I don’t understand why this is a thing? Who wants to watch someone nod their head to someone else’s content?
Just show the original video! How did this get popular and what is wrong with those that helped it to happen?
Because if you show the original video, thats copyright infringement, and pirating of content.
Show the “reaction”, and it falls within fair use. Even if the reactor doesn’t DO anything.
This shit should be against ToS.
Laughing is a social thing that people don’t normally do by themselves (unless it’s really funny), so I’'m guessing that having a human face on screen to “enjoy the content with” ups the level of engagement. Similar to laugh tracks in shitty sitcoms.
Interesting… Never thought of that
But they don’t laugh. They just nod and look stupid.
Sounds like even by “reaction video” standards you’re not seeing very good ones, lol
Billions of idiots. I have no other explanation.
I’ve seen limited evidence to suggest the audience is material. A lot of these numbers are farmed for engagement and to inflate ad revenue. A lot are just channels that auto play when people aren’t paying attention.
There’s definitely an audience of little kids who are just strapped to pads with nothing better to do. But it can’t be overstated how fudged these audience numbers can get.
YouTube claims their Shorts channel gets 200 billion views per day. There’s only 5 billion Internet users on Earth.
That’s 2.5B with 80 views a day, or 1.25 with 160 a day. Sadly those numbers aren’t that unbelievable the way people consume short media. Just average it out so some make up for others only watching a few.
Sadly those numbers aren’t that unbelievable
They’re absurdly unbelievable.
But for the “everyone is stupid except me” crowd, they provide a certain confirmation bias.
That’s pretty interesting. Thanks.
You must be a load of fun at parties.
I have friends. I don’t watch videos of people commenting what my friends do when I’m not there.
People who actually are fun at parties are usually the ones that wouldn’t find watching some knob nodding along to someone else’s content entertaining.
Unpopular thing to say but… I just don’t understand watching other people gaming.
Note that I did not say “people who watch twitch are idiots”.
Just that I personally don’t get it, never will. I’m fine with that too, people do loads of things that I don’t find at all appealing.
For the same reason people watch professional sports.
Fair enough. I don’t watch
gambling adsprofessional sports either.
I’m not into sports neither and when my father explained why he watches sports, I suggested you might just as well watch people playing video games.
I thought that was ridiculous at the time but it actually became a thing
The streamer might do some funny (or insightful) comments about the game while playing, or do a playthrough with some weird conditions (e.g. he can’t do certain actions like healing, …) that you wouldn’t in your right mind apply to yourself
The streamers I watch are usually incredibly talented and can pull off things I wouldn’t even imagine. They also explain the game at a very high level and can show me the boundaries that I didn’t even know existed. They also experiment with different setups and beat the game in hard mode without breaking a sweat.
Not everyone can pull it off while being entertaining and pleasant, but I think those are the ones worth watching the most.
Amazing.
Sometimes I find it fun to watch a game I will never play, but I also get to chat with the streamer so theres that too.
More power to you brother, but yeah this holds no meaning for me.
I’ve watched let’s plays of strategy games that I want to be better at, in order to see people who don’t fucking suck like I do. But after I get a better idea on how to suck less, I stop.
When i was a kid me and my 4 siblings would often have to take it in turns to play single or 2 player games. In the mean time if you weren’t playing you would watch the others play. It was exciting rooting for one player or another, it was great when something funny happened, or when someone did something amazing, whether on purpose or by accident whilst button mashing. Even single player adventure or rpg games were fun to watch. It was kind of like watching a movie. You were there for the fun bits, the exciting bits, the sad bits, the shocking bits. Even watching, you are part of it.
Admittedly, despite this, i initially didn’t find this sort of content appealing as i thought there would be something different with me not being in the room and it not being my siblings. But after watching a streamer who makes other, non-game content do a few multiplayer games with other people that appear on his stream i found that they can be just as fun to watch. You still get a bit of that feeling and its still enjoyable. Especially if you are watching live and can take part in the chat. The rest of chat are substitutes for my siblings and the streamer and his buddies are all funny and the camaraderie is very familiar.
All in all i would say, you might be suprised if you gave it a go.
Reaction videos just feel like a cheap way to profit on other people’s content without getting flagged.
Yeah I don’t like them either.
You know that person reacting already watched it at least twice before putting on a show of exaggerated expressions.
It just seems dumb to me.
It’s ridiculous. I can’t even figure out a stupid reason to do it.
