While your favorite YouTuber might be selling shirts, hoodies and maybe a mug if you’re lucky, Horses has gone with something you’ve almost certainly never seen on a creator’s product page. An “ethically sourced” human skull.
The listing sits on his store alongside the usual merch at $3,000, with no detail on where the remains came from or how that sourcing was verified.
Horses gives no detail on where the skull came from
The page warns that each skull is different, so buyers may receive one that varies in color or shape from the photo, with shipping estimated at three weeks.
It’s out of stock too, so that ritual you may or may not have been planning might need to be put on hold.
It also can’t be shipped outside the US, or to Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota and Florida, where selling human remains is restricted.
Viewers spotted the listing and took it to Reddit, where the reaction was mostly bafflement rather than outrage.
“I know it says they’re ethically sourced on the page but there wasn’t any details about how and where from,” one person wrote. “I guess this is probably legal where he’s from but I won’t lie its very off putting.”
The wider trade is legal in most US states, and Reuters has previously investigated how freely body parts change hands there. The grey area is almost entirely about how remains were obtained in the first place.
That’s where commenters kept landing. One pointed out that historic medical skeletons frequently came from people who never consented, disproportionately from marginalized communities, and that a seller’s word is often the only assurance a buyer gets.
“You basically never know now where these bones are coming from,” one wrote.
Horses has not publicly explained the sourcing process behind the listing.
It follows another odd week for creator merch. Mighty Mike Plays faced backlash after turning a $118,000 accidental ad spend into $100 AI-generated shirts.
