A Boring Dystopia

You can win in gambling, there's no winning here.

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?

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.

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.

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!".

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.

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.

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.

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?

Amen

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.

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.