
Fidget Spinners: Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful - lunaru
https://betterthansure.com/the-ecommerce-of-fidget-spinners-why-being-interesting-can-do-more-for-your-brand-than-being-f059dbb8c17b
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mhalle
Seems like lots of people dismiss spinners as a fad or silly. They are a fad.
But I celebrate the fact that they are generally simple mechanical objects
that feel good in the hand. Not a doll, not a cheap molded plastic toy (ugh,
Shopkins), not an electronic lump of stuff that will eventually leech into a
landfill. (Yes, I know there are LED spinners, but that has it's own simple
coolness.)

I have enjoyed having ball bearings, bearing races, and random bike parts to
play with over the years - I don't see this as all that different in concept.

School disruption is another matter. Our kids can only share them at recess.

~~~
Kluny
Yeah, I figure the faddishness will fade in about 6 months, as it normally
does, but I'm planning to get one myself. I keep a piece of bike chain on my
keychain, a plain silver ring on one finger, and a bracelet on one wrist all
for the purpose of having some metal to play with during slow meetings. A
fidget spinner will fit right in. Actually, can I get a recommendation? I want
one that's solid machined aluminum, minimal plastic, and on the smaller side
(I have little fingers).

~~~
gm-conspiracy
Winter will end the fad - mittens, gloves, and cold weather.

~~~
coldtea
Not all places have winter with mittens, gloves and cold weather.

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ilaksh
Its not really an interesting product. Its a fad. The article really doesn't
explain why fads happen.

I think humans are just dumb animals at heart who like shiny things and
automatically copy what other humans are doing without even realizing it.

~~~
cortesoft
Our ability to copy others is a sign of intelligence, not stupidity.

~~~
justinjlynn
copying others is a sign of intelligence, being unwilling to choose something
of value to copy is a sign of a lesser intelligence

~~~
amelius
IMHO it is more about values, and not so much about intelligence.

~~~
Neliquat
While somewhat unique, the two are not seperable.

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jhulla
This is a great article about fidget spinners:

[https://geeksdistrict.com/inside-the-fidget-spinner-gold-
rus...](https://geeksdistrict.com/inside-the-fidget-spinner-gold-rush/)

"Over the last month or so, the spinning toys have gone from an elementary-
school fad to a nationwide obsession. Unlike many other toy crazes, fidget
spinners offer a wild-wild west for global capitalists looking to cash in on
the craze. For one, there are no patents or trademarks to worry about
infringing, so any factory can spew them out by the thousands. They're cheap
to make and buy, so there's little risk in investing in, say, 500 or 1,000 of
them. And unlike hoverboards, the craze that Chinese factories were cranking
out last year, they aren't going to explode or catch fire.

"I'm selling a couple thousand a week just walking around and asking stores if
they them""

~~~
hodgesrm
This looks like a product where some investor will end up with a few dozen
railway cars full of unsaleable fidget spinners when the excitement dies down.

Some VCs I know had a similar problem with garden gnomes a few years back.
They used a few for office decorations and probably buried the rest.

~~~
DanBC
But unlike other fads the bearings have some minimal value, and fidget
spinners are easy to breakdown into a pile of plastic and a pile of bearings.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
This is what I am waiting for - an abundant, inexpensive supply of bearings
for projects.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They're £3 (GBP) on eBay for a set of 4 scooter bearings. Which suggests
they're pennies on AliBaba, perhaps cheaper without a (fake?) ABEC rating.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
I don't want to wait 4 weeks to receive them, though.

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legopelle
I'm halfway through the article and still have no idea what a fidget spinner
is.

~~~
Rotonde
It's another silly fad toy object that you spin in your hand. A very
successfully marketed one, that is.

~~~
ChrisClark
Marketed by who though? Like the article says, there is no main company or
companies behind this. Just lots of random products cheap from China being
resold.

~~~
gambler
I wouldn't be surprised if some smart folks in China launched a covert social
media campaign to sell this stuff. You don't need much (aside from money and
some dedication) to create a fad these days, as long as it's something simple
and doesn't require extensive concentration to grasp.

~~~
bitexploder
They have been popular with folks that owned 3D printer for a while. It could
be something simple like a critical mass of 3D printers being reached. My wife
was printing these for fun a few months before it all exploded.

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skraelingjar
It's definitely a fad, they rose along with the 'fidget cube' from the EDC
(every day carry) community. I found these over a year ago on Thingiverse.
Since then I've made ~$400 selling 3D printed frames to the local skate shop
(because they have the bearings).

Once the kids heard about it, the spinners flew off the shelves. They were
also popular with people who have ADHD and those in rehab, giving them
something to do with their hands.

When my printer broke a month ago they didn't wait for me to fix it and bought
their own. They now have an order of over 200 units and nobody that knows CAD
design... guess who they called for help.

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vsloo
My brother in law bought one the moment he saw one. Returned it for a
different color. Now he has 9. It's been 4 days. These things are definitely a
phenomenon and the eCommerce world is going crazy.

