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?
That’s literally all Japanese shows. Sometimes they several reaction faces simultaneously.
oh I have seen that!! and wondered the same. For anyone confused, it’s (what I assume to be) somebody else’s recording, with a head superimposed on it that chuckles every 10s or so
Reaction videos just feel like a cheap way to profit on other people’s content without getting flagged.
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.
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
Some streamers play indie games and some are terribly boring to me. It helps me sleep.
For the same reason people watch professional sports.
Fair enough. I don’t watch
gambling adsprofessional sports either.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree it is generally pretty stupid and difficult to watch, however there are a few situations where it makes some sort of sense.
- It is sometimes used as a way to get around certain copyright issues (probably not legally, but it sometimes confounds the horribly stupid copyright bots that major platforms use with lazy impunity)
- Sometimes the person “reacting” is themselves entertaining to watch. These reaction videos are generally for pre-existing fans of that person, not for fans of the video being watched.
- Sometimes the person reacting is adding genuine value, for example they might be a legitimate expert (or at least a self-believed one) on the topic the video is discussing. This is in some sense sort of a video review, or a fact-check.
- It is pure algorithm-bait, not really intended for any actual human to deliberately enjoy, but it tricks the algorithm into showing it to people who are too low-effort to look up the real video and just watch it because it’s in their “feed”.
Usually it’s some combination of the above.
I just block them and move on regardless. But man…. They’re so horrible!
As a counterpoint, I like watching The Charismatic Voice - a trained opera singer reacting to pop and rock music vocalists, often the first time hearing them, and offering a great analysis of their vocal techniques. That’s a reaction video done right.
As an example, watching her react to John Farnham’s performance of ‘Help’ reduces me to tears.
The last time someone made a similar complaint about reaction videos, I responded with a comment similar to yours regarding El Estepario Siberiano reacting to a Danny Carey performance and someone else responded to me explaining that an analysis video is much different than a reaction video and I tend to agree. I appreciate analysis videos where the person provides insight and context to what they’re showing me that I might not understand on my own.
Exactly.
often the first time hearing them
If there’s a bigger lie told by react videos than this, I’d like to hear it.
That’s not what I’m talking about. And I love her too. She’s a trained artist listening to comment on her art.
I’m talking about some idiot that just sits there nodding looking like a clown.
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.
I mean that’s what these people are trying to do and claiming to do, but under most jurisdictions this doesn’t hold in court
And that’s exactly why YouTube channel H3H3productions is suing some Twitch streamers that just reposted his content with no commentary whatsoever (some of the those streamers even went to the bathroom during their “reaction”).
It’s funny how they won a lawsuit over the same thing back in the day and we were all on their side, but now they’re rabid Zionists who lie about everyone else and their critiques of them and spending the last of their money to mount lawsuits against small, often women, creators who they know don’t have money to fight back.
Fuck H3.
You are profoundly misrepresenting Ethan and the situation. Neither is he rabid, nor does he lie about everyone. It’s also not the last of their money. Not at all
The lawsuits were settled out of court.
I agree with you. I used to love h3h3 back in the day when it was just him reacting to videos; now it despise them.
Copyright circumvention is the lie YouTubers tell themselves as they shamelessly feed their ego. They’re imagining all their followers laughing because they thought something was funny. Copyright circumvention is the useful product distilled by human ingenuity out of the toxic cesspool this market created as it feeds upon the attention capacity of the youth of the world.
Show the “reaction”, and it falls within fair use
i doubt that, but it would probably depend on jurisdiction.
i think it is just really lazy way how to become a youtuber. you only need to be attractive person with no other skill.
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.
But they don’t laugh. They just nod and look stupid.
Interesting… Never thought of that
I don’t know but I’m thankful I don’t see any of that shit pitched to me yet.
Idiots seem to determine what gets popular on YouTube and that happened to be one of them for a good while.
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.
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.
