WTF are Labubu?
Ignis’ eyes darted over the six massive screens as she monitored the social media feeds.
Her reflection caught her attention.
Her mum wasn’t wrong. She looked pale and needed to spend some time in the sun. Easy to say, but hard to do when she worked ten-hour shifts in an underground bunker buried in the heart of a mountain. While she let loose at night when her Lycan, Yaya, hunted and explored the forests, in her humanoid form, she had a job.
Images bounced off the blue lenses of her glasses. Though designed to combat eye fatigue caused by screens, they didn’t help much.
She ripped off the specs, tossed them on the table, and rubbed her tired eyes. The wheels of her chair squeaked as she spun it in circles until she felt dizzy. Amused woofs echoed in her as her bored beast enjoyed the break from the monotony of her current employment.
When the chair came to a standstill, she peered into the lobby encased in curved, seamless glass.
Water trickled down the fountain designed to mimic a wall of rocks. In the pond under it, lush plants bloomed.
The monstera vines with huge variegated leaves and lavender lotus flowers bathed in streaming sunlight. Together, they created a beautiful illusion. Buried deep underground, they had no source of natural light. Even the labs had UV bulbs on a timer to help them cope. Vitamin D deficiency caused health issues and mood swings even for shifters.
The view distracted her from the clinical sterility of her workspace. Theirs was the smallest of the monitoring labs, but it had the best location.
The Pit, a technological hub, was a massive clean room containing sleek flat screens and wireless keyboards. Even all cables and wires remained hidden. Not a dust mote or personal touch in sight.
Within her office, the white and pink marble surfaces gleamed. Above her, from the roof, the vents pumped in air filtered from the surface. A shudder crawled up her spine as she detected the hint of pine forests above, on the ground.
‘One more hour to go. Tomorrow, let’s go to the lake. This is not natural,’ her restless beast whispered within her head.
No, it sure wasn’t natural for her to spend her days monitoring human activity on the internet.
‘It sure isn't what you had in mind when you elected to study anthropology, eh?’ her beast teased.
Her thesis, ‘The Rise of the Internet Man,’ landed her this cushy appointment close to home. But she hadn’t predicted the mind-numbing monotony or the boredom of the long hours. Now that she understood their biggest threat, nothing they did surprised her anymore.
The human world was always on fire. Often it seemed on the verge of burning down to ashes. Even when they came so close to ending their dominion on the planet, somehow they pulled back from the brink.
‘They’re hard to get rid of, like roaches,’ Yaya grumbled.
“We’d end up unemployed if the human civilization went up in flames,” she mumbled under her breath.
She tapped to pause the TikTok ‘influencer’ yapping away about a celebrity, a singer.
Their fake enthusiasm and over-dramatic expressions didn’t matter. They all said a lot and nothing at all. But she studied the screenshot of a female carrying a bag.
Nothing about the photo warranted trending. Not when the democracy of the land of the brave and free was teetering on the verge of collapse. Or at the risk of turning into a Christian nationalist nation. Female bodily autonomy was under attack. Immigrants demonised. Laws overturned left, right, and centre. Civil unrest in eleven countries. Five failed nations. Three wars waged in other parts of the world. A hurricane. Two earthquakes. Of the five foundational species now critically endangered, three had become unviable.
Yet what mattered online?
A singer worth a few hundred million wasn’t hot property anymore. Her music might’ve been big a decade ago. But she'd capitalized on it and rode a wave of her fan base by launching fashion and makeup lines. In the past, even her pregnancies, who she dated, and risqué dresses had not drawn so much attention.
Ignis studied the tags, wondering if the pop diva had dropped another single or was in the eye of another controversy.
An unknown hashtag caught her attention.
Labubu.
She clicked on it.
Another window popped up. The image captured a close-up of a Birkin. A hand, tipped with long painted nails. The crystals embedded on each tip glittered as the fingers held the handle.
‘How do they hold things? Scratch an itch? Even clean their butt crack with such long, stuck-on claws?’ Yaya wondered.
She typed in the code, and a web formed, condensing the tens of thousands of comments. Instead of scrolling through the reactions, she used an add-on widget. It formed a web of related terms and phrases. Such tools made internet sleuthing easier and saved hours of digging through inane comments.
The 100k overpriced bag wasn’t the subject. Nor was the huge diamond ring on the unnaturally smooth, photo-shopped fingers. Instead, it was a stuffy dangling off the handle.
“Oh, Labubu are dolls!” Her hushed whisper sounded too loud in the quiet enclosure.
She reached into her drawer and pulled out a lollipop. Unwrapping it, she savoured the tart grape flavour as she clicked on the many windows on her screens.
