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The new YouTube sensation: Hauls
Girl in haul video.
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
TESS VIGELAND: We are in a TMI culture these days. Too much information. Every detail of your life, right there on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. I, for one, don't get it. Here's the latest example, and when one of our producers told us about this, I laughed and said something like "Yeah, right." It's a YouTube trend called "hauls." H-A-U-L-S. Video diaries about the junk people buy.
Girl on a YouTube video: Hey guys. OK, I just got home from a long day of shopping at the mall, and I just wanted to show you what I got at the mall today...
A young woman sits in her room and tells you all about every single thing she bought today and why.
Girl: I got three belts, because I really needed some belts. Um, this one is $5.80, and it's just a simple gold belt right here, and it has a little rhinestone right here. And it's just a thin gold belt.
Here's the kicker. Some of these haul videos have hundreds of thousands viewers, which prompts us to ask:
Comedian: Let me start with question number one: What the hell were you thinking?
Now, who hasn't come home one day and showed off stuff they bought to friends and family, right? But on the Internet, for the world to see? And we watch this? Rob Walker writes about consumer culture for the New York Times magazine. So we asked him to view some hauls for us. He says they fit right in with the social media trend, where everything you do is worth documenting.
Rob Walker: I think that the other element of it, which is really related is kind of "I'm a brand" culture, you know, the brand of me. Because a lot of these people sort of present themselves as some sort of grassroots Tyra Banks or something, and they have thousands of subscribers, who apparently are interested in. And then you read the comments saying, "Oh yeah, I love MAC cosmetics," so it really is being a little mini version of the kind of Style TV that you might see in the mainstream media.
He says haulers probably dream of being the next blogger-Tweeter-YouTuber to make the big time with a book deal or a TV show. And why not? Plenty of celebrities are famous only for their shopping habits.
YouTube video by Beautycakez: Hey guys, this is Sylvia from Beautycakez. So I don't usually do haul videos, but I've been getting a lot of requests to do them. So, we'll start off with this: these are the kinds of nail polishes that you can draw with...
Sheena Iyengar: Well, I believe that's Beautycakez, right? She's an Asian girl from Toronto, Canada.
Vigeland: Yes, it's BeautyCakez and that is Sheena Iyengar. She's a professor at Columbia Business School and just wrote a book called "The Art of Choosing." We asked her to watch some hauls too, and apparently, Beautycakez made an impression.
Iyengar: She has a whole bunch of things that she buys that's "cool" or "hot," so she's got that yellow t-shirt and that French Connect maroon sweater with pink writing on it.
So maybe it's understandable why people make hauls, but really, what about the folks watching them? What are they thinking?
Iyengar: I think what people are looking for in these haul videos, it's not just about finding what to buy and what's the right thing to buy, it's about finding what kind of things does my kind of person buy? So they look at her and they look at the way she dresses and they look at the way she's talking and they look at her name, and they think, "To the extent that I think that she's cool and I'm also 17, then I want to join her club. I also want to buy the kinds of things that she has."
Let's take a listen to one of them. And I know that you've seen this one from the grocery store.
YouTube video by Manolomandi: Hi, I just wanted to show you a haul and I just got back from Whole Foods and I got a whole bunch of new stuff... So I wanted to show you quickly... Two organic black plums, I got two -- I don't know if they were organic or not, but they are local -- peaches, four braeburn apples... The 100-calorie packs of guacamole, because I've been wanting the fresh avocados and I love 'em, but I can't eat more than half...
And Sheena, as we're watching this, we're literally waiting for her to root through her bag and pull out peaches or plums, and I do not understand why anyone would spend their time watching this.
Iyengar: Imagine that you're trying to figure out what are the things that you should be buying, what are the things that are kinda healthy. And you can read about it in the various news outlets on-line, in fact you can get a lot more accurate information than what you can get from, I believe that's Manolomandi, you get a lot more accurate information of what's really healthy to eat. But for people that relate to Manolomandi and see themselves as similar, then they're really curious -- "Whoa, let me see what she's buying, what's she eating."
Maybe that's why I don't get it. I didn't see any of my kind of person showing off a haul on YouTube. I guess I'll just have to make one myself, right? Or get, say, Rob Walker to tell me about what his haul video would look like today?
Walker: I'm a little bereft today. What did I... I don't think I have anything good. I bought some pizza, but I don't know, maybe the crust, I could've brought those home and showed those on YouTube. That's entertainment right?
Now that? I'd watch.
Think this is amazing, Tess. Search YouTube for "unboxing." Scads and scads of younglings videoing the electric anticipation of unboxing the latest gadget acquisition. Meh.
I can understand the videoblogging "review" phenom, I've been posting reviews on Amazon for years, and recently -- don't ask me how or why -- have been dubbed a Top1000 reviewer. Guess my comments on products (good, bad, and indifferent) have been helpful to others. I suspect the "haul" video is just a more superficial iteration of this.
