Yep. Mostly faked and even if not- who cares?
Now that I think about it, the whole reason I share movies I love with my friends is because I want to see their reaction. It stands to reason I’d like a similar thing on YouTube.
I was thinking about that earlier when I saw the post and thought that some might be akin to a reaction video. Some “walking simulator” type games really have little game play and you’re essentially just hand cranking the media along. Others might be more interactive but you’re really watching to see the player react to major plot developments like a character death.
Broadly, though, I agree that the layer of gameplay between the person and the media means each player has a different tactile experience with the game – not like each person will have a different reaction to a song based on their personality but more like if each person was hearing the song played at different tempos or repeats or skips or layers missing, etc. It’s just mechanically different.
So different but I think still potentially sort of cousins to one another.
ETA: The creator described his game thusly: “I made it for a certain kind of person, to hurt them.”
I like this guy. I’m not making any assumptions about how sincere he is, but in any case, I find him amusing. If he’s just pandering to old white farts like me, fine. He at least puts some effort into selling it. “These are some cool, smooth brothers, all right? You gotta have…your confidence level has to be at an all-time high to come out there with the…the man got, I don’t even know, like the damn fairy godmother, the thing, the suit, I don’t even know what it is…they don’t give a damn! ‘I’ll still take your girl!’”
Oh absolutely. Sometimes I watch my favourite Youtubers playing a puzzle game and I enjoy smugly knowing the solution while they squirm in frustration. But sports commentators are often professional reactors as well.
Last year I was staying at a friend’s house and found out that she had never seen A Princess Bride. So we did a search and found it on one of her streaming services. As I had suspected she loved it, and watching her watching it was marvelous.
That’s an interesting observation. SRV is very well known, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people are familiar with his music. I think he’s actually a great example of that.
As an odd coincidence, it used to be very difficult to find spoilers for that show on the internet. I watched maybe two seasons, but it seemed like they were doing a lot of stuff just to fill an hour in a lot of those episodes. I was interested but bored, so I stopped watching and started looking for spoilers.
This is great. I forced my nephew to watch that movie when he was about 11-12 years old. He was just like the kid in the movie. He was bound and determined to hate it, and he made it to the point where the priest says "Mawwiage before he broke.
He died 35 years ago and was never a top 40 artist. It’s understandable how someone younger who didn’t grow up listening to rock.
There’s a Gen Z musician and music analyst (I don’t know what to call these guys. There are a lot of channels with young people who obviously studied music in school) who was recommended to do a video on School House Rock. And I totally believe he’d never heard them. The only reason my children know them all is because we bought them the VHS of it when they were young. And my kids are now in their 30s!
My favorite movie is I Heart Huckabees which is very hit or miss. I either get laughter or “WTF?”
He always loses me early on when he starts getting excited about keys. Mystifying amount of specific knowledge I cannot follow.
This made me chuckle. If I wanted to listen to someone trying to hammer out how a song toes, I’d go visit my buddy so we could do it together.
If he would figure that stuff out before the video, that would make it watchable. But then it wouldn’t be much of a “reaction” video, would it?
Okay, I know this thread is about a year old but I have recently gotten very heavily into reaction videos myself. Also, Im using VOICE TO TEXT to make this post and sometimes this thing mishears me…so I apologize for any misspellings.
Well, it’s been a slow buildup.
I was first introduced to reaction videos to movies and shows through the very first reaction channel that I knew of, a YouTube channel called blind wave. Blind wave consisted of five guys who watched a lot of shows and movies, and they posted their reactions on YouTube which you could watch in a trunicated version, or you could sign up for their patreon or their website and watch the full reaction.
Now… I understand people’s aversion to it and people who don’t understand why other people would want to watch a person watching another person watch something.
It’s one of those things you either like or you don’t. Sometimes you can’t really explain it. If you don’t understand it, quite possibly you never will. It doesn’t mean that you are not getting something, it simply means I like something that you don’t and I’m sure there are things that you like that I don’t.
For example I cannot understand the humor in Monty Python. Monty Python is the most complete unfunny thing in the world to me and it has never made me laugh… I don’t get Monty Python humor and why people find it funny and usually I feel like I’m in a club all my own like I’m left out or something…
… Well personal interests like reaction videos and professional wrestling sort of fall under the same category. I am a huge fan of professional wrestling, however I have had to endure years of “you do know it’s fake, don’t you?”. People who just don’t get it. Yes, I know it’s sports entertainment, I still like it.
