards?
There isn't one. Certainly never has been with baseball cards. It's all the same though. Except you can't win anything with collectible cards. Maybe you get one that's worth something down the road... IF you took care of it.
I'm with you, let people have fun. Just like with anything else it's all about moderation and self control.
I bought way too man Pokemon cards, Crazy Bones, and Pogs back in my day to talk shit now, and I had fun doing it too.
idk, I'd say it's more of a problem now because people have easier ways to liquidate their wallets for those sorts of trash purchases, without realising it on a physical / rational level at the time. Like when you had to go in to a store to buy those blind-box card games, it took effort to be an addict, so much that it was more a hobby.
Now, someone's kid can accidentally wrack up thousands on a credit card online buying lootbox shit.
Buying a pack of Magic the Gathering isn't arguably different from buying a scratch ticket. Most packs are worth less once you open them and sometimes are worth nothing once the contents are revealed.
Edit: Fuck the downvotes, I maintain there's a significant difference between coloured plastic/paper with no game attached, and a game you need materials for. Or are we lumping D&D rulebooks and wargaming miniatures in here with Labubus too?
While most of your post is spot-on, I don't think Magic: The Gathering belongs here. Magic is a (fun, to us) game that I've played with my friends for decades. The cards also have nice art on them most of the time. People can and do totally spend as much on Magic as the other fandoms listed, but what game are Labubus for, or baseball cards? Thus, I feel M:TG is the odd one out in this list.
I said Magic: The Gathering but I was thinking of Weiss Schwarz, a less popular card battle game that uses anime characters. Sometimes called Waifu Wars because, well, waifus. Part of the gamble there was that the game would last, whereas Magic was a more established property.
I didn't mean to shit on Magic. I got plenty to not like about it. When it came out, Wizards of the Coast was competing with TSR (who made D&D). Wizards ended up buying TSR out entirely. But, I think they've been good to the franchise, so I've cooled off on Magic. Even tried it. Got a starter set five, six years ago, tried playing, I was running forest or whatever you call it (all my lands were trees/forest, so I ran the related cards). Never really went anywhere. But I'll tell ya what I love about Magic... the troll cards. So I was playing Weiss one day, guy comes up and asks for a high five. I bet you know where this is going — He Who Is Left Hanging or something like that. Had I denied him, he would have gotten some bonus in combat? And the card that forces you to set the whole game aside and run a sub-game out of your discards? Love it. So aside from the nice artwork, there are some really interesting game mechanics. I kinda wanted to get into Commander, but didn't really have the patience/drive at that point. I know a guy with like a dozen Commander decks and we played a game, it was fun.
The similarity is the mystery box nature of them, not what's intended to be done with them.
Are D&D rulebooks mysteries when you buy them, or do you know it's the player's handbook before purchase?
And btw you're not better than other collectors simply because you play a little game with your collection, you're the same as any philatelist.
FOMO and gambling. What could go wrong 🤦♂️
I don't understand this. With $1300 can't they just buy the thing they are hoping to get? Is a big part of this paying for the thrill of winning, but never experiencing that?
As they say in the article, it's gambling. Gambling is inherently irrational.
Same way people won't pay 5$ to take a 50% chance to earn 6$, but some will consider a 0.00005% chance to earn 6,000,000$. If the extreme's are worth enough, some people just focus on that instead of considering the odds.
Yeah I think some people just can't help spending money on little dopamine hits. I don't think there's anything you can really do about it. Even if you ban blind boxes/loot boxes entirely they'll just find something else, or pick some random product like water bottles or beanie babies and decide they're 'rare' or whatever that was about.
it's basicly gambling… just like loot boxes…
Beanie babies all over again but twisted up to make them seem new. Save them to cash in for your retirement. /s
I think the arguments about direct psychological harm are a bit overblown. A bipolar person, like the one interviewed, who's buying a bunch of these blind boxes because they're manic likely isn't experiencing suicidal ideation because of the blind boxes but the bipolar depression on the other side. Sure you'll see correlation there, but not causation. That said, a business making big profits on poor decisions made by manic folks is intrinsically exploitative.
Because its gambling
You can win in gambling, there's no winning here.
As soon as you start winning at the casino, they boot you out.
If you figure out at way to outprofit a GACHA game, the admins ban you.