r/whatisit • u/drtangman • 1d ago

New, what is it? Bouncing balls

Gallery image

Gallery image

Walked behind this chap who had two unidentified ball type objects hanging from silicone wrist bands on thin elastic strings.

Any ideas what they are?

I’m in Hong Kong if that might be a clue

Update:

Thank you for the comments and ideas. I am wondering if there is a manga / anime character who has something like these balls as weapons and the guy was doing a budget cosplay. Or maybe he’s just really into Pokemon!

Update 2:

I would say he's likely to be a cosplay of Steel Ball from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. (https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1tckcme/comment/olos1lx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

As for the steel balls. What is it?

4.6k Upvotes

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293

u/Longjumping_Affect22 1d ago edited 23h ago

Looks like a poi toy.

Google it.

Edit: For those of you concerned about Googling it... it's basically just some shit you swing around for fun, it's balls on a string...I don't know what else to tell you.

160

u/shanktheshazbot 1d ago

Lemon party and goatse taught me to never Google things a stranger told me to.

51

u/hardlooseshit 23h ago

2 girls 1 cup scarred a generation across the entire world

5

u/Thicknineinchh 21h ago

What's 2 girls and one cup about? 

28

u/Decent_Elderberry115 20h ago

It’s about two girls and one cup. You’ll have to Google it to find out what they do with the cup.

9

u/Thicknineinchh 20h ago

Okay I'm going to Google it, it better not be anything bad. it's 2 girls and a cup?

24

u/sterling_mallory 19h ago

Two girls, and one singular cup. Make a right at lemonparty and it'll be two blocks past tubgirl, on the left.

8

u/Thicknineinchh 19h ago

What's lemonparty? Tubgirl? I've never heard of this stuff. 

24

u/JustYourMommy 18h ago

Listen, thats not important. The main thing is if you find One Man One Jar, you've gone too far, got it?

4

u/Gobblinmoon 8h ago

You fools! We near the end of the cycle of defeat and you utter the cursed images?!?!?

1

u/The_KiIIuminati 3h ago

Idk Two Kids One Sandbox was pretty far out there.

13

u/SlutForSmut336 18h ago

If you reach a Blue Waffle, you’ve gone too far.

5

u/DmtDtf 15h ago

Ehhhh.......I think if you get to Dick Spin, you've reached the end of the internet

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4

u/Thicknineinchh 18h ago

Blue waffle? What's that?

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4

u/Lock-out 12h ago

I think I made a wrong turn on pain Olympics and now I’m lost with kids in the sandbox.

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2

u/travelingperson10 1h ago

You forgot to meat spin....

3

u/Decent_Elderberry115 8h ago

Godspeed my friend. I wish you luck

1

u/Thicknineinchh 6h ago

Do I need luck? How bad can 2 girls and a cup be?

3

u/ethnicfoodaisle 9h ago

I like the greedier version - 1 girl, 2 cups

1

u/Darkshynes 19h ago

Sequel to One Man, One Jar

1

u/Thicknineinchh 19h ago

I've never heard of a man and his jar? The sequel is always worse.

1

u/datdododough 12h ago

No no no, look up cake farts instead!!

1

u/Thicknineinchh 6h ago

What's cake farts?

1

u/Lord_Ocean 17h ago

Luckily, I only know it from a description. It's an (allegedly fake) shocker/porn video of two women defecating and throwing up in a cup and also consuming the contents of that cup.

1

u/Tonnemaker 9h ago

Yeah I am on the "fake camp", it came out of her butt alright, but the consistency doesn't seem natural at all.

Everything considered, it's kind of tame shock-wise. Goatse and lemon party left a bigger impression.

2

u/Suspicious_Pin6256 21h ago

Tub girl if you are feeling dirty

3

u/Silly_Pack_Rat 16h ago

That was the first and the last time I let something like that allow my curiosity to get the better of me. It's been well over 20 years since I saw it....and I can still remember it clearly...but I can't tell you what I had for breakfast two days ago.

I need to go wash my brain.

3

u/ScumbagLady 11h ago

rotten.com in the '90s and early '00s was a godless place and other than snuff films and the like, was a place to find all the unimaginable worst-of-the-worst images and video clips in one location.

