Dolling Up YouTube

Playbor in the DollTube Creator Economy

Abstract

This article argues that DollTube—the collection of YouTube channels and videos dedicated to doll-related topics—is a digital space that is both a play environment and a work environment. Through an analysis of five DollTube channels that were drawn from a sample of 26 channels, it shows how DollTubers transform their play with dolls into carefully curated ‘digital video play’ (that is, play that involves the capture of moving images and the uploading of the resulting footage to a video-sharing platform). In curating their play, the DollTubers also perform work within and for the creator economy; most importantly, they become involved in the process of self-branding. The aim of this paper is showing that the DollTubers’ activities meld play and work together, but that each DollTuber melds these two types of behavior together in their own way. As such, DollTube channels variously (co-)emphasize imaginativeness, critique, education, consumption, personal aggrandizement, or community building, and each thereby demonstrates an individual ‘playbor’ style that contributes to a uniquely branded persona and an individual niche in the doll community.