17 ms·

A Mother’s Journey Through the Unnerving Universe of ‘Unboxing’ Videos

132 points by takinola 12y ago

hackaflocka 12y ago
I love it. The masses are gradually being brain-deaded. Perfect timing.
- geographomics 12y ago
  What does that even mean?
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    "I actively seek out opportunities to feel smug and superior."
    - twic 12y ago
      Ah, so it's probably hackaflocka who watched that egg video 92 million times.
derefr 12y ago
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.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
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.
morgante 12y ago
Phenomena like this make me increasingly unsure that I understand anything about the existence or desires of the average American.
- ars 12y ago
  > of the average American. of the average Toddler. I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids.
  - morgante 12y ago
    > I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids. This specific video might be aimed at toddlers, but the article notes that there are unboxing videos for all sorts of products with hundreds of millions of views in aggregate. Hundreds of millions of views represents a significant portion of Americans.
  - VLM 12y ago
    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.
doctoboggan 12y ago
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_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...
- bbbrad 12y ago
  Yep, this is a huge driver of many of these youtuber's traffic.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    I doubt it. That video had 90 million views. That's an absurdly huge number of views. Searching for ASMR, the subreddit is the first thing that came up, and the front page items have an average of 5 upvotes, and 80,000 subscribers.
- Mithaldu 12y ago
  A lot of that traffic is definitely ASMR. The camera is very close to the unboxing and manages to pick up the tiny sounds made in great detail and clarity. Another use for this type of video is also falling asleep, which would explain the sheer amount of views as many people queue up these videos night after night. Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Some people feel nice -but in special ways- if they listen to certain sounds. Imagine a bit like listening to a special piece of music that makes the hairs on your neck stand up. Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice. A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos. Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
applecore 12y ago
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.
- __david__ 12y ago
  > Your brain can't entirely distinguish between watching a video game on a screen and actually controlling the action. I'm not sure I agree with that. I'm an avid gamer but find long gameplay-only vids to be pretty boring. The really successful lets-plays are good because there are one or more people talking over them.
  - derefr 12y ago
    It depends on the game. Or, to put that more incendiarily: the degree to which a non-voiceover, 100% completion, edited-for-repetition LP (these are usually called "longplays") of a game serves as a good replacement for playing the game, is inversely proportional to the degree to which the game is actually a game, rather than interactive fiction. The least interesting longplays are made from games that are games in an essential sense: games that are about the aesthetic of exploring and mastering the mechanics of an environment. Simulation games, procedurally-generated adventure games, etc. If you don't wrap a narrative around these, there's nothing compelling there to watch. It's only compelling to play. I'm wondering whether the proliferation of LPs will actually kill the market for genres like the JRPG, the visual novel/dating sim, etc. as people feel satisfied with just having watched the-movie-of-the-game and are left with no urge to play. --- Three examples: 1. I recently tried to watch a Kirby: Epic Yarn LP and fell asleep after five minutes. Yet I'd gladly play it as a game. The same applies to, say, Tetris. 2. Final Fantasy makes for excellent long plays. I played FFVII once and have no urge to do so again, but I'm still waiting for the FFVII-HD longplay well-cut enough that some friends and I can just watch it and Advent Children in sequence as if it were any other movie series. 3. I still do pull out games like FFV every once in a while, just to faff about with the combinatoric possibilities of the battle system and to replay some of the boss battles--but I have no urge to undergo the grindy bits. What I really want from these sorts of hybrids is a CG movie that comes with a "bonus disc" that lets you jump right into the various preset sandbox fights, plot battles, and minigames. As it is, I frequently keep emulator save states to do exactly this.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
That headline sounds the output of a Markov generator raised on hand-wringing clickbait newsfeeds.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
adrusi 12y ago
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.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  I'm aware of two major subgenres: 1) the "first impressions review". Descriptions of how sturdy or flimsy or smooth something feels, how it disappoints or delights compared to the picture on the box, whether it works as expected immediately. This actually seems really useful to me as a supplement to written reviews. 2) the "revel in the thing itself" unboxing. My preschool-aged nephew loves these videos. He seems to have as much fun watching people play with new toys as he does actually playing with new toys, or more. In a sense, this sort of video actually shields him from disappointment -- if the toy sucks, he can just move on to the next video, or he might not even notice since the person on screen is probably having fun anyway.
- arrrg 12y ago
  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.
walterbell 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Good point, a lot of views could be coming from a few obsessive compulsive repeat-viewers.
ianbicking 12y ago
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.
- ams6110 12y ago
  Watch as this talented carpenter works with amazing proficiency as he lays down a series of cinder blocks. I would think he means mason, not a carpenter. Though I didn't watch the video (no Flash).
- chubot 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
  - 12y ago
Leander_B 12y ago
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.
grimman 12y ago
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.
gatehouse 12y ago
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.
- minikomi 12y ago
  That was amazing.
- creamyhorror 12y ago
  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&view=0&sort=p https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&vi...
kremlin 12y ago
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.
kremlin 12y ago
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.
AliAdams 12y ago
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.

