
A Mother’s Journey Through the Unnerving Universe of ‘Unboxing’ Videos - takinola
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-journey-through-the-unnerving-universe-of-unboxing-videos.html
======
ianbicking
Here's a video that I think has a similar
appeal:[http://wimp.com/cinderblocks/](http://wimp.com/cinderblocks/) \- it's
just a guy laying cinder blocks, zero consumerism. But relaxing.

My daughter is about to enter Montessori, and one of the techniques they like
is to simply demonstrate to a child - not much narration, no shortcuts or
summarizing, just demonstration. And I realized how little I do this, even
though I describe things to my daughter constantly.

So maybe these videos are filling that gap. The commercialism might be a
supply-side phenomena, since that's where the ad dollars are.

~~~
chubot
I dunno I think that one is different -- it's nice to watch someone who is
good at what they do.

But that's not what unboxing videos are. I've never found one to be enjoyable.
I just stumbled across some when trying to search for reviews of products and
they can't hold my attention.

~~~
ianbicking
When I imagine a toddler watching these videos I think of this - for a toddler
these unboxings are the work of people with manual skills they still aspire
to.

~~~
walterbell
Since society is happily live-testing (90M instance) videos on toddlers, it
could be extended to formal A/B experiments distributed on YouTube. Create
variations of this popular video, changing one variable at a time - shapes,
colors, voice, manual dexterity. Compare toddler learning with computer vision
algos for training robots on manual movement.

------
doctoboggan
I suspect some of the popularity of unboxing videos can be attributed to the
ASMR[0] community.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand
anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.

~~~
bane
There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around
sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and
Frisson being the most common.

Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken
skin") is the most common. _Most_ people experience it from time to time. Like
during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered
by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's
rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.

The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. _Most_ people don't experience
these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't
ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But
it's only recently started to get attention and research.

ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the
sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds
in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. _something_
about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can
ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking
a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical
reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically
pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct
from a cold chill.

Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and
discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-
ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as
the two phenomenon are often confused.

Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr](http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr)

Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any
trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.

Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more
about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to
musical perception, but _can_ occur outside of music as well.

While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be
much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an
extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people
who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or
even certain performances of a song).

And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often
see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index
when the sharer typically frissons.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson](http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson)

A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get
it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades.
If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical
frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.

But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners,
but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions
are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you
are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a
human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly
found alive at the same time.

The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a
bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability
to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.

Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive
in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal
crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face
who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's
"extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never
even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate
it a bit.

I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my
mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo
while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother
thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to
music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a
very long time.

But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix".
Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage
it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and
collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to
mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started
to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a
drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not
street drugs.

Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wow, I haven't heard about Frission before! Thank you for long and detailed
explanation. I guess I can relate only to Cold Chills. I tried to listen to
some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of
discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing
someone clean their teeth.

~~~
dunmalg
>I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction
and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard
or hearing someone clean their teeth.

Glad to hear I'm not alone. My wife and I listened to the This American Life
program on ASMR and I couldn't even stand the few short snippets in the
program. The whispery sound of quiet talking where you can hear the speaker's
tongue flapping around in their mouth makes me want to pull my teeth out with
pliers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So maybe we should find (or found) some kind of Negative Autonomous Sensory
Meridian Response society? ;).

~~~
dunmalg
Heh. Seriously though, it does feel like I have anti-ASMR. I swear, every
single thing that is supposedly happy-making for ASMR folks is "please pull my
teeth out with pliers" level bad to me. It's like the same neurological
response, only wired to my revulsion center. Perversely though, I kind of
enjoy the sensation of scratching a chalkboard with my fingernails.

------
derefr
It strikes me that with "surprise eggs" in particular, the "feeling of
unboxing" is actually the entire traditional value proposition of the product.
Seeing the contents of all the eggs removed and displayed entirely short-
circuits the need to actually pay $1.99 to do that yourself.

------
adrusi
I can't say I know much about the range of subgenres that exist withing the
unboxing universe, but at least in tech unboxing videos, I've always assumed
that the primary appeal was the first-impressions review that comes with the
unboxing. After a user takes their new thinkpad out of the box, they might
remark about how great the travel is on the keyboard, or about its weigh or
build-sturdiness. They're the next best thing to trying a product in person
(and real reviews are harder to come by than dime-a-dozen unboxings).

