Labubu's One-Night Fall from Grace: When We No Longer Believe in the Future

Last week while cleaning out my shoe cabinet, I dug out that dusty Labubu strawberry cookie keychain. Last year at this time, I was still showing off in my friend circle about how lucky I was to have drawn it. The craziness of squatting in front of a trendy toy store at three in the morning now feels like a joke—this little plastic piece priced at 799 yuan can't even sell for 50 on secondhand markets now.

What really struck me during this wave of declining interest in trendy toys was the day the Labubi-themed store in Shanghai Global Harbor closed, when a dozen post-00s squatted at the entrance holding unopened boxes of figurines—not to hold some farewell ceremony, but to set up a street stall. "Anyway, there’s no hope for a price increase anymore, let’s see how much we can recover," said one boy wearing a fisherman hat as he pulled out his phone to browse job listings.

Our generation long stopped believing in the stock market and mutual funds, yet we were willing to believe that paper figures and plastic toys could bring about a myth of sudden wealth. Posting about hidden edition items in our friend circles is, in essence, no different from our elders forwarding virtual currency advertisements—both are desperately seeking a lifeline in an era of inflation.

Experts always say this is a downgrade in consumption, but I think it’s the collapse of faith in the future. We used to be willing to pay a premium, essentially buying into the expectation that "tomorrow will be better"—that we would get promotions at work, make money from side hustles, and see assets appreciate. But now, when unemployment at 35 and AI replacement have become certain topics, those trendy toys that once carried the illusion of appreciation naturally revert from "blue-chip stocks" back to plastic pieces.

Recently, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: college students have started group buying counterfeit Labubu on Pinduoduo. When I asked them, "Aren't you afraid of being mocked for playing with knockoffs?" one third-year male student’s words struck hard: "What’s the difference between genuine and counterfeit? Anyway, we are all nearing our expiration date of youth." This made me think of the young people who packed the Yonghe Temple last year, only to turn around and buy a cup of "Compassion Americano" for 48 yuan at a temple café—this generation’s split lies in wanting to grasp certain small joys while also letting go of the gamble for sudden wealth.

The bubble of capital games will eventually burst, but when even the youngest post-00s begin to lose interest in passing the parcel, it may indicate that something deeper is rotting. Just like I saw yesterday on secondhand markets—a new business of burning trendy toys, where someone is actually willing to pay to have their once-coveted limited edition thrown into the incinerator.