Fidget Spinners: Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful
betterthansure.com
betterthansure.com
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.
Here's a fidget toy made from keyrings and a bit of bike chain.
https://youtu.be/tzXUznrgdbw?t=38s
This one has slightly different threading of the keyring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1bfPgeq7GE
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.
Or is there more going on and I am being stupid ? Like people being aware but doing it to fit in due to social instincts ?
And still, I had to ask myself: "what's the big deal?".
Guess I won't know until I actually handle one.
https://geeksdistrict.com/inside-the-fidget-spinner-gold-rus...
"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""
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.
Hadn't thought about wholesaling to gas stations. Maybe we'll try that.
Some people don't like to use many browser extensions, like me. I've never been bothered by the ads; sometimes they are even useful.
Half of the content of both of those sites is ads, even if it poses as part of the regular flow (sponsored feeds etc).
Lemarchand's Box:
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.
The toys are a set of 4 bearings held in a plastic frame. http://www.asseenontvandbeyond.com/assets/images/fidget-spin...
You can get deluxe versions using metal frames and ceramic bearings, and some spinners use two bearings not 4.
You pinch a bearing between two fingers and spin the frame.
The toys have a legitimate use for people with autism. It's a shame that they're being misused in classrooms.
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.
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.
[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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I bought one for my son. He's not so interested (he still has small hands which doesn't help). Turns out I use it every day.
See also the glitter bottles I built with him. He liked making them - lots of mess - but I'm the one who spends time watching them.
I love the fidget cube though. (Got it from antsy labs)
Go to your friendly local makerspace if you don't have the tools to do it yourself.
Step 2: Insert a bearing of the correct size, aiming for an interference-fit. If the hole was too big, apply glue.
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.
If you don't have one, you could do the same and instead print it off and use it as a stencil to cut some wood, cardboard, etc.
> Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful
Because that is what I witness regularly.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I saw the practice knifes are about $10 on Amazon.
Still being sold in every big-box retailer 60 years after it was invented?
I'll just sit over here popping my bubble wrap.
Original artwork by Renée French
I definitely see the appeal after toying around with one.
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.
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.