The Internet has contributed to the death of local retail shops, but it’s also brought forward a new form of expressing consumerism that’s specific to YouTube: the unboxing video. Ordering a record on colored vinyl, a Masonic ring , containers of newly legal Ontario weed or even the costumes worn by Kanye West and Lil Pump in their “I Love It” video might be momentarily exciting, but there are hundreds of people willing to enhance their thrill of anticipation by broadcasting it to the world. Many unboxing videos sound conceptually interesting but would be more enjoyable viewing if they were edited more heavily. The “mystery box from the dark web” sub-genre has started proliferating, to the point where I came across a playlist with more than 50 of them. Every single one I’ve watched is obviously fake (note to future video directors: real blood dries brown), feeling like an audition to direct and star in a low-budget found footage horror film. Not surprisingly, there are occasional overlaps with another YouTube-specific form, the ASMR video. As with almost everything on YouTube, there’s such a glut of unboxing videos that I’m not sure how much longer the concept could sustain interest, but for the moment the best videos are usually worth watching more for their makers’ enthusiasm than their subject matter. That said, I tried to choose a selection that contrasted superficially sensationalistic topics with fairly banal reality.
My New Grell Wig! Match Wigs Carissa Wig Unboxing
Shawn Mendes Cover II Vinyl UNBOXING (They Sent Me The Wrong Color?) Olivia Rena
Flower Boy Vinyl Unboxing/Kind of Review
Airsoft Global Glock Unboxing (Even More Glocks!)
Objectification ASMR: Item #1 – The Wooden Box
“Opened By Customs & Leaking Powder” / Psyched Mail
Retro Crown 59FIFTY Unboxing New Era fitted vintage throwback cap
WTF? A 37 Suit?? Alain Dupetit Unboxing and Review
MYSTERY BOX from the DARK WEB Unboxing (GAME MASTER Watches Me) THINGS Went Really WRONG!
DS Doll – body unboxing (part 2)
Canada Legal Weed Unboxing From OCS
UNBOXING a $500 Dark Web Mystery Box!
Illuminatiam Special Unboxing
the masonic ring, Unboxing will make you consider buying one
Unboxing Ridiculous Religious Gifts (Fan Mail)
$120.000 biblical synthesizer & drum machine unboxing!!
1/6 3R GM Reinhard Heydrich Unboxing
HUGE K-POP ALBUM UNBOXING!!!
Sedition & Sedation: ASMR Unboxing of TRUMP the Game [ASMR] [Political]
Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom Criterion Collection Blu-Ray Unboxing
Why Did I Buy This?! UNBOXING the Kanye West “I Love It” Costume
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p.s. Hey. This weekend maestro Steve Erickson has concocted an addictive show-and-tell that’ll pin you to your laptop or phone or, I guess, pad, you just wait. Please click and gander and enjoy until further notice, and, of course, give Steve some kind of heads up so he’ll know you partook. Thanks, and thank you ever so much, Mr. Erickson. ** Sarah Schulman, Hi, Sarah. How great to see you here! I made that post about nine years ago, and it definitely needs updating, and I’ll start by adding links to your books. As it said in the post, it’s part 1 of 2, so there’ll be more great artists, including the two you mentioned, as soon as I can repair the second half. Thanks! I hope everything is great with you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, indeed. So many, many important losses. Someone needs to do a documentary or other rediscovery type presentation about the sublimely great Ethyl Eichelberger for one thing. ** Larry-bob Roberts, Well, hi there, Larry-bob! How cool! Thank you a lot for entering. Yes, the blog has a weird glitch whereby some people can’t see the comments or realise that their comments registered. I’ve tried to get that fixed numerous times, and no one has been able to diagnose what would be causing the issue, so until some genius comes along to help, it’s an unpleasant quirk the blog is having to live with. Kembra Phaler is in the part 2 post that’s forthcoming at some soonish point. Yes, Blacklips. Basically, the post is meant to cover performance artists whose work I experienced and know personally from my years living in NYC, and Blacklips started just after I moved away. ABC No Rio, yes, an inexplicable oversight. I’ll add it. