Plagued Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[Dieter Laser]

Most blind boxes don't really have a trading group and they don't sell them on ebay either unless it's very specific Chinese brands. Aliexpress is your best bet depending on the brand. I have also seen some blind box stores with discord servers that allow selling/trading. Maybe Reddit?

Yeah the only ones I see on eBay honestly are the Lego ones.

On a related note Lego has had to go to all sort of new methods to keep adults from being cunts with their blind bags. Too many people were tearing the bags apart trying to feel what figure was inside. Lego figs are very rigid and the packaging doesn’t handle it well.

They just switched them to actual boxes instead of bags and the AFOL are pissed off. Now they are trading tips on the best milligram scales to buy and trying to figure out how much variation there can be in the weights of injection molded plastic.

God forbid you buy the damn blind box as intended.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Fell down a rabbit hole and stumbled upon this video of a massive Popmart figure.

View attachment 5716756
Good god, that's hideous. Even the dog is judging.

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Wonder how much it costs...
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Jesus christ.

Can't afford the 1.4k USD price tag? No worries! You can get a smaller one for a measly $300 instead!
View attachment 5716770


Even their little blind box figures are $16 each. This means if you want a complete set, you're looking at around $200 depending on the series. That doesn't include the random extra exclusive super secret figure you have a 1/144 chance of getting.

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Popmart website "who the fuck is buying this ugly shit?" bonus:
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these look like some kinda artsy fartsy stuff, i can see there being a market for this and it being a (somewhat) legit thing
the designs aren't particularly attractive to me but they're certainly not generic, it seems like the opposite of something like squishmallows that tries to be as simple as possible to avoid going out of style, instead it revels in how unusual and artsy it is, and that at least i can respect

 

[Dambusters' Dog II]

how about them cool reusable stone ice cubes

I found these to not keep my beverage cool for very long. I don't know if my choice of glass was shit [...]
We were so disappointed, shit was still room temp and the stones were already warm.

They don't work. Ice cubes make things cold by melting (latent heat), not by warming up. The stone things can only make things cold by warming up, so they'd need a massively large specific heat capacity compared to water, which they don't have. In fact their specific heat capacity is lower than water. I had heard about this but never calculated it, and when I did so for this post, I was surprised at how pathetic the stones are. Of course, doing the experiment with real drinks would be even more accurate, but the theoretical result is so clear I don't think it would be worth the expense and time.

Spoiler: In numbers:

I'm going to round off a lot to simplify. You can redo the calculations more precisely yourself. I'm also not going to write any of the algebra out.
The latent heat/enthalpy of melting for water is 334 kJ per kg. We'll take this to be 300.
The specific heat capacity of liquid water is 4.21 kJ per kg per degree C (actually depends on temperature but doesn't change much over the range of temperatures we'll consider so I'm not going to bother). We'll take this to be 4.
The specific heat capacity of ice is 3.108 kJ per kg per degree C. We'll take this to be 3.
The specific heat capacity of soapstone is 0.785 kJ per kg per degree C. We'll take this to be 1.


Consider a 20g = 0.02 kg ice cube in 250g = 0.25 kg of water (250 ml or half a pint or so), which starts at 15 degrees C. The ice cube warms up from freezer temperature of -18 degrees C to freezing point, 0 degrees C. This takes:
0.02 * 3 * 18 = 1.08 kJ =~ 1 kJ
The ice cube then melts, which takes:
0.02 * 300 = 6 kJ
So we have 20g of liquid water at 0 degrees C, and 250g at:
15 - (1 + 6) / (4 * 0.25) = 8 degrees C
These then reach the same temperature, which because they're both water we can find out by:
(0.02 * 0 + 0.25 * 8 )/(0.02 + 0.25) =~ 7 degrees C

Now for the stone, which we take to be made of soapstone. Let's say it has the same volume as the ice cube (this assumption is in favour of the stone, because of its higher density). With a value of 0.92 g per cc, 20g of ice takes up 21.7 ccs, and with a density of ~3 g per cc, the mass of the soapstone is 21.7 * 3 =~ 65 g = 0.065 kg. We put the soapstone in the freezer and get it to -18 degrees C, then drop it in 250g of water at 15 degrees C. The amount of energy lost by the water is equal to the amount gained by the soapstone, so the temperature they mutually reach is:
(0.065 * 1 * (-18 ) + 0.25 * 4 * 15)/(0.065 * 1 + 0.25 * 4) =~ 13 degrees C

Of course, the drink and ice system will in fact also be warmed up by air, but that counts even more against the stones.

