Gadgetory

today we're doing our first unboxing this is a fluke current clamp so there you go thanks for watching I'll see you all next time unboxing embargoes are a complete they're a form of generating more marketing hype and hanging onto the news cycle as long as possible it's not even a user experience to see a media unboxing because as a user you don't get this stuff when you buy behind the product and open the box it's not even a user experience anymore it's just blatant pandering and trying to draw hype and keep it as long as possible I need to move these before getting to that this content is brought to you by the Thermaltake flow RGB closed-loop liquid cooler which is a 360 millimeter radiator plus 3 120 fans that are RGB illuminated if then we'll take it ringg fans at that this is a 4.5 done a stack pump which is one of the faster pumps you can learn more at the link in the description below at some point this year it went from a normal news embargo plus performance embargo cycle to something a little crazy sometimes it was news embargo unboxing embargo performance no actually there was another one there was unboxing embargo news embargo something in between like a guide and then performance embargo what used to be the case more traditionally and if you ask some of the writers as an on video in the industry they'll tell you the same generally speaking it was you get the news you can publish the news but you don't talk about having the product and can't even say you do and then you do the performance review later but now there's all this hype to fill the gap and generally it's being filled under the term unboxing embargoes which aren't necessarily news and it's kind of ambiguous where you draw the line as to what constitutes an unboxing so it's getting kind of just it's too much hype it's not consumer friendly it's a waste of your time and more so than even my time because on your end if we take a 5 to 10 minute unboxing video which we have not yet made and we do please kill me but if we take that and multiply it by fifty to a hundred thousand views that's a lot of minutes that will never be returned the people who once had them so again it's not even really a consumer experience anymore because what's happening is with the advent of unboxing embargoes which stem from a new era of visual based media that's more hype focused than information and data focused what we end up with is these extravagant media boxes and gifts and unboxing experiences and sometimes it goes to the consumer look at the dre beats for example you end up paying enormous amounts of money for the literal box that they come in and sometimes it doesn't go to the consumer it just goes to media and makes it look like this thing is way fancier than it ever will be so from the aspect of hey this thing's actually useful I would say no except for one perhaps one instance where maybe you're looking at an unboxing because you're not quite sure if the thing includes the adapter that you want or the cable that you want and hey no one actually talked about it in the reviews so let's watch an unboxing that makes sense doing an unboxing embargo specifically to generate hype not a fan of it and this isn't calling out any one company in particular because there's been a couple of them that have done it this year and I'm not sure who started it I would like it to end but this year it's basically been more and more pushing the limit by both the companies and by the media and we do this to I'll tell you in a minute to figure out how much can you on the company side it's how much can they market the product and stretch out that launch timeframe as long as possible to keep hype and interest and from the media perspective it's how do we push the limits of what's allowed under this phrase unboxing embargo which has been left intentionally vague by the company to try and do something actually unique and different get views so everyone is playing into it but in different ways for example with the point of where do you draw the line where does it stop when we're told unboxing embargo what we do is take the product and disassemble it never open it from the box but hey this is part of my unboxing process so it falls under in an unboxing Barga does it not and then you see other channels there in PC builds and things like that and this isn't a beef against them because I totally agree with their perspective and what they're doing again we took it apart they built a PC where's the line both are unboxings and neither have performance numbers I guess ours is more of a well it's just taking it apart but it doesn't have a performance metric attached to it so you don't really get yelled at for it and this is a lot different from where it used to be where you had the news coverage no one knew we have the product you could probably guess but you don't show it and then later you do the performance embargo and in between that time you have enough time to test and focus on testing and benchmarking and reviewing and really build your content piece to be something worthwhile now that time is filled with instead of silence it's filled with marketing hype and noise and a lot of that is generated by media and a lot of it's generated by the company because everyone's fighting for views to survive in a pretty fierce industry and if you start looking at things like logical fallacies you could pull the slippery slope one and draw a parallel to the games industry I used to basically only cover games before moving over to the hardware side and on the game side there was a trend that's now more popular where you would get these special embargoes depending on who you were are you an influencer on YouTube or are you a reviewer and if you were an influencer then you would get a special embargo for some games where you could post Let's Plays that were non critical to show the game before launch if you were a reviewer well then screw you post your review and it launches like everyone else so that's kind of where you want to avoid getting that direction because ultimately with an unboxing you really can't be that critical because to be critical really properly anyway to be critical requires data you can't just be an asshole and call it a day so ideally you have some data to back it up and just doing an unboxing isn't going to give you that data and oftentimes we don't have enough time or even the drivers to benchmark products to put out data in discrete forms so really what you're looking at is a video where the user or the creator is not going to be critical very likely won't be anything that is critical will probably be pretty softened and then you open the box you get the hype you got to see the stuff that's inside the fancy media kit that you'll