This article on Fusion about the highest YouTube earners makes me sad on several levels.

A YouTube channel – DC Toys Collector – earned just under $5 million last year by posting videos of “a young woman in intricately painted nails removing the toys from their packaging and then assembling them”.

The most viewed video from DC Toys Collector has been viewed 172 million times. The channel gets 380 million views a month and has almost 3.5 million subscribers.

Those numbers are…surprising. At least to me.

If you’re wondering what a toy unboxing video looks like, here you go:

 

For some reason I find the idea of kids sitting in front of their PCs watching someone else open toys quite sad. It conjures images of bare-footed waifs, fingers gently stroking the PC screen, tears in their eyes as unattainable riches are paraded in front of them. Not that it’ll be anything like that of course, kids love this type of thing. And so do adults – which is why Amazon bought Twitch.tv for $970 million.

It’s still weird though.

Of course, I’m also sad I didn’t think of it first, but I’m think my upcoming series of toothpaste unboxing videos is going to be a smash hit.

 

[“How to Earn $5 Million a Year” by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 21st January 2015]