 

[AfghanBlue]

Can't reply, but yea those stone ice cubes don't work and are gross. Even when they are new the idea of putting them in your drink is sus. Once they've sat in the fridge getting ever scruffier, there's just no way.
They didn't cool the drink down the first time I gamely tried to get at least one use of out them (stocking filler bullshit) and they just got less attractive after that.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

Can't reply, but yea those stone ice cubes don't work and are gross. Even when they are new the idea of putting them in your drink is sus. Once they've sat in the fridge getting ever scruffier, there's just no way.
They didn't cool the drink down the first time I gamely tried to get at least one use of out them (stocking filler bullshit) and they just got less attractive after that.

Just drink scotch straight as it was intended.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Yeah the only ones I see on eBay honestly are the Lego ones.

On a related note Lego has had to go to all sort of new methods to keep adults from being cunts with their blind bags. Too many people were tearing the bags apart trying to feel what figure was inside. Lego figs are very rigid and the packaging doesn’t handle it well.

I did that in elementary school when I knew there was a Lego set in the Secret Santa gift sack. It's hard to imagine doing that as an adult and not feeling like a complete loser.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

X

but how fresh are your stones

 

[Twinkie]

Some blind box figures are quite pretty

I agree with this. I think vinyl artists are capable of coming up with very interesting stuff. I'm content just looking at pictures of it, though.

tldr plastic money laundering. They and the bearbrick dudes do it better than anyone else.

I dunno I think they cost a lot so the artists can get paid decently. A manufacturing run of vinyl figures is at least 50k, I read that somewhere.

 

[John Titor]

At least pens have a skill tied to them in caligraphy, and it seems these guys actually use them instead of just making a shrine and substituting their personalitys for it. I can get behind the pen guys.

Yes but like a majority of this thread, you don't need a pen that costs $1000 with a fancy logo to do the same thing as a $50 or a $20 one. I don't have much experience with fountain pens but for $50, that better be a damn good pen.

 

[Clutter]

these look like some kinda artsy fartsy stuff, i can see there being a market for this and it being a (somewhat) legit thing
the designs aren't particularly attractive to me but they're certainly not generic, it seems like the opposite of something like squishmallows that tries to be as simple as possible to avoid going out of style, instead it revels in how unusual and artsy it is, and that at least i can respect

There's worse stuff out there you can burn money on for sure and I'm with you in respecting the design aspect (at least the little figures. I stand by the big ones being overly expensive trash). The cynical part of me can't help but think about the consoom part of it though. There's definitely people out there dropping their money on a whole set with each release even if they don't like the theme or every figure in the set. There's youtube channels where that's all they do and racking up hundreds of those things can happen pretty quick and get ungodly expensive (unless they have enough viewers to be gifted a set).

 

[Starved Artist]

God forbid you buy the damn blind box as intended.

My wife wants the Endymion and Neo Queen Sernity and my daughter wants the Luna P.

I've bought 200 dollars worth of these fucking things. If being an autistic cunt and weighing the packaging helps me find a Luna P faster,I'll do it. But I will be considerate and not destroy them in a fit of autistic rage. Side note: I did give away the extras to my daughters friends. I was thinking about just driving around and throwing them at women with sailor moon accessories but a moment of reality hit me. Do I really need a felony assault charge?

 

[Godchu]

Yes but like a majority of this thread, you don't need a pen that costs $1000 with a fancy logo to do the same thing as a $50 or a $20 one. I don't have much experience with fountain pens but for $50, that better be a damn good pen.