never own and everyone moves on watch this the next one and the product launches and everyone's all hyped about it whether performance well or not is irrelevant at that point except for the fact where the hype is the worst thing in the industry and if it performs poorly then it comes back at us which is really crazy because it's media who are following this unboxing trend so to generate all the hype if a product that performs poorly consumers of course feel misled because they're like wait a minute but this thing looked awesome based on of course nothing except for unboxing videos and not data so it's this really vicious circle and you point fingers a few different ways but really just like no more unboxing embargoes please so ideally the way it's done I think is the way it used to be done when this was more of a a written driven industry where you had written articles and Ian Contras over at on and tech had a great article that was just called thread Ripper 1950 X we can show you photos now and he goes through showing the photos kind of even pushes the limits a bit with that one and that's a written cite by showing the thermal paste circle which we also showed in video form so even they're just pushing it a little bit and then at the bottom he's got a personal note that's actually really well written about the state of the industry and the same thing about how unboxing embargoes are based on a new form of media which is video that we obviously play a part in and it's on that form of media being primarily hype and driven by marketing and visuals and not charts and data and all the stuff that we put out on the channel which obviously you get less interest for that so that's that's part of the problem part of the problem is the demographic changing part of the problem is the means of media consumption changing and those are all things that are pretty difficult to control and you really can't so there's no point trying to control those but trying to put out good content that doesn't play into just simply opening a box showing the product and moving on I think is part of the solution to the problem and the problem being an insurmountable wall of hype for various products all the way down to cases now when computer cases have the amount of hype behind them that some of them do like the age 500p it's kind of getting to me like a little bit much it's not something you don't really saw and it's fantastic for the companies this is completely brilliant for the companies involved with unbox and embargoes they get free coverage for the most part they get they don't have to pay for the advertising and they're getting advertising and it's the sneakiest advertising in that it seems sincere and it's not actually disclosed as an ad because the creator of course doesn't see it as an ad and probably didn't charge for an ad so it's actually just just to conceal Dada but the creator is not even making any money for it other than maybe YouTube Adsense which is not enough to even eat ramen noodles off of so that's what you're dealing with with unboxings so to back it up a little bit I think I first started thinking about this with the 1080i was one of the first ones that used the explicit words unboxing embargo and then after that thread ripper played into it quite a lot actually Rison did as well with thread Ripert started getting a little crazy and we voiced that to Andy we voiced it to multiple other companies that have done on box and embargoes where basically you start getting into product unboxing news embargo installation guide embargo review embargo a week and a half later and really why does the installation guide why does the the news embargo why does the unboxing why did those have to be separate things just all in one or just the news and that's it and then do the rest later but it controls the media narrative quite a bit because everyone's vying for traffic and it's it's pretty hard to break away from that you need view is to keep going and in this industry that's as saturated as it is it means that it's harder and harder to get those views from people who are now your competitor so from that perspective obviously you're gonna do as much as you can to show the new product and talk about it because that's what's getting interest in views and drives revenue and growth and all those things and now from our perspective I don't think it's not really the point to talk about our perspective of this but again if we don't do unboxings will do a teardown which we do anyway whether or not there's an unboxing embargo we always do tear downs but the reason I'll post them with an unboxing embargo lift is because it's unique content it tells you a bit more we can actually start drawing conclusions about the product look at the BRM for instance before even getting to the performance so you actually start getting some good information there and it is pushing the boundaries a little bit as to what's allowed so as long as it's not charts and numbers I guess it seems like it's okay to do again you get PC builds by other youtubers which is perfectly fine they're doing the same thing we are provide different content to get views and the reason that these borders are pushed PC builds PCB analysis that we do tear downs and various other things you can do with the product and an unboxing the reason all that happens is because what the hell do you do with a literal unboxing you basically open it up and you show it and maybe you can do an overview and say like it's got a dial and it has ten different settings and you can zero it out that's kind of getting useful but still without any kind of actual user information how the product behaves it's ultimately not that useful unless someone has already purchased it in which case it is after the unboxing embargo left and after the performance embargo has lifted so really they might as well just defer to the performance review which is gonna have numbers and information on how to use the product in that specific scenario so I think that's it I don't know that I have a lot else to say I'd like to I'd like to think that this will have some kind of ripple but it probably won't either way I got to rant about it so yeah thanks for watching we do not do unboxings as you all know and it's not gonna happen anytime soon and if a company tells me you can't do a teardown either then I'll say okay well we're just not gonna post anything and hold us wait for the review date to lift because unboxings are stupid that's my opinion of it so now you're watching you can subscribe for more as always patreon.com slash gamers and access to helps out directly I'll see you all next time if there is one if they the Cabal of media relations people don't get me when I leave later today