There’s a couple areas these days that are new like that, another is the ASMR universe… In which people watch videos of others doing things like whispering.
I don’t really understand why this is such a mind boggler to some people though, people just tend to like sounds that make them feel calm and peaceful. I recently listened to a stuff you should know podcast, which is the best podcast in the world in my opinion, where Josh and Chuck talked about ASMR and they talked the entire time about how they did not understand or get it and almost seems like they were bashing it. Usually they do great reporting on a ton of subjects that have taught me a lot, but I was not a fan of this episode because I don’t quite understand where their misunderstanding is coming from.
It’s nothing new that people like nice sounds. ASMR really doesn’t have anything to do with specific sounds, it doesn’t have to be whispering which is something they brought up a ton of times in that episode… Chuck especially said that whispering grates on his nerves… But it can be any soothing sound at all. Think about how many wave machines were made because people like to fall asleep to the sound of waves or maybe they put rain sounds on their computer. Maybe they sleep with a blowing fan on them because the white noise is comforting. You ever watch Bob Ross paint? Bob Ross could put me to sleep, he instantly calms me down because his voice has a very ASMR factor to it. I feel like it’s one of the reasons why people like to hear the narration of Morgan Freeman, because his voice is a bit more pleasant and distinguishable and it’s not heavy on the ears.
So it should be no surprise that some sounds might appeal to some people.
And then there is the world of let’s play videos, where you watch somebody play a video game. Yes, you could play the video game yourself, or maybe you already have, but you are watching someone else play a video game. I have been a fan of this much longer than the movie reactions, because I love the look on someone’s face when they discover something they never have before or are surprised by things.
Another newish area I found is mukbang. If you don’t know what mukbang is, then Google it, it’s okay, you will not get any pornographic results. It’s safe for work… kind of.
It’s people eating. Yes, there are people, such as myself, who like to watch videos of people eating a large amount. Why? I could not tell you. I just do. There are competitive eaters who make regular mukbang videos where they put away a lot of food and it’s definitely a very specific area of interest, yet a lot of these people have thousands of fans.
…
So after that bit of a huge introduction, allow me to come back to reaction videos. Where was i? Oh yes. I first came across blind wave and I loved it. But I used to watch what they had on YouTube because I did not think it was worth it to pay even $5 a month for a full reaction. They tended to post the highlights of the reactions on YouTube for free so why would I ever pay for it?
For 10 years off and on I was a fan of blind wave and a couple of other reaction channels but I never paid for any.
Then, a couple of months ago, I was surfing YouTube and I found a new thing online called a mashup.
If you go on YouTube and you search the word “mashup” and “movie”… You might start to get a better idea of why reaction videos are so popular. Or maybe you won’t, maybe it will only make you find it all the more weird, but mashups were what truly got me into reaction videos fully.
A mashup is when a person takes a lot of reaction videos and puts them all together into one, oftentimes with the full movie playing. It’s kind of like the video posted by @BlankSlate above, in this topic.
Now there are some things that are not good with this practice, most of them being that the full reactions are often behind patreon accounts of these reactors. … Mashups are obviously made by people who pay for each of these reactors singly and specifically and use them all in one video.
Most unfortunately though, there are many people who can never pay for the full reaction of every reactor. It would cost far too much. I would love to see full reactions of some of my favorite reactors, but I just go with the free YouTube versions they usually put up that are heavily edited and don’t show any of the movie alongside the reaction… Simply because I never found it to be worth to pay $5 each for each reactor I like. Let’s say I enjoy watching 20 reactors. 20 different channels. That’s a lot of channels, but let’s say that most of them charge $5 on each of their patreons to watch the full reaction.
That’s already $100 a month right there… Just spent on watching people react.
So for people much more rabid and hardcore into reaction videos, I can see why somebody would probably seek out these mashups over paying for 10 or 20 different reactors patrons.
I don’t condone the practice though because as I said, it takes the money out of the pocket of the reactor who is trying to earn some money for it. It’s kind of like buying a cassette tape and making a copy for all of your friends… A lot of people have done it, but technically it’s against the law. Same with recording movies that you rent from the video store so that you could have a copy yourself. Now, I don’t know of a single person who has never done this at least once (although I’m sure some people in this thread will come in and say “I’ve never done it” now that I’ve said that)… But it’s against the law 100%.