132 points by takinola 12y ago

hackaflocka 12y ago

I love it. The masses are gradually being brain-deaded. Perfect timing.

geographomics 12y ago
What does that even mean?
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  "I actively seek out opportunities to feel smug and superior."
  - twic 12y ago
    Ah, so it's probably hackaflocka who watched that egg video 92 million times.

derefr 12y ago

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.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

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.

morgante 12y ago

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

ars 12y ago
> of the average American. of the average Toddler. I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids.
- morgante 12y ago
  > I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids. This specific video might be aimed at toddlers, but the article notes that there are unboxing videos for all sorts of products with hundreds of millions of views in aggregate. Hundreds of millions of views represents a significant portion of Americans.
- VLM 12y ago
  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.

doctoboggan 12y ago

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_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...

bbbrad 12y ago
Yep, this is a huge driver of many of these youtuber's traffic.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  I doubt it. That video had 90 million views. That's an absurdly huge number of views. Searching for ASMR, the subreddit is the first thing that came up, and the front page items have an average of 5 upvotes, and 80,000 subscribers.
Mithaldu 12y ago
A lot of that traffic is definitely ASMR. The camera is very close to the unboxing and manages to pick up the tiny sounds made in great detail and clarity. Another use for this type of video is also falling asleep, which would explain the sheer amount of views as many people queue up these videos night after night. Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Some people feel nice -but in special ways- if they listen to certain sounds. Imagine a bit like listening to a special piece of music that makes the hairs on your neck stand up. Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice. A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos. Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

applecore 12y ago

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.

__david__ 12y ago
> Your brain can't entirely distinguish between watching a video game on a screen and actually controlling the action. I'm not sure I agree with that. I'm an avid gamer but find long gameplay-only vids to be pretty boring. The really successful lets-plays are good because there are one or more people talking over them.
- derefr 12y ago
  It depends on the game. Or, to put that more incendiarily: the degree to which a non-voiceover, 100% completion, edited-for-repetition LP (these are usually called "longplays") of a game serves as a good replacement for playing the game, is inversely proportional to the degree to which the game is actually a game, rather than interactive fiction. The least interesting longplays are made from games that are games in an essential sense: games that are about the aesthetic of exploring and mastering the mechanics of an environment. Simulation games, procedurally-generated adventure games, etc. If you don't wrap a narrative around these, there's nothing compelling there to watch. It's only compelling to play. I'm wondering whether the proliferation of LPs will actually kill the market for genres like the JRPG, the visual novel/dating sim, etc. as people feel satisfied with just having watched the-movie-of-the-game and are left with no urge to play. --- Three examples: 1. I recently tried to watch a Kirby: Epic Yarn LP and fell asleep after five minutes. Yet I'd gladly play it as a game. The same applies to, say, Tetris. 2. Final Fantasy makes for excellent long plays. I played FFVII once and have no urge to do so again, but I'm still waiting for the FFVII-HD longplay well-cut enough that some friends and I can just watch it and Advent Children in sequence as if it were any other movie series. 3. I still do pull out games like FFV every once in a while, just to faff about with the combinatoric possibilities of the battle system and to replay some of the boss battles--but I have no urge to undergo the grindy bits. What I really want from these sorts of hybrids is a CG movie that comes with a "bonus disc" that lets you jump right into the various preset sandbox fights, plot battles, and minigames. As it is, I frequently keep emulator save states to do exactly this.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago

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

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

adrusi 12y ago

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.

lotharbot 12y ago
I'm aware of two major subgenres: 1) the "first impressions review". Descriptions of how sturdy or flimsy or smooth something feels, how it disappoints or delights compared to the picture on the box, whether it works as expected immediately. This actually seems really useful to me as a supplement to written reviews. 2) the "revel in the thing itself" unboxing. My preschool-aged nephew loves these videos. He seems to have as much fun watching people play with new toys as he does actually playing with new toys, or more. In a sense, this sort of video actually shields him from disappointment -- if the toy sucks, he can just move on to the next video, or he might not even notice since the person on screen is probably having fun anyway.
arrrg 12y ago
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.

walterbell 12y ago

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 12y ago
Good point, a lot of views could be coming from a few obsessive compulsive repeat-viewers.

ianbicking 12y ago

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.

ams6110 12y ago
Watch as this talented carpenter works with amazing proficiency as he lays down a series of cinder blocks. I would think he means mason, not a carpenter. Though I didn't watch the video (no Flash).
chubot 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
- 12y ago

Leander_B 12y ago

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.

grimman 12y ago

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.

gatehouse 12y ago

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.

minikomi 12y ago
That was amazing.
creamyhorror 12y ago
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&view=0&sort=p https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&vi...

kremlin 12y ago

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.

kremlin 12y ago

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.

AliAdams 12y ago

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.