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A Student Photographed 100 Screw Heads — and Found Almost None at Disneyland

A photography assignment about uninteresting things led to a surprisingly deep insight about design and magic.

· 5 min · Togetter

What's going on

A professor at Meiji Gakuin University *(a private university in Tokyo)* shared results from one of his recurring assignments: students must photograph 100 images of something they find completely uninteresting. The goal is to push them to look more carefully at things they'd normally ignore entirely.

One student chose screw heads — the flat, round tops of screws visible on everyday objects and surfaces. What started as a mundane subject led to an unexpected discovery: at Tokyo Disneyland, the student could barely find any screws at all. The professor pointed out the parallel to Apple products, which are famously designed to hide all visible fasteners. The thread quickly branched into conversations about design philosophy, the nature of "interest," and what it means when the ordinary suddenly reveals depth.

Comments

Yesterday’s class was the review session for that “photograph 100 things you’re not interested in” assignment. One student shot screw heads — just the tops of screws you find on streets and around the house. Really fascinating stuff. The best part was their discovery that when they went to Disneyland to look for screws, they could barely find any.
I noted that the idea of hiding screws completely — treating them as something that would “break the dream” — is a lot like what Apple does with their products.
And from there we got into just how much of the world is literally held together by screws. I recommended they read One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw (a popular history book tracing the screw’s invention and its impact on civilization).
This is great!
Now I want to go to Disneyland just to verify this.
A few attractions at Tokyo Disneyland do have visible screws. Whether they’re actual functional screws or just decorative, I can’t say. DisneySea (the adjacent park with a nautical/explorer theme) actually has quite a few visible ones.
Very Daily Portal Z energy to this whole thing. (Daily Portal Z is a beloved Japanese web magazine known for absurdist, curiosity-driven experiments — the “what happens if you do this completely pointless thing seriously” genre.)
This is so cool. Everyone should try this.
Things I have zero interest in… women’s fashion… minivans that can’t go off-road… small dogs… watches like Rolex… melon bread… stuff like that…
I vaguely remember talking with someone while waiting in line at Disney about whether Phillips-head screws (the cross-shaped ones) had a center dot or not. Can’t remember where exactly.
This got me curious so I went and read the Wikipedia article on screws. Apparently the concept dates back to ancient times. So why did Disney decide to hide them? Not for historical accuracy reasons, but more like… a magic and immersion thing? (Speaking as someone who doesn’t know Disney that well.)
On the topic of interiors — I read an article about 40 years ago that noted trains tend to have exposed screw heads everywhere, while aircraft have very few.
In early Showa-era (roughly the 1920s–30s) buildings, Phillips screws hadn’t become widespread yet, so flathead screws were standard. Whenever I spot a flathead screw in a modern building, I get weirdly excited.
Screws and emergency buttons should ideally be easy to find when you actually need them — yet both tend to get hidden or camouflaged.
Side note: at Disney, even the railings that look like solid metal have bendy tips.
Given all this, I was a little shocked when I once spotted plastic cable ties used to secure a rope on a boat at a certain well-known fountain area… the illusion broke a bit.
Even if you start out uninterested, I’d think the act of photographing something makes you observe it closely enough that interest starts to develop. So is it like, a “game over” rule if you start finding it interesting? Or is it fine to just shoot 100 disconnected photos? I want to know how it actually works. Can I join the class?
I mean, if you decided to photograph screws, doesn’t that mean you were already interested in them? Feels like it might technically disqualify you from the “uninteresting things” assignment…?
What a brilliantly designed assignment… There are two kinds of “uninteresting”: things so far removed from your life they feel like another world, and things so ordinary and close that you’ve never consciously noticed them. When you try to fill 100 photos, you’re basically forced to choose the second category.
The moment when something uninteresting becomes interesting — that’s the best part of being a teacher. Humans don’t go looking for things they don’t know exist. But once they know, they can’t stop looking.
I feel like around photo 50, you’d start genuinely getting interested in whatever you chose, and the whole premise of the assignment would collapse.
Just the act of framing a shot requires you to pay attention to something… feels like a paradox.
This is great. Shoot enough photos of anything and you’ll probably start caring about it.
Reading stuff like this suddenly makes everyday life feel full of angles you hadn’t considered. Focus on screws and you realize they’re everywhere — which makes the Disneyland thing all the more striking.

My take

There's something quietly profound about a class that teaches you the world has more depth than you've been noticing — and all it takes is looking closely at something you'd usually walk past without a second thought.

Comments loosely translated for tone.

Source https://togetter.com/li/2705794