Gamers hoard nonsense. Digital cats, cosmetic skins, emotes you’ll use twice, 400 Steam stickers, mounts you forgot you owned. And honestly? It rules. Inspired by that viral “useless things people found that are funny for no reason” trend, let’s talk about gaming’s own love affair with stuff that technically does nothing… but totally makes the experience better.
From Fortnite to Baldur’s Gate 3, studios are leaning hard into cosmetic chaos and joke items—and players are eating it up. Here’s why that “completely pointless” gear in your inventory actually says a lot about where gaming is headed right now.
1. Cosmetic Chaos Is Now The Real Endgame
Look at pretty much any major live-service game in 2024: Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Destiny 2. The “endgame” isn’t always beating the hardest raid—it’s drip.
Fortnite just ran another crossover wave with brands and celebrities, and half the hype on social is literally people flexing skins in lobby screenshots. In Valorant, that $25 bundle doesn’t make your gun stronger, but players still argue about which skins “feel better” purely because of sound and animation. It’s vibes as a service.
What’s wild is that these items don’t change how the game works at all. They’re “useless” in a power sense—but extremely useful in a social sense. They’re identity gear. When you’ve put 500 hours into a game, playing “dress up” becomes part of the loop: match your friends, cosplay your favorite character, or just look loud enough to tilt the enemy team.
2. Useless Inventory Items Are Quiet Storytelling
RPG fans know this one. Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Elden Ring, and even cozy games like Stardew Valley are full of totally pointless items: forks, crumpled notes, broken keys, random trinkets, “misc junk.”
They’re not there by accident.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, that bloody note you find in a forgotten corner might not start a quest, but it makes the world feel lived-in. In FromSoftware games, half the lore is hidden in descriptions of rings, useless statues, and items you never need to pick up. It’s environmental storytelling disguised as clutter.
Tech-wise, this is interesting because it shows how devs use cheap data (tiny text files, basic models) to make a world feel huge without constantly building giant new areas. You, the player, fill in the blanks with your imagination. The item is “useless,” but the brain work it triggers is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
3. Emotes, Sprays, and Taunts Are Basically Multiplayer Memes
Overwatch 2, Counter-Strike 2, Rocket League, Fortnite again (because of course): all of them have one thing in common—emotes and sprays that exist purely to be funny or annoying.
On paper, these are peak useless:
- Sprays don’t change gameplay
- Emotes don’t buff your stats
- Taunts literally leave you vulnerable
And yet, new emotes trend on TikTok and X every time a big season drops. Players sync dances in lobbies, do victory bits after a clutch round, or spam a goofy spray at the exact spot they just wiped a squad.
This is where social media and gaming blur: emotes inside games become short-form content outside games. Fortnite’s constant emote collabs with viral dances and songs aren’t random—they’re designed so players generate free clips and memes. You’re not just playing the game; you’re feeding the content machine.
4. “Useless” Collectibles Are Low-Key Player Retention Hacks
If you’ve ever chased every Korok seed in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or grabbed every Toad in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, you already know: collectibles are legalized time theft.
Some do unlock things, sure—but a lot of them? Just cute icons, completion percentages, or tiny cosmetics. In PlayStation and Xbox ecosystems, trophies and achievements are their own “useless” layer on top of that. They don’t affect your game at all, but they absolutely affect how long you stay in it.
Modern game design leans hard on this. Live-service titles like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail constantly drip-feed limited cosmetics and small collectibles tied to events. The fear of missing out on something silly-but-rare is powerful. You’re not grinding for power, you’re grinding for a badge that says, “Yeah, I was there during that weird crossover event in 2024.”
From a tech and business angle, it’s clever: extremely low-cost content (icons, simple models, UI badges) that can keep millions of players logging in daily.
5. We Actually Want Games To Waste Our Time (A Little)
The “useless things” trend hits because we love stuff that exists purely to entertain our brains for five seconds. Games are leaning into that same energy: tiny, pointless side systems that break up the seriousness.
Recent examples:
- In Starfield, you can decorate your ship and bases with random mugs, plushies, and junk, even if you’re otherwise min-maxing your build.
- In Palworld, people are building absurdly over-engineered bases because… why not.
- In indie hits like Dave the Diver and Dredge, there are random side activities—idol cutscenes, silly interactions—that don’t meaningfully change your progress, but make the world feel playful.
This is where gaming quietly separates itself from “pure productivity tech.” Your phone, your laptop, your apps are all about doing more, faster. Games are one of the few pieces of tech built to be gloriously inefficient. Collecting fake chairs or doing a dance emote after every win is, in a way, a protest against everything else in your life trying to optimize you.
Conclusion
The next time you scroll past a thread of “useless things people found that are funny for no reason,” remember: gamers have been living that life for years.
Cosmetic skins, joke items, goofy emotes, junk collectibles—they’re all technically unnecessary. But they’re the glue that holds modern gaming together: identity, story flavor, social fuel, and low-stress fun layered on top of the “real” game.
So no, you don’t need that limited-time skin or that absurd hat for your character. But if it makes your tiny digital world feel more like yours? That’s not useless at all.
Now your turn: what’s the most completely pointless item in your favorite game that you’d absolutely never delete?
Key Takeaway
The most important thing to remember from this article is that this information can change how you think about Gaming.
