are YouTube giveaways becoming too extreme?

Are they?

When giveaways first began, especially on beauty channels, YouTubers would do the odd giveaway for their subscribers.

They would usually give away excess items that they received through their PO box from pr packages, or their favourite items that they wanted to share with their viewers.

But now it seems that materialism has soaked through so much of the YouTube culture that it has reached giveaways, too.

On July 23rd Bunny Meyer, aka grav3yardgirl on YouTube, announced a giveaway to celebrate reaching an astounding eight million subscribers.

Giveaways are part of YouTube culture for a number of reasons.

In her thesis, The Leading Role of Influencers in the YouTube Beauty Community (2015), Androulaki Georgia states that rewards lead to influence, ‘for closer connection and communication with each other and as a result, openness from the other side to be influenced’.

Giveaways can also be a way to give back to the subscribers who make the dream a reality for YouTubers.

In the case of the YouTuber, whose channel is ranked 181st most popular on the site, it seems like more of a thank-you to those who have supported her throughout the years.

In a 36-minute announcement video, Bunny promised one lucky subscriber the giveaway of a lifetime- $14,000 of skincare, makeup, toys, jewelry and gift vouchers to keep for themselves or share to their heart’s content.

The only things followers needed to do to enter the giveaway were to subscribe to Bunny’s main channel, as well as Banana Peppers, her new ‘for everything else’ channel on the site.

Followers had the option to gain extra entry points by following Bunny on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, as well as tweeting and commenting about the giveaway.

In the past, Bunny had used Rafflecopter to run her giveaways; this time she used Gleam (not to be confused with Gleam Futures management).

It’s a staggeringly generous giveaway- though there is no doubt that some of the items were donated by the big brands that she flaunts about in the video.

At this point it should be noted that Bunny put a disclaimer in the drop-down box of the video.

‘FTC- I am not being paid by any of the mentioned companies or designers to make this video. The views in this video are strictly my own and I am not affiliated with any of these companies,’ it reads.

I just can’t believe that no one has flagged the giveaway for being fairly extravagant.

Bunny isn’t the only one who overdoes herself with prizes for her followers, though through my own research I haven’t found any other YouTubers who stated just how much was spent on the prizes.

On the day the winner was to be announced, there were a lot of nervous followers.

“Only 92 entries of course I wasnt going to win now i feel like cryingggg” one young follower posted.

The $14,000 giveaway ends only a couple of weeks before Bunny’s annual back-to-school giveaway begins.

Last year, 3,226,461 viewers watched the back-to-school announcement video, an increase from 1,765,865 for 2015.

Though I had reached out to Bunny for a statement on two occasions, she was unfortunately unable to comment.

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*Disclaimer: I have been a loyal subscriber of Bunny’s since October 2011. This article is merely an observation and a conversation starter. I fully respect Bunny’s decisions with regards to giveaways and admire her for giving back to her fans.