Unwrapped
Kinder Eggs, YouTube, and Being Poor
A friend of mine recently introduced me to “unwrapping” videos on YouTube. The concept is pretty simple — first person videos of hands unwrapping things. Sometimes people talk, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they unwrap candy, sometimes it’s toys. Kinder Eggs are pretty popular, but the point isn’t really what they’re unwrapping. It’s the unwrapping itself.
These videos have tens of millions of views each. The most popular one I could find has over 500 Million. They are, ostensibly, for children, and while there is nothing technically wrong going on, the videos have a strange, fetishy overtone. Unmanicured fingers crawling their way around a Kinder egg, all for a legion of children to stare at from their parents’ iPad. It’s voyeurism, and it’s really, really unsettling to watch.
My first thought on seeing this was that I should make one. Monetized YouTube videos can make an insane amount of money — PewDiePie, a Swedish gamer who uploads videos of himself playing video games (not necessarily reviewing them, just…playing), made $12 Million dollars last year according to a recent Forbes article. That’s before taxes, but still.
Contrary to popular belief, a high number of views doesn’t necessarily mean more money. What pays, according to videopower.org, is engagement. Ads are tailored to content, and people watching PewDiePie are probably not opposed to clicking on an ad for a game or console to find out more. That click is attached to his profile, and he gets paid. There’s power in numbers, but those numbers have to give a shit.
Who’s watching unwrapping videos? Children. Even if I like a product for an ad, I don’t click it, because I’m cynical and have some weird thing against “falling for it.” Kids, though? Hell yeah they’re gonna click that ad for Mobile Strike. They’ll probably spend a shit ton of money, too.
So, people are making some really creepy videos and getting up to half a billion views from a primarily ad-friendly audience. Like, holy shit. How much money is that one video raking in?
For the record, I really don’t like that this is where my brain goes. That shouldn’t be the point. The point should be something about promoting want in children and the perils of capitalism, or whatever.
But here’s the thing: I used a napkin as toilet paper the other day because I had $7.10 and a maxed-out credit card to my name. And when you can’t afford toilet paper, the difference between alright and not great can get pretty blurry.
This is where I am in life. Money is the focus of all things. Everything has to be some financial opportunity. I can’t cook an egg without wondering if I could open a breakfast food truck. I’ll make a goddamn omelette and spend the next hour day-dreaming about my meteoric rise to breakfast success. I have a lot of photographer friends, I bet we could put together a pretty nice cookbook. Tartine did it. We could too, we could start in San Francisco and move our way to LA. And how expensive are food trucks? Probably not that much. Maybe have kind of a funny name, like Eggy Breaky Heart. We’d be a family friendly EggSlut. Plus, eggs are a super low overhead, like this could work. We’d just have to do it, you know?
I really, really don’t want to make unwrapping videos. Or whatever equivalent. On my bed of money, I wouldn’t sleep. But I’m not sleeping now, even though God knows I talk about it enough to tire myself out.
