Ow.
CAMERAMAN: Mike, ya ready?
Oh, yeah.
The paradox of fidget spinners might change the way
we think about fidgeting.
Wait, did I say "here's an idea?"
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Fidgets spinners and other fidgety devices
have been around for a bit, but only since the end of last year
have they been a bona fide craze.
"Forbes" described these things as the "must
have office toy" in December.
But by this month, "The New York Times"
has described them as the "hula hoop of Generation Z,"
referencing the worldwide adolescent craze
from the 1950s.
Yeah, fair-- there are five spinners here
in an office of like 10 people.
There's an entire YouTube ecosystem around them.
In my neighborhood, which has three middle and high schools,
the sidewalks are littered with fidget spinner packaging.
Global sales estimates are in the tens of millions.
The assumed purpose of the fidget spinner
is to help people particularly students
concentrate, to give an outlet to excess energy caused
by stress or anxiety, particularly that associated
with ADHD and autism--
something that we're going to spend plenty of time
on in a few minutes.
But many teachers have been saying actually tool-assisted
fidgeting is not an aid to concentration but a hindrance,
that they are a distraction, with students focused
on spinner color, construction, and skills, rather
than classwork.
Many schools have even banned them.
REPORTER: That distraction has prompted
his school and many others to become no spin zones,
banning the gadget.
What I want to figure out is how we got here,
how the constellation of meetings around fidgeting
and who does it launched a tool reportedly
suited for promoting calm concentration to sensation
status, and how that may then feedback into how
we think about fidgeting.
To do that, let's begin at the beginning with a brief history
of fidgeting.
[PIANO PLAYING]
Fidgets etymology links it to a long disused verb--
"to fidge," meaning move restlessly.
But in emotion in the 19th century, a culture of fidgets,
Karen Chase points out that in popular usage,
"fidget" was also and remains the name of a pie--
one with an overabundance of ingredients.
OK, I'm going to put this down now.
Through successive literary turns, including the character
Lady Fidget from William Wycherley's "The Country Wife,"
Chase says that "fidget" came to name out
of place actions and people exhibiting
an overabundance of motion--
someone who schemes, plots, and plans.
"For a long time then, she writes,
fidget remained a fidgety term, carrying suggestions
of variety, restlessness, impropriety, and surprise,
and settling on all manner of objects and behaviors."
She points to a late 18th century essay
by Noah Webster as a possible source for our current sense
of fidget--
surreptitious actions taken by a person who is odd and tense.
Someone who flaunts social norms.
I think a lot of this sense persists.
Fidgeting isn't simply moving restlessly.
To fidget now is often thought to be
inattentive or disrespectful in private, at dinner, in class,
at a meeting, in public, at the movies,
on the train, or waiting at the DMV.
Fidgeting is distracting at best and alarming at worst.
Chase points out that more than anything, fidgeting
is seen as a release valve for built-up irritation.
To onlookers, a fidget is a value judgment
on the situation in which the fidgeter is seen fidgeting.
Like their namesake pie, fidgeters seemingly just
have too much going on.
Often they're stuck in the situation which
inspires their motion, so they got to do something
to cope with it.
A student can't simply leave a classroom,
but neither is every lesson so gripping
it fully occupies every pupil.
Fidgeting, as a sign that one is not fully engaged,
is taken as a tiny commentary on a lesson's quality.
The management of excess vigor is
the foundation of how fidget toys are
marketed and discussed.
Whether spinner, cube, bar, or even slime,
people ostensibly buy these things
to help deal with aspects of their life--
classrooms, meetings, quitting smoking, general distress.
Anxiety diagnoses are at an all time high,
so maybe it's not even people who are tense but things.
Things are tense.
It's also possible that cube havers, spinner flickers,
and slime pokers are interested in communicating to others
that they're the kind of person who has worries,
whether they do or not.
Or maybe they just like doing tricks.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
I call this one the hot potato.
Hot, hot, hot.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
Or something else entirely like looking for a quick ASMR fix.
The point being that by the time anything
reaches full- on craze, it challenges simple explanation.
If you use a fidget spinner or a cube,
it doesn't mean you're definitely anxious.
But whatever the reason, to fidget or really
to need to fidget is in some broad view
to be eccentric, preoccupied, or both.
And there's cultural capital to be had in being or suggesting
that you're either.
For corroboration, we need look no further
than the success of the spinner and Matthew
and Mark McLachlan's fidget cube Kickstarter, which
asked for $15,000 but ended up raising $6.5 million
and inspired a legion of knockoffs along the way.
These triumphs speak two simultaneous volumes.
First, that nervous energy is ubiquitous.
And second, that its cachet is eminently bankable.
It's also telling I think that much
of the original hubbub surrounding these gizmos,
especially those with price tags in the neighborhood of $200,
began in the tech sector in Silicon
Valley, the legendary home to well-funded rambunctious
geniuses who make flatten rocks filled with lightning
do their bidding but also a group of people stereotypically
associated often through their command of technology
with non neurotypicality.
This, I think, is the more quiet association between fidgeting
and fidget spinners.
While these things are, yes, markers of taste or affect,
a pastime, or a toy for some, they
are a tool for others, specifically those with ADHD
or who are on the autism spectrum--
two groups of people with reputations that often precede
them and who are amongst the most well
known contemporary fidgeters besides drummers.
One hope is that the newfound popularity
of the spinner at all helps normalize fidgeting,
helps to shed some of its negative associations.