~~~
psyc
My 45-year-old brother-in-law literally just showed up with a bag of these 5
minutes ago.

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edanm
I've been in the "fidget" and specifically "spinner" community for a long
time, well over a year at this point.

It's funny, but all these articles and all these posts are completely missing
the story of the _actual_ rise of the spinners. That's too bad - it's a good
story.

These spinners first started getting popular online in a community driven
mostly through Facebook/Instagram, and where adults collected metal spinners
that cost in the $50-$200. This had been going on for about a year and a half,
all started by a single toy from a single maker that was endlessly expanded on
(or "copied", possibly).

The plastic spinners that all the kids are buying are one offshoot (obviously
the largest) of this community.

(This is hinted at in the Nerdwriter video).

All in all, it was an amazing experience to watch this group grow into this
global craze.

~~~
beaconstudios
interesting! Could you expand on what this original spinner was, and what led
to it drawing a community of its own? Especially given that it sounds pretty
expensive.

~~~
DanBC
This is the actual original:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914)

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emef
Anybody tried a fidget spinner? My wife has adhd and likes the idea but we
haven't ordered one. Are these interesting for 5 minutes and then shelved? or
do they have some lasting appeal?

~~~
pitt1980
My mother in law suggested that we get one to see if our daughter will do that
instead of sucking her thumb when tired

Other night she had thumb in her mouth, fidget spinner in the other hand, so
I'm chalking that up as a fail

They're pretty cheap ($5 or so), so it's a pretty low cost experiment if your
wife is curious

~~~
vsloo
Give her 2 to play with. Will turn pro.

~~~
bykovich2
she's gonna figure out how to use her toes

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aesthetics1
These have started showing up all over our office. Kind of like a stress ball,
but louder.

~~~
vikiomega9
They do seem to be showing up. Do you think there's a common advertising
source?

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blhack
I HIGHLY recommend that anybody who has family or friends who are interested
in these things (kids i mean) just take a few minutes and build one. They're
super cheap, and super easy.

Go to your friendly local makerspace if you don't have the tools to do it
yourself.

~~~
lunaru
Do you have instructions for this that you've used with success?

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Step 1: Drill a hole in the centre-of-mass of any object/material.

Step 2: Insert a bearing of the correct size, aiming for an interference-fit.
If the hole was too big, apply glue.

~~~
cortesoft
Step 1: Build a fidget spinner

~~~
celticninja
Step 0: create the universe

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tunesmith
Just the thought of playing with one of these makes me feel anxious - they're
supposed to _reduce_ anxiety?

~~~
falcolas
Works for me. Not enough mass to hurt anything, but enough to play with
precession. I like mine.

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jhoechtl
Came here and thought this is more of a discussion about human behavior and
self-portrayal:

> Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful

Because that is what I witness regularly.

~~~
schtitt
Have you found any good ways to mentally deal with this arguably sucky part of
human nature, assuming you belong to the part of humanity that would rather be
useful than interesting? For me it's a daily source of consternation and I
would like to develop a more healthy way of dealing with it.

~~~
throwanem
No reason you can't be both.

~~~
schtitt
In a given person's life, there might be plenty of reasons why they can't be
one or the other, but that's just me being a pedant.

However, as I see it you can choose to invest time and resources into being
'useful' or 'interesting', but the one will usually divert said time and
resources away from the other. E.g. you can do deep science, and help the
scientific progress of humankind, or you can be 'interesting' like Nye or
Tyson.

What really gets be is how fame, or 'interestingness' at times cloud our
judgment so that the individuals who focus on that path are more recognized
(often for much less actual useful work) than the sticklers who are actually
doing most of the useful work.