Next trend? I dunno, maybe the "e-cycling" video, showing what the blogger is discarding and why?
I like to think of this as shopping vicariously through others. I can't afford to shop but it's a nice window-shopping type phenomenon to watch others buy some interesting pieces. In an economy where most of us have cut back it hits a need to watch other people shop. And as for "rich" most of the ladies I see posting get these items for incredibly low prices ($5 for a t-shirt, $2 for a tank top) and laud these deals. So they're not all rich.
It's life documentation as well as a way to review the products. At 46, I talk about why I like and dislike items. I appreciate Makupbytiffanyd, who is at the top of this page. She's a makeup artist who works with brides. Since that's my job and focus, it's information sharing.
Nancy
The Over40princess.
I may be mistaken, but the hauling phenomenon seems to be an outgrowth of tubecasts like that of "Rice Bunny" Michelle Phan, "Xteener", and "Makeup Geek". If you don't know these young ladies, let me explain.
These are young women who record make-up/cosmetic application "tutorials" and post them on-line. The standard schitck - how to apply eyeshadow, how to draw "the inner-V", etc - eventually came to include 411 on where to buy the cosmetics, the brushes, the applicators (etc.); and before long (it seemed inevitable) the makeup gurus began showing their hauls of swag unrelated or tangentally-related to cosmetics and skincare.
Ms Vigeland may chuckle about all this - and indeed, there's good reason for a wry smile and arched eyebrows: How and when did good old fashioned consumerism/voyeurism go awry? But here's something interesting to note.
"Xteener" and Michelle Phan, Chinese- and Vietnamese-Americans, respectively, were immensely popular in Mainland China in the days before Zhongnanhai's lock-out of Youtube. (Michelle Phan's work has become alarmingly professional.) For a number of metrochina maidens, these tubecasts - now very much missed - were of interest and value for a few reasons. Here are two of them.
First, the "Asian faces" speaking English were embraced by many Chinese young women as virtual English-language tutors. The idiom-rich chit-chat of the host wasn't always easy to follow, but the subject matter and its context were intuitively accessible, and for that reason interesting. I've heard also that the sight of Asian women speaking English with grace and/or fluency was particularly inspiring and encouraging --- bear in mind the huge English-language/ESL push in the PRC.
Second, many young Chinese women in the early 21st century simply do not have older sisters or older cousins from whom to learn the (ahem) beautification arts -- noting that these aren't the sorts of things many Mainland Moms would (or could) teach their daughters. Not to overstate the case, but Xteener and Rice Bunny were for many dedicated fans the sexy big sisters the females of one-child families never had.
The real story to follow up, however, is this one.
There's a fortune in skin care/cosmetics trade on www.taobao.com, a C2C (consumer to consumer) e-commerce portal (part of Alibaba.com) which is Mainland China's Ebay (with the inevitable "zhong guo de te'se" -- Chinese characteristics). Many Overseas Chinese living in the UK, US, and Canada make a tidy little sum every month punting Boots, CVS, and Walgreen's products - brands like Lush, Revlon and Maybeline - to Chinese women via Taobao, the popularity of which is difficult to overstate. Drugstore-grade makeup can fetch a good price in the mainland, even after postage and a little mark-up. (None declares tax.)
My research into this suggests that - customs and excise issues notwithstanding - there's very likely a lot of looking the other way going on, at least on the part of cosmetics manufacturers themselves. The volume of grey-market trade on Taobao provides manufacturers with the kind of market-research and consumer-base insight money couldn't buy. Thanks to Sleight-of-Hand Economics, manufacturers can track (e.g.) which colors of foundation and eyeshadow (etc.) Asian women like, and adjust their domestic (China) lines in accordance with the "Taobao transaction trends". (This is a copyrighted acronym of mine: "TTT".) Whatever (e.g.) Maybeline might lose in these transactions - if it loses anything apart from unit sales of the legal imports - it gains in net market-presence of their brand, and in their intelligence on what local consumers want to buy.
But that's another story.
The "hauling lass" phenomenon is more than mere posery nonsense, however. If you are a manufacturer, retailer, or distributor, the conspicuous celebration of conspicuous consumption is free market-feedback.
Jack Cameron
International Channel
Zhejiang Radio & Television Group
Hangzhou, China
ztv.jack.cameron@gmail.com
While I wasn't aware of the existence of the hauls YouTube videos before hearing today's show, I don't quite understand the bemusement at their appeal.
Didn't your school ever have your class do "Show and Tell"? Haven't you ever gone to yard sales, estate sales, or open houses and gawked at what other people have acquired? Don't you sometimes exchange stories of shopping conquests at the office, perhaps prompted by a compliment on a new piece of apparel?
It's interesting to see what other people buy, and even more interesting if you can get insights as to why they have bought whatever it is. Perhaps it's not a stretch to call this "Shopping Anthropology 101"! :-)