For those on the autism spectrum,
fidget objects provide an outlet for self stimulatory behavior
or "stimming."
Stimming is a way for those on the spectrum
to manage their anxiety and focus
by engaging with predictable stimuli that blocks out
less predictable stimuli that's often overwhelming.
Video game critic Laura Dayle writes that the fidget cube
specifically feels purpose-designed to help manage
smaller stimming patterns but that while it normalizes those
small patterns, it may serve to further stigmatize larger ones
like rocking or twisting--
source.
For those with ADHD, physical activity
has been shown to increase focus.
Of course, handheld fiddly bits aren't exactly
yoga or a dance party.
But where anthropologist Mikka Nielsen
has described having ADHD as existing
in a state of temporal desynchronization,
maybe the pleasing motion of a spinner
is a way to recenter oneself to calibrate as Nielsen says
if even momentarily.
I haven't seen any spinners specific studies,
but anecdotal evidence from friends, advocates, and news
reports, some of which apparently inspired the cube
Kickstarter, suggests that these objects provide
non-disruptive physical output for otherwise
stigmatized and even occasionally self-harming
actions.
They aren't a panacea but potentially a step
in a positive direction.
This I think is what could provide a continuation
to Karen Chase's timeline beyond her stated
focus of the 19th century.
The role of the non neurotypical and their physicality
can help chart a path beyond the fidget as pie and fidget
as rapscallion, to fidget as the calming multi-faceted finger
dance with objects that we're confronted with right now.
What we might ask is if these accessories challenge the idea
that a fidget is a socially burdensome boredom inspired
overabundance of energy meant as a non-verbal complaint.
If fidgeting isn't a release valve for irritation,
then what might it be?
Maybe it's the self-directed creation
of calm, a search for satisfaction.
Oh, maybe the ASMR fix thing wasn't so off after all.
It may be that the spinner toy/tool
and whatever else aren't worry stones or not just so much
as their bubble wrap or that thing were like one cup fits
perfectly inside another cup.
And this just happens to be a moment where many of us
are seeking such an experience.
As the objects we spend most of our time interacting
with move in steps towards becoming
perfectly smooth ingots of glass and metal
it's possible that the growing fascination with pens,
and flashlights, notebooks, and these things
smack of a desire to be satisfied by an otherwise
diminishing tactility.
Scott Stein at CNET attributes the success
of fidgets spinners and even the Nintendo Switch
to just such a desire.
Either way fidgeting , has long had negative connotations
through its association with mental inactivity
and a resulting excess energy.
But these things outline a paradox,
showing how fidgeting can also be
the exact opposite-- an abundance of mental activity
resulting in excess energy.
This paradox echoes that foisted upon the non neurotypical.
Those with ADHD and on the spectrum
are often considered simultaneously deficient
and eminently capable, savant-like even.
This drives, I think, the mystique and therefore
broad attraction to these objects.
One is able to be at once bored and motivated, preoccupied
and hyper-focused, neurotypical and not.
The neurotypical can through certain quiet associations
with fidgeting cash in, so to speak,
on the cultural cache of the non neurotypical-- insert "Big Bang
Theory" jab-- here.
And the non neurotypical with luck
can experience at least some amount of relief
at the partial normalization of their own physicality.
And much in the same way the hula hoop
was banned in certain spots due to fears of moral impropriety.
(PROTESTING) Shaking hips?
Well, I never!
The fidget spinner confronts the same-- a blurry line
between honest wholesome spinning
and godforsaken immoral spinning.
Also like the hula hoop, we may ask
what fate awaits the spinner and its users when it's
no longer dizzyingly popular.
Where it has perhaps partially normalized certain actions
and provided a low cost easily acquired tool
for focusing them, is there a future where once spinners
are old and lame?
Those who benefit from and even rely on them
replace or compound one stigma with the next.
What do you all think?
What is the deal with fidgets spinners?
Let us know in the comments, and I'll respond to some of them
in next week's comment response video.
And in this week's comment response video,
we talk about your thoughts regarding the Nintendo
Aesthetic.
If you want to watch that one, it
will be out tomorrow, on Friday.
One small bit of news--
I'm going to be at VidCon this year doing a couple PBS Digital
Studios events.
We're going to be doing a PBS Digital Studios "Dungeons
and Dragons" Q&A, just basically exactly what it sounds like.
We're going to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons
and give the audience the opportunity
to play as NPCs for exactly the amount of time
it takes them to ask a question.
And we're also doing a nerd night,
and I'm going to be a part of that.
I don't know why I'm doing yet, but I'm
going to talk about something for 20 minutes.
I should probably figured out sooner rather than later, huh?
If you would like to support the show,
"Idea Channel" has a patron thank you so, so much
to all of our current patrons.
We have a Facebook NirC and a subreddit.
And the Tweet of the week comes from "double plus goodfull,"
who points us towards a philosopher's zone
episode about the word "awesome,"
and the idea of awesomeness, which is great.
And just in general if you don't listen to the philosopher's
zone, I really like it.
I listen to it a lot.
I think it's pretty great.
And last but certainly not least,
this week's episode would not have been possible or good
without the very hard work of these fidgety spinners.
I'm just-- to be perfectly honest,
I'm shocked the episode even got finished.
They were so busy spinning things-- so distracted.
We're going to ban them.
We're going to ban them here.
Morgan!
What did I say?
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