Maybe I'm totally misjudging and the primary attraction that they instill the
same reaction as getting a shiny new gadget does.

~~~
arrrg
Some things are attractively packaged. So seeing someone show off that
packaging can be quite nice in itself.

Sometimes unboxing can give you valuable and otherwise hard to find
information, e.g. how big the transformer is and how it looks. That stuff is
typically nowhere to be found, not on the website of whoever made the thing
(even if you search for the manual) and often not in reviews (at least if the
transformer isn’t extremely enormous or extremely ugly or otherwise
noteworthy).

First impressions tend to be pretty useless in my opinion since it’s not very
thought out and all very subjective. Maybe sometimes something useful is said,
but it’s mostly useless.

It’s also good for getting a non-product-photo look at the product. For some
things there just aren’t any video reviews and photos often just don’t cut it.
It’s always good to get more than one look at a product.

~~~
diydsp
I just did an unboxing video (of the Bitbox
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDuMKHX91Mk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDuMKHX91Mk))
and part of my motivation had to do with the packaging.

Not the Bitbox's packaging, but the postal wrapper which came from France. As
an American, I've felt a small bit of fear as I've watched our financial
resources diminish. When I saw the multi-colored postal package, with its
delicate rose-colored gradient, I had the distinct cognition "Hey, there's a
country and a people unafraid to spend some resources on making their postal
packages look good."

We should get our national shit together.

~~~
daturkel
See the recent redesign for USPS

[http://grand-
army.com/work/projects/project.php?project=usps...](http://grand-
army.com/work/projects/project.php?project=usps_retail)

------
morgante
Phenomena like this make me increasingly unsure that I understand anything
about the existence or desires of the average American.

~~~
ars
> of the average American.

of the average Toddler.

I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids.

~~~
VLM
Look for oscilloscope unboxing videos. I've watched a few and haven't pulled
the trigger yet. (edit: trigger is a bad pun wrt oscopes, sorry)

I bought a camping tent after watching about 10 unboxing videos. I got a table
saw about a year ago the same way, watch a couple videos first.

I am well aware probably 1/2 the video are astroturf. If I tune out the speech
the video speaks for itself. Oh, OK, with my own eyes I see thats how you
adjust the height of the blade. I like/dislike that particular saw's blade
lifting design.

The problem is narrow focus by marketing making at least some purchasers
prefer homemade commercials over their hyper focused "professional"
commercials which unfortunately suck. Lets say someone is trying to sell a
"pro-grade" digital multimeter and I'm trying to buy one. Unfortunately the
market "user interface" will be a little too "stylized" and probably rely on
sexual objectification of women and business cliche speak.

Some beautiful very young woman who has no idea what the product does reads a
script explaining "Our ISO9000 manufactured meter will synergistically
energize your resources to proactively meet their key performance indicators".
Unfortunately as a mere user of the device instead of being a CEO, that kind
of marketing is useless to me as a purchaser, I have no idea how painful the
device makes it to switch between ammeter and voltmeter probe wiring topology
and how useful is the continuity feature anyway? The official PR materials
suck so much I'll just watch an unboxing video. That may be the only way I'll
be permitted to get a straight answer WRT the connectors being too tight to
easily swap.

I have plenty of experience where the quality of PR has little correlation
with the quality of the product, so I'm not overly concerned. I can see why
pro content creators are terrified. This is equivalent to when print
journalists first noticed some people prefer bloggers to their "professional"
productions, following which about 50% of them lost their professional jobs.

From my kids, they like to study stuff they like. In the unlikely event we
ever get a Wii-U my son is already an expert on how to connect it to the TV
and configure it. I admit I've been window shopping new oscilloscopes,
including ones I'll never be able to afford... The article makes fun of a $2
plastic egg, but I don't waste money on that for my kids on a regular basis,
so I can see the kid appeal.

------
gatehouse
Reminds me of happy kitchen #4
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8gJOCwBuFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8gJOCwBuFc)
, 15 mil views), somehow both relaxing and terrifying.

~~~
creamyhorror
This is incredible. The most viewed video of 'RRcherrypie Group' has 80m
views. I wonder how these videos spread - are people sharing this like crazy?
The comments are a mix of "so cute", "i don't get why i keep watching these",
and "where can i buy this??"