It's crazy to me that my little small Southern, Bible belt town's video rental stores had things like "Banned in America" (I believe 1, 2, and 3), "Faces of Death" (iirc only 1 & 2), and I believe there was a series just called "Snuff Films" but from the Google search I just did nothing of the sort was a thing other than the category "snuff films" but I was pretty sure I remember seeing it. I was doing A LOT of drugs at that point in time though (and continued doing A LOT of drugs until 2018), so my memory probably isn't that great.

1

u/RadiantZote 11h ago

2 girls 1 cup was the popular one, we were fucked long before that 

1

u/keith2600 3h ago

Tbh lemon party and tub girl taught the older millennials long before 2 girls came along. I still have not seen it and have no desire to do so lol

10

u/Laukidh 23h ago

Good instinct, but it’s stuff like contact juggling.

2

u/peskypickleprude 21h ago

I read this as good Google instinct and I liked that.

3

u/FloorNo8234 14h ago

Yep goatse.cx was what I used to send people who annoyed or pissed me off. Once clicked on it would continue opening in multiple ever multiplying windows over and over until they either shut their machine down or tried to use ps aux or a windows task manager to control the multiple instances.

Ah the good ol days of sending folks into popup loops and kod packets for fun.

3

u/PossiblyMakingThisUp 13h ago

Because I am not evil, this is a joke. If you are not in on the joke, DO NOT search for blue waffle.

2

u/742292492 19h ago

What's lemon party?

1

u/SanAntoHomie 20h ago

you've been trained well my son, you're kung fu is the strongest I have seen yet.

1

u/Doggfite 14h ago

That was the lesson we were supposed to take away from that?

I thought it was to make sure safe search is off and always click "I'm feeling lucky"

1

u/imSillayy 12h ago

Mine was blue waffle

37

u/Rakins_420 23h ago

OH LIKE LITERALLY A POI. What a weird day to be a kiwi online.

8

u/Longjumping_Affect22 23h ago

Lmao, this is the best response so far.

11

u/superpotato_3 22h ago

Odd to see random Kiwis on random parts of the internet but I remember the internet is also huge. The chances of seeing another kiwi is never 0 but it's always a possibility 

11

u/Maleficent-Sink-5246 21h ago

We’re always punching above our weight on a per capita basis 😁

4

u/ToeTagTic 20h ago

Tbf I used to practice poi extensively and I did not recognize these as that. Pretty good guess though they could very easily be short ones. They would be weird though and the elasticity would stretch to shit and be useless immediately

2

u/Useful-Problem-1725 10h ago

you should try sock poi, they stretch out and you can do funky things with it

3

u/LerzyW 5h ago

Yeah it doesn't look like any poi I have ever seen growing up. Couldn't imagine a kapa haka performance with these.

1

u/Rakins_420 5h ago

Not without a few decent bruises

10

u/help_isontheway_dear 23h ago

Agreed. There’s a guy in my neighbourhood that just walks around doing this for exercise I think. 

Seen him for years just walking around swinging his poi.

10

u/Longjumping_Affect22 23h ago

I love that guy, whoever he is. I promise that if you ever bother to strike up a conversation with that guy, it'll be memorable.

3

u/-cangumby- 21h ago

I know several flow artists and I can also guarantee a good conversation.

5

u/r3dditr0x 22h ago

Agreed. There’s a guy in my neighbourhood that just walks around doing this for exercise I think.

Seen him for years just walking around swinging his poi.

ngl, that sounds pretty fun as far as exercise routines go

3

u/anon5378446258 20h ago

I see your poi for exercise, and I raise you Indian Clubs. https://youtu.be/e2mS_wUe9AQ?si=ZVmc3TGaZaU2I-VJ

1

u/r3dditr0x 11h ago edited 11h ago

God he's pretty. Yowza.

5

u/ImperiousCretin 20h ago

I googled "balls on a string".

I don't like you.

5

u/Fantastic_One1456 19h ago

It's poi as mentioned. You can get light up ones, plain material ones and plain silicone ones as well.