Ehhh, when it comes to fountain pens that's kind of in the lower end of things: solid pens that are perfectly functional in their own right while still being quite affordable. Anything less than that and you're going into disposable pen territory.

A more apt comparison would be the pens in the $100-500 range (give or take). That's the REALLY good stuff. The kind you're fully expecting to last you your entire lifetime, with all their gold nibs, vacuum filling systems, and bodies made out of shit like brass or ebonite or resin or whatever. As you say, anything beyond that is pure excess. Nothing these pens can't do just as well.

 

[BTS4Lyfe]

I got myself a ballpoint pen for work. I need it to be sturdy because I sometimes have to use it to scratch shit off and already ruined a pretty nice pen that way. So I got myself a metal (I think brass?) pen by Rotring for about 30 bucks. This black fucking pen can write on black paper and you can read that shit. I was so impressed with this thing I got myself a second one for at home in blue and I don't see myself get me another pen for a long time.
The top part is barely bent while in the same amount of time I already went through 4 plastic pens. I could just scratch the material off with my fingernails but I broke it that way once in a pretty bad way. So I resorted to pens.

 

[Yeeted Teet]

At least pens have a skill tied to them in caligraphy, and it seems these guys actually use them instead of just making a shrine and substituting their personalitys for it. I can get behind the pen guys.

They do make shrines to their pens, though.



Not all consoomerism is the accumulation of inherently useless junk, sometimes people accumulate so many functional items that the majority of the collection becomes useless junk because it's not feasible to use it all.

 

[glass_houses]

They do make shrines to their pens, though.

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Not all consoomerism is the accumulation of inherently useless junk, sometimes people accumulate so many functional items that the majority of the collection becomes useless junk because it's not feasible to use it all.

There is no way in hell that even a professional calligrapher working twelve hours a day could use all that ink. It's the same as perfume collectors; they are collecting something that will absolutely dry out and go bad at some point, regardless of how nicely it's stored. At a certain point it goes from collecting to hoarding.

 

[User names must be unique]

Not all consoomerism is the accumulation of inherently useless junk, sometimes people accumulate so many functional items that the majority of the collection becomes useless junk because it's not feasible to use it all.

Knife guys are probably the worst for this imo

A pocket knife is handy, having a spare isn't a terrible idea, having one for everyday of the week is a bit weird but whatever. having 60 is just daft.

 

[AN/ALR56]

Knife guys are probably the worst for this imo
View attachment 5727206
A pocket knife is handy, having a spare isn't a terrible idea, having one for everyday of the week is a bit weird but whatever. having 60 is just daft.

I'd understand if you kept buying shit like kabars or even foldable hunting knives (I love my buck 110 slim) but those flimsy ass,"cool" fold knives who would break their point if you shoved then too hard in a cardboard is cringe.
Specially for their cost, I bet you could buy a couple dozen Leatherman tools for the price of that "collection".

 

[WelperHelper99]

I'd understand if you kept buying shit like kabars or even foldable hunting knives (I love my buck 110 slim) but those flimsy ass,"cool" fold knives who would break their point if you shoved then too hard in a cardboard is cringe.
Specially for their cost, I bet you could buy a couple dozen Leatherman tools for the price of that "collection".

Quality above quantity when it comes to sharp pointy things, every time. The steel in most of those is gonna be shit. Just look at how mall ninja they look. They'll dull or even snap after only a short while

 

[terraform45]

I wonder how many years it will take for ai to become part of consoomer culture
Unless that has already happened and im just being a complete dumb retard lol

 

[Creative Username]

I wonder how many years it will take for ai to become part of consoomer culture
Unless that has already happened and im just being a complete dumb retard lol

They are very cheap to run, so probably not. Maybe if there were enough people selling LoRAs, people would show off their LoRA folders, but a folder isn't exactly as visually appealing as a cabinet full of junk for the addled minds that peruse mainstream social media. "where pretty colors," the simpletons would say. A lack of attention will ward off the consoomer influencer, and that's why it isn't clogging up TikTok at this time.

N.B. They could show off their generations but then they would start moving away from the classic consoomer because they'd have to use everything they're showing off.