~~~
throwanem
You're talking about fame. I wasn't; I took "interesting" to mean "not
boring".

~~~
schtitt
I think much of the original point still applies: Should I put mental
resources into being perceived as 'not boring' or should I disregard all that
and focus on doing what I do well? Maybe I catch a lucky break and somehow
just have an interesting personality without having to do much, but then
again, maybe not.

Recognition of one's work is a lot of the time a function of how 'not boring'
you are, as well. Thus, if you do excellent work but don't advertise it, the
next promotion will very likely not go to you.

This is, IMO, an inherent weakness in how humans perceive the world and I'm
not looking for a fix, just a way to cope with it, since the injustice of it
all sometimes really gets me down.

~~~
throwanem
What gets you down isn't the injustice of it, if such there be - it isn't fair
that some people are better at a given thing than others, but "fair" is
something no one ever promised any of us life would be. What gets you down is
that you can see how it would be a useful skill to have, but you don't want to
invest the effort required to develop it. That's an internal contradiction,
and those are uncomfortable to carry around. Either developing the skill, or
abandoning the desire to have it, will resolve the contradiction. Just pick
one and do it. You'll be fine.

And it's not even as though the skill is all that hard to develop! The first
thing to know is that, to a good first approximation and in the general case,
nobody in a social setting cares one way or the other about anyone else, so
your actual _personality_ doesn't really come into play here. What matters
instead is that you be enjoyable to socialize with, and that's not a matter of
personality but rather one mainly of wit, good cheer, and the ability to carry
your share of a conversation. If you happen to have the kind of personality to
which these traits come naturally, great! If you don't, they can be developed
through observation, trial, error, and practice.

Worked for me, at any rate, and I've been a strong introvert all my life.
Being so, I remain picky about when and how I socialize, because it costs me
energy to do so and I don't always enjoy it - but socialization is a necessary
aspect of full membership in a social species, and unless you can make a go of
ornamental hermitage (good luck!), it's worth developing the skills to make
the most of those social occasions in which you do necessarily participate.

~~~
schtitt
I appreciate you taking the time to write this, and for bringing to my
attention the concept of an ornamental hermit - that's today's 'huh' moment!

Just for the record, it sounds like I am in quite the same situation as
yourself (introvert but with acquired social skills) so it's not all that bad,
and part of my lament is actually for those who have less of a disposition for
this than myself.

But from time to time there will be people who have more developed social
skills but less developed 'deep knowledge' about what they're doing than
myself, and seeing that the world in general recognizes them more than me (or
people even more able than me) _for doing things that I do better_ smarts.
(Especially when they're really dickheads in disguise ;) )

A 'solution' would be to go even more all in to be even better socially, but,
like you, it costs me energy to do so, and it's hard not to feel like other
people for whom this is a natural skill will _always_ have the advantage here.
But it's even more - it's a matter of principle. I don't want to prostitute
myself to get recognition, to put it bluntly.

And I guess that leads to the conclusion that I should then abandon the desire
for recognition, since I'm not willing to accept the alternative. Which I am
trying, I guess, but which is quite hard, and which leads me to such questions
as the one that started this thread..

Again, thanks for giving your thoughts, it's good to get the truth straight
now and then!

------
quietplatypus
Fidget spinners are genuinely useful though---arguably even more useful than
the other items on the list, for their ADHD/anxiety-reducing properties plus
portability.

The only way you can do noticeably better is direct, hands-free brain
stimulation. The fidget cube is also such an object, but it is MUCH more
complex and hence vulnerable to be put down due to a competing distraction.

~~~
Neeek
Wait, I thought the cube was just a bunch of interesting things to fiddle
with, there's no problem solving element to it is there? And when I say
interesting, I really just mean different switches with a satisfying tactile
response. I fail to see how it's any more complicated to operate...

------
zanecodes
At the risk of sounding like a fiddly-toy-elitist, I have to say that I prefer
practice butterfly knives. There's a wide variety of tricks to learn and it
takes some hand-eye coordination. Of course, they're also louder, and tend to
freak people out until I point out that it's not sharp (and probably a while
afterwards too).

~~~
gm-conspiracy
Do you have any good links for learning the tricks?

I saw the practice knifes are about $10 on Amazon.

------
pmoriarty
My barber gave me one to play with as I sat down for my haircut the other day.
I was eager to try it out, but once I did, I didn't really see the appeal,
apart from a cute name. This thing is going to go the way of the hula hoop.

~~~
krallja
> This thing is going to go the way of the hula hoop.