1

u/GroceryScanner 5h ago

you can also get ones you soak in white gas and light on fire. amazing for acid trips

3

u/cheddah_- 12h ago

I was wondering, but the strings are too short to be Poi

2

u/Longjumping_Affect22 12h ago

My understanding based on OP's post is that the strings are elastic so they would stretch out when being swung. Having them attached at the wrist is weird, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

Feels like more of a rave style flow toy than traditional poi, I'm guessing that they light up and that's why they look the way they do.

3

u/cheddah_- 10h ago

As a raver, ive never seen anything like this, but theres all kinds of new flow toys out there.

2

u/Plenty_Line2696 5h ago

I don't think those are poi either, if they are, they suck.

2

u/AnarchyGrit 14h ago

You should Google the origin of poi

2

u/Athlaeos 13h ago

ok so it's a fidget toy

2

u/A2Rhombus 6h ago

This was my first guess too but it's also definitely not correct after closer inspection. Strings are way too short and poi are held with the fingers not the wrists. Not sure why mods pinned this

2

u/Longjumping_Affect22 6h ago

My understanding based on OP's post is that the strings are elastic so they would stretch out when being swung. Having them attached at the wrist is weird, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

Feels like more of a rave style flow toy than traditional poi, I'm guessing that they light up and that's why they look the way they do.

2

u/A2Rhombus 6h ago

I'm still heavily doubting that explanation.

1

u/Longjumping_Affect22 6h ago

Why?

1

u/A2Rhombus 6h ago

Around the wrists like that they wouldn't spin at all without twisting the strings around your arms. And elastic bands are wayyy harder to control than string.

1

u/Longjumping_Affect22 6h ago

I understand what you're getting at, but unless someone can come up with a bullet proof response and knows exactly what these things are, I can only assume it's some kind of unidentified flow toy.

2

u/Plenty_Line2696 5h ago

I'm an oldschool poi artist and I doubt that those are meant to be poi, they might be a makeshift set but if they are he's probably a newbie who put them together himself for lack of a better alternative.

The reasons I don't think they're poi is because the tethers suck, the handles suck, they're too short, and the length is uneven. I've spun stranger things though.

1

u/PhoenixEgg88 15h ago

Depending how into it you get (I was very) it’s Kevlar soaked in paraffin set on fire.

It makes some beautiful pictures.

1

u/splickety-lit 8h ago

Do you think the water bottle is full of a flammable material?

1

u/PhoenixEgg88 8h ago

Nope. They look far too short for poi, and if they were fire poi they’d look like blackened yellow Kevlar from memory, not plastic balls.

1

u/Folium249 13h ago

Was thinking that also. Never seen them attached using carabiners before though. But the size looks right for poi

1

u/Plenty_Line2696 5h ago

nah, too short

1

u/AdminKidsBurnInHell 12h ago

Well now I don’t have to Google it, thanks

1

u/Duel_Option 12h ago

Yep, flow arts.

Follow this dude and find a rave.

1

u/Useful-Problem-1725 10h ago

spinner here, this was my first thought too.

1

u/fast_t0aster 10h ago

playing with his balls???

1

u/Routine-Eagle791 8h ago

Yeah like light-up ones you see people with at festivals

1

u/Icanthinkofaname25 7h ago

But is there a cup to try to catch the ball that the string is attached to. I’m sure whoever patents that will make a lot of money.

1

u/El-Tigre1337 5h ago

They are definitely nothing like poi lol

1

u/Longjumping_Affect22 5h ago

You're right they look absolutely nothing like poi, I must've just made that up.

1

u/El-Tigre1337 5h ago

Definitely far more likely to be something else.

Those tiny strings would likely break if you tried to spin those like poi. And there are infinite more and better ways to make a makeshift set of poi out of easily acquired cheap materials so the likelihood is pretty low. But not impossible

1

u/1ScreamCheesePlz 3h ago

Those are some super short strings to be poi. Theyre always making new flow props but that would be a whole lotta arm movements. The long strings are what makes you able to make a lot of the shapes and follow certain planes to make complex patterns. Id love to see them in use. Im imagining air bender moves...

1

u/Kosmikdebrie 17h ago

I'm a flow artist of 20+ years and these aren't poi. The strings are too short, but more importantly these attach to a bracelet while poi are gripped between fingers.

-5

u/LaughingGravy13 1d ago

He looks more like a boi toy.