
How to Make Millions of Hoverboards Almost Overnight - jordigg
http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/how-to-make-millions-of-hoverboards-almost-overnight
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sand500
_Call it memeufacturing. It starts when a (typically) Western company, eager
to cash in on a product made popular by the social internet, contracts a
Chinese factory to make it. From here, the idea spreads throughout the
elaborate social networks of Chinese electronics manufacturing until the item
in question is being produced by hundreds and hundreds of competitors, who
subcontract and sell components to each other, even as they all make the same
thing. It reaches its saturation point quickly. It moves from product to
product without sentiment. And it is proof that our never-ending digital
output, our tweets and Vines and Instagrams and Facebook posts, has the power
to shape the lives of people on the other side of the world._

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redlightbulb
Just listened to the Planet Money episode about this:
[https://overcast.fm/+BP5_W92-o](https://overcast.fm/+BP5_W92-o)

Anyone getting one?

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Lemmih
Don't have a hoverboard but I do have an electric unicycle (they're usually
made at the same factories). It's fast and I use it instead of my bicycle when
it isn't raining.

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tempestn
Why are these wheeled things referred to as "hoverboards"?

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dzhiurgis
Same reason quadcopters are referred to drones.

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tempestn
Thanks, now that's going to bug me forever.