Still, people who buy these mash-up patreons instead, it’s kind of like they’re looking for a bundle deal and who can really blame them? Personally, I can’t.
…
That’s the first half of my opinion.
My second half is this…
I will watch the free mashups on YouTube though, I won’t pay for mashups because I don’t want to take money away from a reactor that I give to another person who isn’t even doing the reaction or the watching, but just doing the heavy editing… But I really take advantage of the YouTube videos that are available just by searching the word mashup and movie.
And after doing this for the last five or six months regularly, I have grown to love a lot of reactors. I have gotten to know, enjoyed, and even communicated with a ton of reactors on YouTube… Channels like…
Cinepals
Popcorn in bed
Blind wave
You me and the movies
Eom reacts
Badd medicine
The media knights
Trixie blue
Magic Magy
The normies
Maplenuts
The homies
White noise reacts
Addie counts
Movies with Mary
Jenhateshorror
Natalie gold
Stormakuna
Cinebinge
And the perfect mix
… Just to name a few, although I could name easily a hundred more probably.
Now, I doubt very much that most people reading this post will rush to YouTube to look up these people. If you already don’t have an interest or understanding in why reaction videos are popular or are not a fan of it, there would be no reason why you would care.
I find it’s a very specific interest. Some of you in this thread have expressed interest in liking them and even name some of the people that I know of…like @Superdude mentioning popcorn in bed… I totally agree about Cassie, I love her reactions because I find them to be genuine. Once in awhile she’ll watch with her sister too and those are also great because they are obviously so unused to horror and bloody movies.
Anyway, I’m going to tag a couple more dopers in here so they see my reply and if they want to check out some of the ones I listed above, they can feel free, the ones that I listed tend to be some of the better react channels, I find. Please note, though, all of the above channels I have listed are people who react only to movies. They do not react to music videos or anything like that, they are movie watchers and show watchers entirely.
@Andy_L @Hypno-Toad @Baal_Houtham @Frazzled @Eonwe @WildaBeast @mbh @RealityChuck
If anybody would like to message me suggesting a reaction channel that I don’t know about yet, feel free, if you think it’s good enough.
A few closing thoughts…
These days I do subscribe on patreons to people I think are worth it. Currently I subscribe to about 20 channels, so it cost me about $150 a month.
I only watch movies I have ever seen myself. I never watch a movie for the first time in a reaction video, what I will do is I will watch a movie first and then I will immediately watch a reaction video of it if it’s a movie I’ve wanted to watch already.
In the last two or three months, I have watched some movies for the first time and then watch them an additional three or four times in three or four different reaction videos, some of them being mashups (although I still don’t pay for the mashups, I only pay for specific members reaction patrons… The reactions I only watch on youtube, for free).
Leslie, I will say that it is completely 100% false that a lot of these are faked. If you have ever watched any of the ones that I have watched in full, you can know some reactions cannot be fake, not even by the best of actors. You can call me or think of me naive if you wish, but from comments that are made all throughout the movie, you get a sense of who has seen it before and who hasn’t.
It’s like someone above said… If they are good enough to fool me? Then I don’t care if it’s real or not personally. It’s kind of like the matrix, maybe the steak in my mouth is not real but my brain is telling me it is so why does that make it any less real?
In the end I guess it doesn’t matter.
And here’s one more round of tagging posters who have expressed interest in this area, in this topic.
@MrAtoz @DWMarch @BigT @N9IWP @TheBryan @Sitnam @snfaulkner @aurora_maire
I regularly watch a lot of the reactors on your list. Cinebinge and The Media Knights are two of my favorites because they have some knowledge of film making and have some appreciation of how the movies are crafted.
I don’t watch them in general but there is a particular sub-genre that I used to enjoy back in the day, kids reacting to old technology like typewriters and film cameras. While I don’t doubt there is some hamming up, I think these are genuine reactions for the most part and the element of physical interaction adds to the amusement.
I’ve checked out most of the channels you mentioned. Some of them I really enjoy. EOM, for example, absolutely kills me when he gets jump scared or cracks up laughing.
The guys at Blind Wave are generally pretty entertaining, too.
CineBinge is probably my absolute favorite, but that’s because I have an insane crush on Simone.
Natalie Gold gets some hate (especially on Reddit, where they tend to say that she’s shrill), but I dig her channel.
You’ve given me a few I haven’t seen yet, though. So I think I have some watching to do in the near future.
This is my feeling as well. Don’t for a second believe they are seeing it for the first time.