I like reaction videos although sometimes I have to wonder if they have already seen the movie or not. Sometimes they’ll comment about something that comes up later as a twist and I am left with the impression that they are trying to make themselves look clever.
Having said that, I find Americans reacting to the Tragically Hip to be pretty genuine. The Hip weren’t widely known in the US but every Canadian knows them (whether they like their music or not) so any music reactor who reacts to anything Canadian is going to be told about a million times that they have to react to The Hip. There is no equivalent in the States. There is no US band where if the lead singer died, the President (any President) would be on TV the same day openly weeping.
What an interesting band. They kind of sound like the 90s “sound” in America, but the songs I listened to were from before that sound emerged. The songs I listened to didn’t have any hooks, but they did have some cool, mellow acoustic guitars and some good harmonies.
We’ve had official reaction videos for as long as we’ve had YouTube. The most common ones, at least at first, were people watching shock videos like “2 Girls, 1 Cup.”
I also started watching reaction videos during COVID. There are a few that I still watch. It has to do with having reactors that you like and enjoy watching. Some of them are pretty worthless, and don’t have a lot to say. The ones that I enjoy have some interesting responses, and also seem to be generally likeable people (or at least have likeable screen personalities) that I enjoy “hanging out” with.
I tend to watch more of people reacting to movies or TV shows. Music reactions aren’t that interesting, although I do watch The Charismatic Voice at times. I like some channels that have already been mentioned, like Movies with Mia and Natalie Gold. I don’t think the channel Neil Talks has been mentioned, but I enjoy that as well. In all cases, it’s because the reactors seem like nice people that I wouldn’t mind hanging out with in real life.
Not really a reaction video but I was really taken by this video Jon Batiste Hears Green Day For The First Time where Batiste plays along with the drums and vocal only of Holiday. It’s a very infectious treatment he comes up with. There are a few similar videos at Pianote although it is a teaching site.
I’m not a big fan. Too often, they’re exaggerated reactions to things that are already well-known. “Okay, so this is Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ so act like you’re seeing it for the first time.” And it shows.
Same with unboxing videos. How many times can a New Zealand family unbox a crate from the US (as it always is) that contains Doritos nacho cheese corn chips and a $100,000 Bar (as it always does) before it becomes trite?
(As an aside, how do packages containing foodstuffs make it through New Zealand customs? They’re pretty strict on what foods they allow in.)
Yes, there are channels that put together compilations or mashups of the best bits from a whole bunch of other reaction videos to the same movie or whatever.
Yeah, I’ve enjoyed some of those with heavy duty Star Wars fans watching The Mandalorian. I like the compilation format because it allows the editor to remove the less interesting parts of individual reactors’ videos. And it was fun to watch everyone freak out when Vader stopped a ship from launching with just The Force.
I like the ones that look authentic. For a while I watched a bunch of very, VERY young adults listen to You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling and Unchained Melody that I’m pretty sure actually never heard them. But then I saw some very, very young adults listen to You Oughta Know and I knew they were all fucking liars. Especially when they all feigned shock at the word ‘fuck’ in the lyrics. As if they didn’t make WAP a huge hit for Cardi B and a song called Fuck You didn’t top the charts when they were 10.
But very recently I watched a young man who described himself as a “succesful Gen Z music producer” who admitted to not listening to any music before the mid 80 and was reacting to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors for the first time. He was either lying about never hearing any songs from this album or lying about any one of the words ‘successful’ ‘music’ or ‘producer’.
P.S., I loved all the teenaged girls who cried upon hearing You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling and the black would-be rappers who were absolutely shocked that they were white.
For movies, I think these are much more authentic. I loved almost all the Sixth Sense ones I watched. I skip to the end for both the confession in the car scene and the final reveal scene. I especiallylike when there are two people watching. They never catch on at the same time. Or if one has seen it and the other hasn’t. That is also fun to watch.
I don’t watch them often, though I cited one of them in my Karen Carpenter appreciation thread. But when I do, they tend to be animals reacting to things on TV, including this classic of a dog watching Darth Vader appear:
I’ve only had two exposures to reaction videos. One was to Glen Campbell’s version of the Lone Ranger theme on a 12-string guitar: I believe the reaction was from another guitar player, but I can’t remember who it was. He was very impressed.
The other reaction videos I’ve scene have been a few “Tribal Person” reactions to a few songs. They had popped up on my YouTube homepage for some reason. I can’t remember what the songs were, but it was interesting hearing the comments from a different cultural viewpoint.
I have definitely seen those. Including, sadly, one with a group of youngish black men reacting to Bohemian Rhapsody and regarding it as weird, rather than great. They got plenty of insults in the comments. As I recall they then later did another reaction vid to song, with a …new appreciation for it.
As others have said, I just can’t buy that these reactors to music love every song they hear, as some channels are. Especially when we’re just talking listening to music to hear music they haven’t heard before instead of analyzing and providing any professional level feedback.
I’m kinda mixed on whether I think reactors could never have heard certain songs. Some, absolutely - but those are usually old enough that reactors don’t react to them because the majority of demographic that really loved those songs is dead now. Because it’s fairly easy not to have ever heard one particular piece of really popular old music, if you’ve never made an effort to listen to old music. It’s just when it’s all the old music. But then again, if it’s from 50 years ago, then why would you have heard most of it, if you are a 20-25 year old who never looked for it. I’d expect more “oh, wait, I have heard this” from people who just didn’t know the title or artist and heard it on a movie or commercial or some such in that case, though, for certain songs.
Cassie’s a sweet, naive woman. It’s hilarious when she’s watching something like Deadpool, because she was legitimately out of her element during that one. I especially like it when she brings her sister Carly along.
I’ve mentioned before that I have a friend who often hasn’t heard some piece of common music, especially in the classic rock style genres. He’s Hispanic, grew up listening to Hispanic music, got into rap and hip-hop as a teen/college and that’s still his main jam. So he never (actively) heard Queen or Steely Dan or Pink Floyd or whoever. Maybe in passing or in a movie but never “Hey, that’s Pink Floyd singing Money…”
When he DOES make a point to listen to one of these, his reaction is usually somewhere between “That’s pretty good, I guess” to “WTF? You guys listen to this on purpose?” so he’ll want to wait on launching that reaction video channel unless he just wants to make people mad.
My wife grew up in Peru and didn’t come to the United States until somewhere in the later 80s but, even then, wasn’t really taking in mainstream culture for a few years yet. She has a blind spot for all of the “obvious” 80s films and hadn’t seen a bunch of the Gremlins, Goonies, Fast Times, Planes Trains & Automobiles, etc films you’d assume everyone her age knows. I think she had seen the perennially played John Hughes teen flicks and stuff like Back to the Future which had sequels into the 90s but a lot of it was new to her the first time we watched it.
I actually have run into that from time to time. The reactor will say something like “I think I’ve heard this somewhere.” Especially if it’s been used in a movie. I remember seeing various videos where the people would listen to “Come and Get Your Love” and exclaim, “Oh, it’s that song from Guardians of the Galaxy!” as soon as they heard the opening guitar riff.
Reaction videos are completly fake. Let’s watch a young black man watch a movie about young high school white girls, like Mean girls, let’s show a war movie to a pacificst. Let’s show you a movie that you would never in you wildest dreams even spend a few mnutes watching, and record your face, all while you know that you are being filmed for your reactions. Mug it up! It is not even good amatuer acting.
