YouTube’s Weirdest Merch is a $350 Lifelike Doll of a Two-Week Old Baby
Taking the parasocial relationship to its logical conclusion results in the sale of a $350 doll portraying a two-week old YouTuber
Look up the “expand your brand” chapter of the unofficial YouTuber handbook, and you’ll see in big, bold letters advice to diversify your income by offering audiences the chance to buy merchandise.
Kings of the YouTube merch machine are the Paul brothers, Jake and Logan, who shill their merchandise to audiences every two minutes in their videos. (The younger Paul brother even added a merch cannon to the top of a tour bus, the better to fire overpriced t-shirts at impressionable fans.)
In the UK, Upload Merch — an offshoot of YouTube live event company Upload Events — is already gearing up to ship 150,000 products to fans this Christmas, its founder, Stuart Jones, told me.
“Merchandise is becoming more and more important to influencers as CPM [clicks per mille, the standard metric for online adverts] rates have dropped in recent years,” he explains.
Stock-in-trade for YouTubers is t-shirts, snapback hats and pop sockets — the latter of which is a good, entry-level product for young audiences who can’t afford…