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Hope you’re doing great, man. ** MANCY, Hey! You made it through! So cool to see you here, pal. My great joy to shed a bit of light on ‘STATC’. So good! I hope the successful sneaking in means I’ll get to see you here more often. In any case, love and respect! ** Misanthrope, Ah, an eating triggered thing. Are doctor visits really called “wellness checkups” over there now? That is truly grotesque. Well, ‘Love the Coopers’ isn’t such a bad title, ha ha. You have a stellar weekend yourself, big guy! ** Dominik, Hi, D! Great to see you! I’m good. No, the TV script needs to be finished by Xmas, and I think we’ll need all the time in between to get that done. My week? Hm. Working on you-know-what. An almost all-day TV script producer meeting that was productive but very annoying. Saw some art (retrospectives of Franz West and the architect Tadao Ando, both great). Saw a shockingly terrible recreation of an old performance piece by Mike Kelley and Franz West put on by some director who obviously didn’t even the tiniest idea of what they were doing. Emails. Some PGL-related work and news. Worked on a new gif piece. Kind of an uneventful but okay week, I guess. Yeah, Lily’s very cool. It was funny because I had read and really liked her SCAB piece but somehow spaced on her name and didn’t realise it was hers until I saw her. I hope your last trans workshop today goes really well, and that everybody cool with your departure and gives you all the props you deserve. And of course I hope the organisation head agrees to let you use the space? Did that happen? No, I don’t know Patrick Melrose at all. That might be due to my general ignorance when it comes to almost all TV. I will seek the book and/or the series if there are traces online. Thank you! Weekend: need to work. The big Paris Xmas fair opens today in the Tuileries, which is just down the street, so I’ll check that out. I’ll probably go look at art. But, yeah, TV script work needs to eat a bunch of my days. Boy, am I ready to get that thing out of my life. I hope your weekend has the perfect combo of rest and extreme, blood-boiling excitement! See you when it’s over! ** Steve Erickson, Unless I’m mistaken, Zeena has collaborated on a lot of dance and theater and performance work by providing music and sometime music performed live, but I don’t believe she’s ever done that kind of work totally on her own. Btw, thank you in person for this fantastic weekend! I’m not sure that there’s anything left to reject. Or nothing centralised enough. Unless some artist or set of them has some brilliant counter to Rap, which is really the only music dominant enough these days to be available to overthrow. ** Colin Herd, Wow, hi, Colin! So extremely good to see you! Oh, thank you so much for the invitation! Very cool. Yeah, let’s confer. My current email is: denniscooper72@outlook.com. I’ll try to write to you too today. How great that your ex-student wants to use my poem. Of course I’m very happy about that and cool with it. If he’d like to be in touch with me, you can give him my email. I’m good, and I hope you are too, and I’ll talk to you very soon! ** KeatonsStuffingTho, Ha ha, your name can do anything. There are weird things in Japan. Well, what is weird, I guess? I guess weirdness is a crapshoot, but, yeah, I saw things there that seemed to maybe qualify. Story! I won’t read anything into it. I don’t think I do that ‘reading into’ thing. Anyway, … I’m there. Everyone, Enjoy your Thanksgiving holidays by doing some mental and other non-money-requiring shopping in d.l. Keaton’s fictional Black Friday, which I feel I can safely predict is a whole lot more soul enriching that the one that just costed money. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I do indeed know Blobbyland, yes! I am a fan. If I haven’t featured it on the blog before, that’s some kind of weird fluke. Thanks, pal. Have a great weekend. ** Bill, Hi. Geography used to be such a fascist. Yeah, well, the TV script work annoyance is what I didn’t full realise I had signed up for but should have realised so … Thank you. I assume you’re back in SF and enjoying a relatively peaceful couple of days? ** Joey, Whoa, hi, Joey! Yesterday’s post pulled in all kinds of non-usual pals. Miss you too. Yeah, I’m good, busy, doing my thing, and all is proceeding apace. And you? I have no idea what books are on tape? I’m pretty certain in my initial guessing that not a single book I’ve read in ages is on tape, though. Hm, I’ll see if I’m wrong about that, and, if so, I’ll pony up with a suggestion. Take care of those eyes. Hi to Jarrod! ** Okay. You know what to do or what you’ve done or what you’re partly through doing, depending on your blog viewing habits. Luxuriate in Steve’s gift and say hey in some way or another to him between now and Monday, okay? See you then.
