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.
I agree, kids don't get as many physical, mechanical toys. They just feel good in your hand, you get them spinning fast and you can balance them on a finger. Angular momentum conveyed physically instead of in some diagram in a book.
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).
I've never handled one or seen one up close, and maybe that's why I'm not that interested in them. I've only heard about them a couple of weeks ago, when by chance, I saw a video about it on my YouTube feed.
And still, I had to ask myself: "what's the big deal?".
On the other hand, I had not heard of them until now, but had grabbed one that my nephew had the other day and felt it was a neat feeling widget. Would I buy one? Im not 7 years and have already held different balancing objects so it's not that novel to me, but I can see why kids like them.
"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""
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.
Can confirm. I just received 100 I ordered from Alibaba at $1.60 each. My kids are selling them to friends and people in the neighborhood for $5-7 each. They're going quick.
Hadn't thought about wholesaling to gas stations. Maybe we'll try that.
Some time ago (in the 1990s, I think) a women who had relatives with autism designed a toy thing that provided some sensory "stimming" activity.
The toy market is brutal. She wasn't wealthy and couldn't afford patent stuff; she didn't manage to make much (if any) profit, so she dropped the patent in 2005.
Three skate ball bearings in a 3D printed frame. They're fun, and you can make them pretty easily. And they can spin pretty quickly for a handheld, printed device.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I happened to be playing with one when this article popped up in my RSS feed. It's my sons but it's on my desk because I tried repairing the cracked frame with super glue, for about the 5th time. It still works with the cracked frame and the repair didn't take this time because I mindlessly starting playing with it while the glue was still drying. We've had 3 around our house for about 2 weeks and everyone that lives or visits, in age groups from 60's down to 10 months have fidgeted with them almost every time they come across one.
Cyanoacrylate can't handle nonporous materials - as you're seeing, it dries so brittle that an incautious glance will snap it.
Try epoxy instead; it's slower to cure and smells funny, but produces a much stronger bond, and doesn't have the same problems bearing mechanical loads. I like J-B Weld and J-B Kwik, which are strong and resilient as hell (you can fix tractor engines with them!) and double as a low-temperature casting material for additive repairs, but for what you're dealing with here, the cheap Loctite stuff on the drugstore blister card should do you.
With metal or almost any plastic, you can do what you like to the surface, and cyanoacrylate still won't hold all that well - if you (correctly) use a very thin layer, it'll last longer, but that's not the same thing as really being reliable. Quicker and easier just to epoxy it once and be done.
I laser cut one with my niece[1] thought it was cool, and ordered one. It was easily worth the $10.
[1]I try to spend as much time as I can teaching my niece how to make things. She had a spinner, and j wanted to show her that she could easily just make one too.
I've had one in my office for several weeks now and haven't gotten tired of it yet. It does seem to be close to the Platonic ideal of "fiddly desk things while my code compiles" where the appeal might not wear off.
I had one on infini-loan from a non-fidgety coworker, but then I changed desks. I didn't want to outright steal their spinner so I've gone back to playing with pens. Haven't yet felt the need to go buy a spinner, pens fill that niche for me nicely.
I have a fidget toy from fidgetland.com that I really like, but I haven't tried the spinner. It seems to help decently with my ADHD (I tend to bite my lip or tap my desk a lot without it).
Fidget spinners seem worse. You just hold it and it spins. That's not what "fidgeting" is, since you aren't constantly moving. I don't think it would work nearly as well. It's not supposed to grab your attention, it's supposed to help you keep focus on something else.
The funny thing is that it may be marketing with a point.
A lot of ADHD kids spend too much time getting schelped around and don't play well. If you ever volunteer at school you can see it when they are young.
Reminded me of active dogs who don't get walked. If needs aren't met, they adapt in weird ways.
I have ADHD. While the fidget spinner is fun, it is not really useful. It is too involved, doesn't have much tactile variety, distracting to the people around you.
I love the fidget cube though. (Got it from antsy labs)
In principle I'd guess it'd work. I have absolutely no idea as to whether it does anything for people with actually illness, but I have a similar thing that (not sure how to word it) is very ?distracting?
I think part of the fascination is the gyro sensation, and few children are exposed to gyroscopes nowadays, like a TEDCO gyroscope (http://amzn.to/2qZsS1t).
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.
Unless you're going to enjoy building one, and have bearings and parts lying around, then you're probably much better off just buying one. Plastic ones are like $5, aluminium (better, don't break) are < $10. They'll probably be much better than anything most people can realistically make - better balanced, for sure (again, unless you're going to enjoy making one - not trying to shit on anyones DIY fun).
and built a couple. My first 3D printer project experience. It was fun for me and the kids. Note that schools have started to ask kids not bring them to school as they don't really help with fidgeting and are mostly used as toys.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
I don't think this is the point originally made. And I'll put it slightly differently:
You have a product team (unnamed scientists in the Nye/Tyson case), and then you have a sales team (Nye/Tyson themselves). What I realize is a fact on the market, and maybe inherently so, is that a good sales team can sell any product, no matter how crap, but a good product can't be sold without at least SOME marketing (and yes, word-of-mouth is natural and comes to good products, but it's no where close to a marketing division).
I believe this was the issue that OP believed was unfair, and at some level I agree. I think your point might still apply in that there's no point in lamenting it if you can't fix the system, because you either have to be better at marketing or stop caring about selling your product.
TLDR; He wasn't saying that it was unfair that some were naturally better at socializing/selling their product/skill, but that the fact that they were (good at selling) was the only relevant factor in getting a raise from the manager/company, and not how well they do the job.
Tyson/Nye aren't on TV/media because they're the best scientists, but because they're the best on TV.
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.
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...
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.