I don’t understand those long ass unboxing videos either. If you wanna review a product and show us what all came with it. Have that shit all laid out on a table before you start the video.
It’s weird to make a 10 min video of slowly cutting tape and meticulously removing things from a shipping container.
Weird.
It’s just ASMR porn basically.
I know some are supposed to be weird edging kink porn. But so much is targeted at kids. So I think that’s also kinda Fked up.
I guess it’s either cheap to make background noise (instead of taking the effort to create an actual original video) or it’s kind of like mukbangs, where some people would watch them while eating themselves so as to feel less lonely.
That’s the “better” reaction channels. There are channels that record singer generic reactions (no commentary) and put them over hundreds of videos despite the reactions not making sense at all
Its affirmation therapy for insecure people. “Somebody likes the thing I like!”
Probably the most solid reason I’ve read so far. A few others have said similar.
Another reason could be that it makes the act of watching a video feel less lonely than it actually is. Reaction videos turn it into a quasi-social thing.
Watching a video of a person nodding or laughing at dumb shit while alone is still watching video alone. So I don’t think this is it.
It’s cashing in on a video worker having to put any effort into it. Watching this shit is like eating regurgitating food- with no credit to the cook.
Ok. I’ll throw myself on my sword and give a different take than what most people are.
I wasnt into reaction videos aka analysis vidoes at all until Kpop Demon Hunters came out. I really like this movie. I’ve even watched it several times, including once at the theater, which is very unusual for me.
I have a fairly isolated life. Not many friends and the few I do have I only see occasionally. So I don’t have anyone I can gush about this movie to let alone rewatch it with or introduce it to.
Putting on a reaction video while walking the dogs lets me listen to someone else enjoying discovering the movie for the first time. Obviously I can’t participate, but I’ve still shared their joy.
An alternate one is singers analyzing music videos. I watched someone going nut over a Beatbox video of Beatpella House, then saw their reaction video of VoicePlay covering Nothing Else Matters. Mindblowing rendition! I would never have found this without scrolling through their other videos. Sometimes being open to new things pays off.
Again- I’m not talking about analysis videos.
I’m talking about videos where a useless pile of flesh takes up half the screen, nodding along, or laughing while saying nothing at all.
I’m talking about videos where a useless pile of flesh takes up half the screen, nodding along, or laughing while saying nothing at all.
Such videos almost always consist of a watchful observer offering their opinion of the behavior going on in the video clip. Their opinions are what creates their fans.
Again…. I’m talking about idiots that nod along with/laugh at videos of people doing stupid shit.
NOT commentaries or analysis videos.
I think you described those comedy videos inaccurately. The fun of those vids is seeing someone use only their face to pass judgement on stupid behavior. And the behavior clips they’re observing are mercifully short. Such videos aren’t nearly as popular as you’re implying them to be. The vast majority of reaction videos are enjoyed for their commentary.
I’ve long since removed myself from the mainstream (I.e enshittified) social media, but my spouse loves to show me cute, silly or funny animal videos and I genuinely love the habit.
However, the pst year or two, I keep finding myself asking “who is this? why are the there?” since the actual silly or just cute video is only half of it, then the other half is just a bloke watching the same video I guess, but for whatever reason (I.e content theft and number go up game) included in the damn video that is the actual content.
I keep thinking it’s relevant somehow, like maybe their dog jumps out and does something funny in response to them watching a cute dog video, but no. The entire thing is just them silently watching and often not even nodding or gesturing like others here illustrate. More often than not, they simply sit there silently with a very neutral non-expressive face, then the video ends and there was exactly zero point to that (other than pumping out content for the algorithm with minimal effort I guess?). It’s a real fucking thing. It boggles the mind. Who wants that?
I asked my spouse why on earth would they ever choose to watch those when they can just skip and look for other cute stuff. It makes no sense to me. The algorithm should simply not suggest or serve those to anyone since in my mind, nobody would bother watching them. It genuinely fucks with my mind.
However, I’ve since learnt that the modern way of consuming even things like instagram is click on whatever on front page, then simply scrolling up/down or left/right for next videos without any chance to evaluate whether one wants to watch it or not. It simply toots new ones infinitely and I guess the users just… watch whatever comes?
It’s fucking ridiculous. The only reason those trend like they do, even for us millennials, the modern boomers, is because somehow somebody watched it once, or it was paid/promoted or something, then the algorithm just decides similar people will watch that snd suddenly perfectly normal and sensible people like my spouse end up watching some random fucking people sit still with nothing to offer, in an abrupt video, day in day out. It’s simply ridiculous.