Now available in North America 
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@ Steve, I really enjoyed the vicarious thrills of these unboxing vids a whole lot! My friend the artist Alex Frost does something called Wet Unboxing, an underwater variant which is an inspired concept and has suddenly got big enough for an article in the Guardian to cover it.
An Édouard Leve style Works:
Shoot a video unboxing Steve Erickson’s Unboxing day and then post it on DC’s blog.
Thanks for the great post Steve! Dennis thanks so much for the response. I’ve emailed.
Who is this FUCKING IDIOT ‘Unboxing” “Salo”? She can’t pronounce Pasolini’s name and has no idea who he is, much less Sade. She just goes on and on about how much she hated the trailer
Nicholas Roeg R.I.P.
Thanks for the praise, Black_Acrylic, Dennis and Colin!
I chose that SALO video precisely because the teen who made it seems to be collecting Criterion discs sight unseen and ordered that film without knowing anything about it. I found it very amusing for that reason.
I could see a movement akin to punk taking hold within hip-hop, but something akin to this did happen circa 1999-2000 with “backpacker rap” and the Rawkus and Definitive Jux labels without having the same impact. Black Star’s “Hater Players” was a pretty cutting attack on the “shiny suit” aesthetic of Puff Daddy and Mase, but it’s 2018 and Migos are pretty much doing the same thing.
Mr. Erickson—
Other than the fingernails and the breasts, the DS Doll looks like it’s 11 years old — is he going to fuck that thing? I wonder how much that thing cost? And when he put his fingertip into the vajayjay, whoa 😲 I can only imagine (don’t want to though).
Personally, I would have saved the $5000 or whatever it cost and just walked to Kroger and bought a nice ripe mango or something, I hear fruit fucking is a thing now — these goddamned incels! Oh well, better to fuck a doll or a mango than an underaged child. And after about six minutes into it, I was thinking— where is her head??!!!! But then the last 20 seconds saved the day. Honestly, the doll has the body of a ten year old boy, with breasts duct-taped to it as an afterthought.
The kid’s excitement during the unboxing of Flower Boy is infectious. I enjoyed his ‘kind of’ review. When FB was first released, copies of it on vinyl were insanely priced, well over $100, even on eBay. I wanted a copy but I wasn’t going to drop $149 on it. I just checked the Urban Outfitters website, and now I see copies available for $28. But I’m over it now — overcharging your fans — not a good marketing technique!
Thank you for this day, Steve. I had no idea unboxing videos were such a big thing on YT.
Dennis! Happy Saturday! I see you have a deadline for the completion of the writing of the television series… finished by Christmas! It’s good to have deadlines, don’t you think? I’ve been working on my new novel for 18 months now, and it’s up to 113,000 words, but I’ve self-imposed a deadline of December 31 to finish the initial working draft, otherwise I’ll be writing this thing forever. And then perhaps, another 6 months on your favorite part, the editing. My dream is to unleash it into the world in late 2020 — that is, if there is a late 2020 … muahahahaha
When do you think you will return to work on your dormant novel? Any idea? Are you chomping at the bit to get back to it?
Oh Dennis, will there be a screening for PGL in San Francisco? If so, where and when? I’d like to attend, if possible, see it on the big screen, as intended! I’ll be in SF in early February.
Love,
James ❤️❤️
Steve, Such a great, interesting day. The things people get up to on the interwebs these days. My nephew was really into some sort of anime-type toy when he was pre-teen and would do unboxings when he bought a new one. He got all kinds of views. I find all of this so damn interesting.
Dennis, Haha, I thought you might like that title. Really bad movie, though.
I watched Hot Summer Nights last night at my friend’s house. She and her husband watched it with me, while her 11-year-old daughter was cosplaying online upstairs. We liked it. Not a bad movie at all. Very fun, but it was pretty uneven, kind of didn’t know what it wanted to be. But still a lot of fun and funny in parts. Much better than that shit movie Beautiful Boy that he was in.
