Cuteness
Overthink
Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.
4.7 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do Labubus, Beanie Babies, Hello Kitty, and Furbies have in common? They’re all cute! In episode 153 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss cuteness. From the idea of cuteness as a logic of contagion to the evolutionary explanation for why we find babies so adorable, this episode has it all. How is the increasing demand for shortform content a symptom of cuteification? What are the harms of categorizing certain animals as cute? In what ways is cuteness tied to consumption? And is society heading towards a future of cuteness? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts talk about the emergence of cuteness in Kawaii culture and what is so cute about Paddington bear.
Works Discussed:
Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic, Cute Accelerationism
Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, and Interesting
Sianne Ngai, The Cute
Dylan Wittkower, “On The Origins of the Cute as a Dominant Aesthetic Category in Digital Culture”
Sarah Wolfensohn, “Too Cute to Kill? The Need for Objective Measurements of Quality of Life”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Overthink. |
| 0:19.6 | The podcast where two philosophers get cute with ideas and everyday life. |
| 0:24.8 | I'm Ellie Anderson. |
| 0:26.1 | And I'm David Pena Guzman. |
| 0:27.6 | To support the show and get access to extended ad-free episodes, lives and more, |
| 0:32.9 | subscribe to Overthink on Substack. |
| 0:35.6 | Recently, the hottest commodity around has been a Laboubu. |
| 0:40.0 | I didn't really understand what a Labubu was other than it was like this cute sort of |
| 0:44.1 | gremlin-looking doll. |
| 0:45.8 | So I read about it. |
| 0:48.6 | And it turns out that these originated as storybook characters created by the artist Kassing Lung, |
| 0:55.4 | a Hong Kong-born and Netherlands-based artist. |
| 0:57.6 | And Lung was inspired by Nordic folklore, especially elves, in creating these cute little |
| 1:03.1 | creatures who are known as kind-hearted and eager to help. |
| 1:08.2 | If you know anything about a Lubu, you know about the toy version of them, |
| 1:12.2 | because they have absolutely popped off both in their plushy form and in their like bag |
| 1:17.5 | accessory form. This happened starting in 2019 when Lung partnered with the Chinese toy company |
| 1:24.8 | Pop Mart and the dolls are sold in blind boxes. |
| 1:30.1 | So you basically don't see them until you open them, which has created all kinds of |
| 1:34.4 | hype because you want to get a rare Laboooo. |
| 1:36.9 | You don't know what you're going to. |
| 1:37.7 | It's like the adult kind of. |
... |
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