But while I don’t get it and actively loathe the practice (I.e content theft and gaming the platforms in ways clearly not intended (or exactly as intended…)) I guess that’s just the way of the world now. I feel boomer enough even though I’ve barely passed 30 because I don’t get all the brainrot stuff and don’t get exposed to those since I no longer use social media I can’t curate myself like non-proprietary link aggregators, and I keep getting these surreal experiences that seem so completely nonsense to me.
Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that this kind of content is not niche, the instagrams and tiktoks of the world keep pushing exactly that kind of senseless shit to even regular millenials like my spouse and by their proxy, me. The feed is otherwise just cute animal videos basically. The half that isn’t, is cute animal videos with some visibly tired and uninterested streamer-looking bloke taking half the screen for no actual reason other than capitalism-driven modern social media practices.
My friends who have entirely different interests also get them. Like tech-savvy guys too, content is mostly technical or nerdy stuff, but a percentage of that just comes with some weird person staring in the screen on the bottom part of the video. It’s so stupid. Musicians whose feed is similarly specialized and in no way gen alpha tier brainrot or suspectible for nonsensical streamer content or whatever, have a part of the feed just be absolutely out-of-place rgb-light-headset gamer looking dudes just silently fucking watching and very occasionally perhaps even react with a singular nod before the video ends.
It is a real trend that seems to even inflict itself to the kind of people I would absolutely think would not ever watch any content like that, are not just your average people mindlessly scrolling, rather very sensible and extremely specialized in their interests kinds of people.
I am genuinely surprised that you do not seem to have seen this. Count yourself lucky. I count myself as one too, although I still occasionally have to be exposed to that shit when a cute otter video is pushed on my face and for a second, each time, I almost laugh at the fucking bloke just sitting there, each time a different dude. What nonsense.
They are stealing content.
Your talking about entirely different videos. The ones everyone is talking never have any actual commentary.
That’s the ENTIRE point of them. They literally only point nod and stay silent.
That’s literally all Japanese shows. Sometimes they several reaction faces simultaneously.
Cannot stand reaction videos. We’re on the same page.
I can understand that many people find reaction videos useless and low-effort content. Personally, I enjoy rewatching a lot of shows and it adds to my enjoyment doing so with somebody else. I have nobody in my life who is interested in that, so reaction videos work as a parasocial substitute. I can still see people I like (as little as I really know them) sharing the experience and sometimes having interestingly different reactions and observations.
BTW: For those who think reaction videos are a sensible way to not pay for the original content, may I introduce you to BitTorrent?
Yeah this. I never really cared for them, and tbh a lot of those reaction videos are very over the top or fake. But I kinda latched onto the more grounded ones this year. It allows me to rewatch some of my favorite content “with others”. Obviously it’s not as good as doing so with friends, but getting friends to watch all this content is kinda hard. If they care, they’ve probably already seen it or it’s just very hard to plan something like this. And if they don’t care then watching together won’t be fun anyway.
Last year has been quite stressful and sometimes I just need some “mental fastfood”. Reaction content is that. There’s no stress, I know exactly what will happen when. There’s just the joy of seeing someone else watch or play something awesome for the first time. It kinda makes it feel like I’m seeing it for the first time with them. And some of these people actually see or know things that I wasn’t aware of when watching. Or they come up with interesting theories about what’s gonna happen next.
I’d say let’s start reaction to reaction videos, but Bo Burnham already covered that ground
I’ll do it but it’s just me sitting stony-faced before going “load of wank” and turning it off halfway through.
Its literally being done now. Its excruciating.
I think it’s one of the most lazy ways to make a video, and leeching off more popular content.
They are not transforming the content enough to be free use.
There is some content I am curious about but can only stomach when I watch it on a reaction channel so I don’t die of second hand embarrassment. For other people I think it has a lot to do with feeling lonely. Reaction channels make you feel like you have someone to share the jokes with. I think way too many people are lonely nowadays.
If I want to watch 10 minutes of funny shorts/tik toks, do I
a) open my feed, where I have a chance to find not funny content, and have to physically swipe for every video? Plus laughing alone is not as fun as laughing with someone else
Or
b) watch sniper-ali-freerobuckz watch the good ones, and I can sit back and enjoy someone to laugh with?
I’m not defending reaction content. They are obviously lazy and just copy-pasting for easy views, but I can see why they get clicks.
