Advice needed on unwanted donations

I'm afraid that if you're too polite, that people will just get angry and insist. Better to just ignore them.

Glen Rea

Maybe a small change to the donations page of your website. Keep the "Things hard to find" and "Things I need" sections, and maybe add a "I don't collect these" section, or make the whole page a webform where the sender has to type in their name, e-mail and what they can offer you. You can then reply with pre-formatted "yes" and "no" e-mails, and only the "yes" one has your private address on it.

I agree with Lisa. Set up a donation-specific email that auto-responds to requests saying that you can choose whether or not to honor them, and reply to the emails you receive with a "yay" or "nay" message.

Per Kofod Hansen

And yes - hide your mailbox address and only give it out to those who you agree to receive from. Anyway - thanks for making these episodes. I'm a fan and I will keep watching no matter how you deal with this :)

Per Kofod Hansen

Its a complex problem. Maybe some of these kids just want to be "famous" and try these tricks. But there will also be the occasional deep fan that really want to give you something and see your appreciation. Having these young fans should also make you proud, since kids who actually are interested in old computers are rare. Of course it would ruin the show if you unbox the litter can. But maybe you could find some small way of aknowledning these kids. Send them a postcard with an autograph or have some subchannel where you unbox this without the usual professional level of production, but still a warm thanks. A somewhat out of view list of youtube links could also make them happy and proud.

I would not show the content unless its something you want to show for the channel. IMHO I would only show the things in the unboxing that you asked for or plan to do a show on. I'm not sure its relevant anymore to see another Commodore 1541 Hard drive get unboxed or some video games you plan on never doing a show. It's to a point that the unboxing episode will come not that interesting.,,,

I wouldn't show the junk donations as it might get more people to send in unwanted junk. Make the rules for donations very clear and try putting a disclaimer like "All donations require prior approval! Any donations sent without my approval will NOT be opened and will be tossed in the trash."

You should not show these items or honor their requests for recognition, it's your channel and once you've made it clear you don't want the item then they are being a**holes if they send it anyway, double-a**holes if they then try to manipulate you into doing what they want. The greatest kindness is honesty, you are being honest when you tell them you don't want their junk and that you are not a vending machine for youtube shout-outs, and you can honestly tell them you will throw their junk away and ignore them if they persist, you should not let them try and guilt trip you into doing stuff you don't want to do and will resent, and should feel free to throw their stuff away. Keeping up the quality of your content is your professional job and you can't let some over-entitled consumers make a mess of your channel because they will falsely claim to feel bad.

L3P3

I think you could do a little video just about this topic where you just speak into the camera for a minute and say basically the same as you wrote here! Then, when any other kid comes up, you just reply by the video link! I think not just your patreons would upvote this solution.

stynx

Make up some donation rules, stick to them and let the people know. It's your show in the end and you decide the content.

Lol, I was about to suggest the same, but I could see trolls getting way to much entertainment out of a massively overflowing bin of trash.

DOSGamerMan

You are not a charity. Bin it, and block them. And mention on every unboxing shows that unsolicited shift will go in the bin if you received any. Maybe even cut to a picture of the bin. I won't think any less of you. Maybe a bit more actually....

Lisa

I wouldn't show any on the screen you don't want to, and if people email you; set-up an auto-responder explaining that items sent are at owner's risk with no acknowledgments etc etc perhaps have a separate email address for legitimate other business. I suspect you have to be a bit of a 'hard-ass' when it comes to that, also; it couldn't hurt to let people know about the problem in your next video