Still being sold in every big-box retailer 60 years after it was invented?

~~~
pferde
Being stocked, maybe. Being sold, I'm not so sure.

------
bsder
I feel so out of touch.

I'll just sit over here popping my bubble wrap.

------
deckarep
These things also make great office toys, give aways at conferences and are
conversation starters. Plus they can be branded as well. Here is one that I
designed to promote the Go programming language:
[https://twitter.com/deckarep/status/864658318479851520](https://twitter.com/deckarep/status/864658318479851520)

Original artwork by Renée French

------
fineline
At last - an invention that is truly revolutionary.

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squarefoot
The yoyo and other toys such as that thing made of two balls attached to a
string you moved rapidly up-down to let the balls hit each other, predate this
by nearly half a century; only difference is that nobody then was talking
about ADHD, and this one requires no ability to operate.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Clackers.

------
electricblue
I feel like there's a very simple explanation the article either ignores or
doesn't see: Kids were allowed to bring them to school for a while (till they
became a distraction)...that's really all you need for a neat toy to become a
sensation.

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tekromancr
I knocked out one if the bearings from one if the edges, so its off-balance. I
actually like it better. i can speed or slow the spin with very subtle hand
movements. I can operate it single handed. Its basicly a million times better
at being a fidget toy, for me.

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nitrogen
Submarine marketing has gone meta

------
dankai
I ordered one yesterday to give it a try. If someone cares, I can report back
later.

~~~
ThomPete
There is nothing to it really. My sons have several. They are kind of fun but
kind of limited in their fun.

------
ProfessorLayton
I bought a 3-pack on amazon recently after visiting family over Mother's Day
weekend seeing all my little cousins and niece/nephews with one.

I definitely see the appeal after toying around with one.

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afpx
Who's the person who invented the fidget spinner? I hope he/she made some
money on this at least.

~~~
bvmatt
funny you would say that...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSXxAlcbMK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSXxAlcbMK4)

~~~
afpx
That's gut wrenching. I'm going to send her $10.

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teddyh
How long until someone sharpens or put spikes on theirs, turning it into a
shuriken or similar thing?

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omginternets
I'll stick to playing with my pen.

~~~
lucasmullens
Careful, Misophonia is a thing and you might annoy some people. Although the
spinner probably wouldn't be much better.

~~~
omginternets
Hmm, I guess I'll have to continue using my good judgement and good manners
then, avoiding excessively noisy and distractive things.

But frankly, if one is so maladapted that a reasonable amount of pen-spinning
makes them unable to work/live/whatever, then we can hardly expect the entire
world to conform to their needs. There's a point at which we move beyond the
realm of installing handicap ramps (reasonable) and onto the realm of policing
innocuous behaviors for the benefit of an extreme few (unreasonable).

I'm sorry for people who can't function around spinning pens. I really am, but
it's unreasonable for them to expect anything beyond common courtesy. I
suggest they buy earplugs if it's that bad.

------
mrfusion
I think It would be a hit to make one with a magnetic bearing. Anyone want to
go in one that with?

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gm-conspiracy
Is this a symptom of children growing up with touchscreens and lack of tactile
buttons?

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CDokolas
Please correct the title. The actual article's title is different!

------
ThomPete
It's all the craze at my sons school.

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squarefoot
And whoever makes first one with a generator inside and a port to plug a
charging cable for cellphones is going to make a load of money. No matter if
the fine print will say it would take six weeks of continuous spinning to
fully recharge a phone, it will just make it look more useful.

------
6stringmerc
Cheap fad. Kids are ingeniously dangerous with their creativity, so, uh,
having worked in Risk Management and Insurance a few years, once a few bad
headlines come out regarding these things (think injuries, use as
projectiles), the liability will justify a crack down. Disappointing it will
take some suffering, but if it bleeds, it leads.

Then schools and restaurants and other places will have the justification to
ban them from their property in principle. This will take the "show" culture
part down a peg, forcing it into off-campus. Eventually it won't be cool
anymore, and actually kind of geeky to have one instead of the new cool thing,
a [SECRET INVENTION BY 6STRINGMERCENARY] which keeps score of taps as a game
to share online.

If you doubt my Cassandra-screed above, just go look into Slap Bracelets circa
the 1990s in the US. I'm not the first person to make the connection (way to
go TFF OT!) but I find it extremely comparable. Once they became bare metal
razors, as the late, great Bill Paxton said, "Game over man, game over!"

For the record, I don't think Fidget Spinners and Yo-Yos belong in the same
sentence. I'm proud to be able to do a half-dozen Yo-Yo tricks with my kick-
ass green Butterfly. It's what helped me quit smoking Camel Lights about 6
years ago. Yo-Yos are awesome, Fidget Spinners are Pogs on a ball-bearing.

