alt Hacker NewsI see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
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I get piñatas, but there is an extreme version of this that I find just too much. Not sure in other places, but in Spain there is a kind of fair stall where children use a plastic fishing rod with a magnet or hook to catch some plastic ducks with the corresponding magnet or hook. The ducks have some points and give you rewards, but the payoff is terrible - maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for €2 at the neighborhood shops. And the fun part with the fishing lasts like 20 seconds, no more, and it's individual, there isn't even a competition or anything, no time limit, etc. Just catch three ducks and see how many points they give you.
My 7-year-old son (who by the way loves math) always wants to go there. I can't help but explain that the payoff is horrendous from any point of view, and he understands and doesn't argue against it, but he still insists. Sometimes I convince him by offering alternatives, but sometimes I have to cave because he seems to like it so much. But man, spending euros on that stings, I have the feeling that the people who run the stall must be laughing at all the suckers who fall into the trap.
The British rock-band Traffic said it in their "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" : "... we were children once, playing with toys".
I wonder if it's true that people don't remember. People maybe remember but don't want to talk about it. It is such a cognitive dissonance.
It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.
Genuinely, what kind of miserable people are you around when even at a children’s birthday there is this kind of obsessive fixation going on?
You really may want to think about if you are around people who are genuinely good for you and your children.
I’m not surprised though, over the years I have noticed a notable shift towards the controlling and narcissistic spectrums of parents. I’m not totally sure why that is, but it seems to be definitely happening and it’s also rather clear to me that it’s a rather “American” toxic nature, probably due to the sick and perverse obsession with besting, outdoing, greedily wanting and needing more and shinier things than “the Joneses”, the obsession with celebrity and fame and money. It all contributes to the diseased state of society and “culture”, if you can call obsession with corporate outputs that.
But anyways, just let kids have their moment of fun, people, their identity and soul will be crushed by the “American” indoctrination and propaganda machine soon enough and they will become like the drone adults. Let them be human for at least a couple years of their lives.
What?!?!? Piñatas are awesome! And as people who emigrated from California it’s usually a fun novelty for the local Dutchies to see (though I see them in local stores now too!)
Adults have piñatas… theyre called starups
> And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
People under-appreciate (or have forgotten) that a lot of happiness is is related to anticipating as opposed to getting. I think if more people focused on the journey or the process (or the (present) moment), versus the goal, there'd be more joy/happiness around.