The kids and I are going to NYC December 14-16, restarting our annual trip up there. Should be fun. We’re staying near Madison Square Park in Gramercy. I got a good deal on two rooms in a really nice hotel for that weekend.
So far, so good this weekend.
Yeah, maybe an eating thing. I don’t know. As long as there is no obstruction or perforation or anything, I’ll be all right. I’ll mention it to my doc if it continues.
They know what that name means when they see the Keaton in it, haha. I have this old romantic Apocalypse Now Asia idea. I guess I could think of that a different way. One of my Asian lovers was Cambodian, I said all the people with glasses were killed. He basically expressed anyone who thought at all was executed. He also was a funny little Buddha. He said his grandparents were Buddhists and his mother expressed to him how silly religion was and I thought he was going to become a grimlin and roll around the room, it was tres beatific. Maybe it is more the Idoru idea. I know Japanese culture from martial arts and growing up in the 80s, they seem excuse the accusation, boring. Maybe like Macau or Kuala Lumpur. I don’t know, I do love Asian boys. Everybody I know absolutely adores Japan. That story is inspired by stories from my family history and also the oldest Zombie story I know of. Salt on the plantains and they realize they are dead and seek their graves. Interesting Florida aside, there are many Hatians here and one of the Romero movies starts out with gators and zombies on the courthouse steps of Fort Myers. Went out for coffee and lunch and there is no one out there. I think Black Friday did it, haha. Went to this hotdog place and everybody was like Bro there, it was so aggressive and there were like frat girls and old rockers and stuff. I was like what the? I love the unboxing day. I was looking through them and it reminds me. Theres so much stuff if you shopped enough everything could be almost free. Unboxing is a really exiting idea, “Whats in the box? A man’s life.” – 7, Robbe-Grillet Version. My brother and I used to tear the presents open on the ends and then place them back under the tree so the wrapping stayed. I unboxed the latest Chains record today. I’m so dumb I only listen to stuff like on my computer or bad radios. My car just lit that record up today. Gonna check this day. Heard about the strikes in France. At least France still believes in life. Hope you enjoy the story and have an awesome weekend. Off to coffee and find some trouble
They know what that name means when they see the Keaton in it, haha. I have this old romantic Apocalypse Now Asia idea. I guess I could think of that a different way. One of my Asian lovers was Cambodian, I said all the people with glasses were killed. He basically expressed anyone who thought at all was executed. He also was a funny little Buddha. He said his grandparents were Buddhists and his mother expressed to him how silly religion was and I thought he was going to become a grimlin and roll around the room, it was tres beatific. Maybe it is more the Idoru idea. I know Japanese culture from martial arts and growing up in the 80s, they seem excuse the accusation, boring. Maybe like Macau or Kuala Lumpur. I don’t know, I do love Asian boys. Everybody I know absolutely adores Japan. That story is inspired by stories from my family history and also the oldest Zombie story I know of. Salt on the plantains and they realize they are dead and seek their graves. Interesting Florida aside, there are many Hatians here and one of the Romero movies starts out with gators and zombies on the courthouse steps of Fort Myers. Went out for coffee and lunch and there is no one out there. I think Black Friday did it, haha. Went to this hotdog place and everybody was like Bro there, it was so aggressive and there were like frat girls and old rockers and stuff. I was like what the? I love the unboxing day. I was looking through them and it reminds me. Theres so much stuff if you shopped enough everything could be almost free. Unboxing is a really exiting idea, “Whats in the box? A man’s life.” – 7, Robbe-Grillet Version. My brother and I used to tear the presents open on the ends and then place them back under the tree so the wrapping stayed. I unboxed the latest Chains record today. I’m so dumb I only listen to stuff like on my computer or bad radios. My car just lit that record up today. Gonna check this day. Heard about the strikes in France. At least France still believes in life. Hope you enjoy the story and have an awesome weekend. Off to coffee and find some trouble
The unboxing video thing is one of my favorite videos to watch. AND vids of bullet journals. And vids about japanese incense….not just any incense. You know I am a diary writer, and it’s the same thing in a way if you squint your eyes. The Chinese make awesome and most packaging for the masses and they do a good job. my perfume bottles and cases are from China. I bought 100 to start my perfume business for $300. Not bad. http://www.lupusandvega.com
Amazon (I’ve been a member since 1999) kills a lot of stores, but here in NYC, there are too many mom and pop shops and thread-stores you HAVE to walk into. You simply can’t find such a curated mass of goods anywhere else, I think. Appleebees and Barens and Noble are in places, but we’ve Spoonbill and other shops that i always visit.