It's like the unboxing video in the original article, except given an
additional play-cooking element and taken to an extreme of meticulousness.

See all the videos here (the Mentos + Cola one is quite unexpected):

[https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&vi...](https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p)

------
Leander_B
I asked about this a while ago on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751806)

Our son always seems to end up on such videos and can watch them for as long
as possible. Really freaky.

Seems the people behind it are taking a nice cheque home each month.

------
walterbell
Would be interesting to know from Google's analytics how many views are unique
vs. repeat.

The super-engaged toddlers are remniscent of those in the "Smile Time" episode
of Whedon's Angel.

~~~
hackaflocka
Good point, a lot of views could be coming from a few obsessive compulsive
repeat-viewers.

------
AliAdams
Surely this is more to do with 'getting views' than anything else. To imply
that there is a deeper motivation like ASMR etc might be taking it a little
too far for the majority of cases.

My guess would be it is just a very easy, non-thinking way of creating content
and gaining attention.

------
kremlin
In the article he lists some kinds of fetish youtube videos like zit-popping
and clean-corn-shuck. One that he didn't mention that I partake in is Earwax
Removal -- videos of someone with impacted cerumen getting it removed by a
metal rod usually by a nurse.

------
kremlin
My daughter loves these 'opening toys' videos -- especially the ones from this
woman. I'm very amused to find an article about this sensation, and my wife
will be as well. We've been curious about it for a while.

------
grimman
This strikes me as a toddler-specific Ashens (sans dry/sarcastic humour and
the iconic couch of course). I watch Ashens regularly, so in a sense I can see
the appeal. Yet this woman's content still baffles me.

------
applecore
This phenomenon is similar to how people enjoy watching others play video
games.

Your brain can't entirely distinguish between watching a video game on a
screen and actually controlling the action.

~~~
morgante
> This phenomenon is similar to how people enjoy watching others play video
> games.

Agreed, in that I can't understand why somebody would be interested in either.

~~~
VLM
Several responses have focused on rail games where you watch a predetermined
story unfold.

I learned how to make an automatic egg/chicken factory in minecraft from
watching a video. I'd never have imagined something so crazy without seeing it
live in 3-D first. You do what with wooden signs, and then pour flowing water
on them, and then throw chickens on it? Madness! Yet it works!

I imagine this has a lot to do with 3-d and open world type games where having
an experienced field guide walk you thru a real world-ish experience helps.

(edited to add, I live in a geographic area where many people make a living as
hunting and fishing guides; the "experienced field guide" phrase for video
games is very intentional, I suspect in the next decade or so of video gaming,
there will be people making a modest living off literally being field guides
for video gamers... just kinda escorting noobs and showing them the ropes,
maybe not a lot of money but more than they'd get off the mechanical turk)

~~~
DanBC
I watch a few different YouTube videos for different reasons.

XisumaVoid [1] does nice, clear, tutorials of a bunch of different stuff.

Etho [2] also does some tutorials, but he embeds them into his "Let's Play"
series. He's also part of a server and I enjoyed the derping around they did.

BDoubleO and GuudeBoulderFist (as OOG [3]) had some funny videos of them
playing a challenge map while drunk.

Yogscast [4] had one series that appealed to me at a particular time of my
life when I just needed disposable nonsense.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/xisumavoid](https://www.youtube.com/user/xisumavoid)

[2]
[http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab](http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpOn5V_NWw&list=PL57E50DFE2...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpOn5V_NWw&list=PL57E50DFE29CD4465)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKorN4Dg64&list=PL535DD4748...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKorN4Dg64&list=PL535DD4748A99318D)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF60520313D07F366](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF60520313D07F366)

------
PhasmaFelis
That headline sounds the output of a Markov generator raised on hand-wringing
clickbait newsfeeds.

------
lifeisstillgood
Tldr: watching a video of taking a product out of its packaging gives people
the vicarious feeling of newness and ownership without actually buying the
product. This is popular it seems, and largest effect is in toddlers.

It's just another trigger the modern world has uncovered in our ape brains.
The thrill of unwrapping a banana or mango writ large. It probably won't hurt
your kids but if they are watching videos unsupervised and you "come across"
them watching that's probably a bigger flag to you.

