YouTube and the restructuring of play: A media (auto)poetics of toy unboxing videos

Abstract

Toy unboxing videos are a popular and lucrative form of children’s entertainment on YouTube. This essay undertakes a media (auto)poetics of these videos and their relationship to children’s play through an integrated analysis of technology (media ecology), text (rhetorical criticism) and participant experience (autoethnography). Based on this analysis, I argue that toy unboxing videos foster and promote a form of ‘play as advertising’ via three key structural features: (1) repetition of the interest-excitement affect, (2) object fetishization and (3) direct address. In a concluding section of the essay, I reflect on the implications of the preceding analysis for digital media criticism, online advertising and children’s play.