Anyway, Jarrod did a drawing for a Brooklyn-based brewery. It’s drawings of smoke tricks done with vapors, those wannabe cig things. It’s, as you are surely aware to guess, an amazing drawing. He’s still the same kid, still doing the same thing, working for Hodges, and skinny, thankfully, a small guy with a “non-descript ass” as you have said (about another kid) and amazing. Actually, that’s me. Jarrod’s got a beautiful shape to his ass that he gets from mommy. I am always in love with him.
Therapy has been good to me, Dennis. I’m not as paranoid anymore, right now not at all. Cops came to our door the other day and though I shivered I still opened the door and talked to them about some shootings in our Bushwick apartment. Good for me! No more destorying hardrives and throwing computers out of 5 story windows with Jarrod screaming in the bakground.
I was kidding about the books on tape. I just finished Ulysses again. It’s pretty awful. A pile of shit.
I’m meeting with a friend of yours for drinks in December.
Did you see my drawings on Evergreen Press?
Can you do a post on ECT? I’ve done it 56 times, I stopped counting and it’s a very effective treatment for depression, my psychotic depression went into remission for a year and a half. Worth the price, which is the loss of memories.
Love,
Joey & Jarrod
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Rembrandt! Love ya!
Steve thank you I really like how you curated this with no videos that have any practical value whatsoever. Pretty much all of my experience with this genre is for stuff I bought that has some kind of setup or assembly required. My favorites of what I’ve randomly sampled are the psychedelic enthusiast talking about how making a video while on a drug that feels like knives stabbing through his legs would be cool and the Trump board game guy flicking around wads of imitation Monopoly money to give the viewer an idea of what playing with a billion dollars sounds like.
Dennis,
I hope you don’t mind that I’m responding to a few posts at once. Still contemplating my book list but Marechera’s on. The performance artists really hit a nerve with me. I enjoyed John Sex, Joey Arias, and to a lesser extent the avant-garde theater stuff, but they were more or less what I’d expect from that East Village scene. Tom Murrin and Ethyl Eichelberger really through me for a loop because they resonate wit the part of my soul that could be cast in a Cassavetes movie, the part that I painfully couldn’t find a place for in New York but just might in Tel Aviv.
I had a very short “career” as a performance artist and still have a performative streak. On the 4th photo on this page you’ll see me wearing bulky headphones with a stuffed rainbow monkey around my neck at a “vernissage” opening event of a performance art festival in Chicago.
http://chicagoartworld.blogspot.com/2014/06/2014-rapid-pulse-vernissage.html
The next day I noticed an Easter Bunny over-the-head mask at an empty storefront being used as volunteer headquarters (left over from a promotion? it didn’t belong to the festival), put it on, walked around the block, came back, and kept it on, and the snotty art school volunteer coordinator didn’t have a sense of humor about it. The rank-and-file folks running the event were irked by my attention seeking behavior in an artistic but still very Midwestern setting but the gallery director was noticeably in a bind: being too strict with my spontaneous performance would be a disservice to his art form, yet letting me make a huge scene (which I wasn’t going to do, but there was no way for him to be sure of that) would be a disservice to his patrons. I could’ve had coffee with him afterwards and maybe gotten somewhere in the art world as a result but I never called him so who knows.
Corey, thanks. That Canadian woman even ordered pre-rolled joints. I came across a video on YouTube long ago showing how to make a working gun from a large chunk of metal and a set of plans (which the guy ordered) and a drill, which he proceeded to put together, but I can’t find it now, probably because it’s been taken down.. Does that count as “assembly unboxing?”
It was hard to find interesting record unboxing videos. Many of the most hardcore collectors tend to film themselves for 30 minutes at a time.