Various branded purses all had one thing in common–the oversized keychains. Each was different, yet had bunny ears and creepy smiles. Many revealed pointed fangs.
‘What are they for? So they don’t lose their keys? Seems stupid to have dolls for keychains.’ Yaya saw no utility in owning such an item.
A quick search of the ‘Labubu’ revealed their true nature—plushies made of vinyl fabric.
‘Yuck!’ Yaya growled.
Sold in blind boxes, the buyers remained unaware of which version they’d purchased. Priced at 20 dollars or above, most hoped for rare secret editions, which were worth thousands on digital markets.
Ignis sighed when the forum threads about the phenomenon filled the second screen. The Labubu were everywhere. But the various articles used the same keywords and catchphrases. Most offered no new information.
She cracked the hardened candy and chewed the shards. Her mother’s long-suffering warning echoed through her head. Despite her weakness for sweets, so far, her teeth hadn’t fallen out. Nor had she developed issues due to the consumption of unhealthy processed snacks.
‘You’re not supposed to eat in the workspaces.’
Ignis ignored her duality. Oddly enough, her animalistic form behaved like an obedient guard dog, loyal to a fault, instead of a monster of myths and legends.
She focused on discovering who produced this piece of plastic cloth stuffed with foam and topped with a metal loop. And why it was worth the heavy price tag. Inspired by ‘The Monsters’, most described them as ‘ugly cute’. Both kids and adults wanted them. A few B-list celebrities had used it as a theme for birthday parties to stay relevant.
‘What do these likes translate into?’
“Fifteen minutes of fame,” she said. Despite not grasping the thrill of chasing the spotlight, she understood how sponsorships worked.
Cases of organic or talent-based fame on the internet were few and far between. Most died out after the initial blaze of glory. But celebrity endorsements and influencers peddling products or services led to manufactured hype. Money created pop culture movements, just like this one.
“Show me the moola. Follow that money trail…” Ignis sang. Her fingers danced over the keys as she wrote the code to separate reality from the illusion. Most trending fads on the internet originated as sponsored content. “Gotcha!” she yelped, grinning.
“What? Darius jumped out of his chair, which rolled away.He bared his teeth and spun around. Crouched, he scowled and wiped the drool off his chin.
She waved him off. “Go back to sleep. Or don’t. Your call. If you get fired, don’t blame me.”
Darius Blackwuden wasn’t happy in the Pit. He aspired to become an alpha and, of course, revolutionise their world. Unfortunately for his, rather their generation, they were late to the party.
United, their kind lived in a secret parallel society, hidden away from humans. The revolution had been done and dusted before they were born.
Their elders had developed technology to hide in plain sight. Medical advancements allowed their species to live up to five centuries. Trained and educated them to be more than apex predators. In either form, they had to be superior beings. Someday, they would inherit the earth and heal her.
For those who depended on their strength and skills as hunters, it was too late to play alphas. The term was a joke. Brains mattered as much as brawn. For the free education they received, they had to pay back their society by serving it. Neither of them had a choice and took the placements offered.
Usually bored, he nodded off at his desk despite being written up for warnings. A snooty big feline, he did not get along with most of their colleagues.
And he made it obvious that he did not like her.
Turning her attention back from Darius, she peeped past her screens at the sprawling section beyond the partition. Over fifty subject-matter experts monitored the global financial markets.Most traded stocks, shares, or commodities, and made killings off their gambles which funded the shifter cause. Others on the floor above studied geopolitical regions in real time.
Ten coders scrubbed all sightings and images of shifters from the internet. And only six, like her, kept a close eye on social media platforms and all human digital footprints.
Most believe they were the least important section of HSID. The Human Surveillance and Intervention Department. And they might not be wrong. It also explained why Darius hated working here. He had ambitions of joining the AI database development. But he needed his master’s degree to apply for an internship on the prestigious sixth sublevel.
He leaned in to frown at the recordings of chaotic, long queues outside shops. “I’d bet my tail these celebrities were paid to wear—whatever this is—in public for the paparazzi,” he said.
They watched the top-trending unboxing video.
The hysterical voice and fake enthusiasm of the speaker grated on Ignis’ sensitive ears. She lowered the volume and moderated the shrill pitch.
“All that, to promote mindless consumerism. Within six months to two years max, they will be worthless. Some will hoard them, waiting for a payout one day. But most will probably end up in landfills,” Darius grumbled.
Except Ignis had a gut feeling. A dull ache in the pit of her stomach seemed convinced otherwise. There was more to Labubu than met the eye.
‘Or you’re hungry. Candy isn’t a meal,’ Yaya grumbled, ignoring Ignis’ concerns.
That could be true.
After all, what harm could little plushy dolls really do?
