Thoughts on "reaction" vids?

Justoshow said:
Lately I've been seeing a pattern on YT. It seems to blow up all you have to do is do "reaction" videos and or mean prank vids. Not knocking anyone hustle, but whats your thoughts of that?

To me its like selling out, but thats just me. Not trying to start any mess to the reactors here.
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I personally think reaction videos are in a gray area of acceptance. For me, if you add criticisms, discussions, reviews and more, then they would be fine. However, if you pull a Jinx and just sit on your a**e and watch the video and add nothing to it, then that's where it becomes an issue. Reaction channels/videos get hate sometimes because of how he stained their reputations with his reaction videos.
 
xingcat said:
I'm going to be brutally honest. I find them incredibly lazy and it bothers me that so much of YouTube is content based on things that other people have created. I realize that criticism, re-imagining, fan art, fan discussion, reactions, essays, etc. are an art form in themselves, but I see so much content that is simply people showing other people's work and adding the bare minimum to avoid copyright strikes that it saddens me.

Even worse is an observation that many reaction videos don't have much in the way of original content beyond a square in which you can see the person "reacting" by watching the video, then remembering that they are supposed to be doing something, so they make a big face or shout or laugh a little too hard, and it's not that interesting or fun. To me, of course. I can't speak for anyone else.

Finding truly original content on YouTube sometimes feels like searching for treasure at the bottom of the ocean.
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I honestly couldn't agree more. Reaction videos are really unoriginal and boring at best. It's like people couldn't come up with anything better.
Now don't get me wrong...I really do love and appreciate just about every form of art. But when does art stop becoming art? For me one of those examples is reaction videos. This is not like watching a character in a movie react to their siblings/significant other's death or their home burn down or anything tragic of the kind. But instead your watching "someone else's work (whether it be a big project involving a lot of people or not)" and kinda reacting to it. What's the point? To me this is not a form of art. It's not criticism and it's just boring.

Not to knock anyone who really does love reaction videos and do it for a living but can you really provide me a good example and tell me why this is a form of visual art? For me it's not. It's just a sad excuse to be lazy and try to make a video with the least amount of effort but yet have the audacity to call "original." Oh please...
 
Justoshow said:
Lately I've been seeing a pattern on YT. It seems to blow up all you have to do is do "reaction" videos and or mean prank vids. Not knocking anyone hustle, but whats your thoughts of that?

To me its like selling out, but thats just me. Not trying to start any mess to the reactors here.
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Personally, I feel like reaction videos are kinda cheap. They're basically just people stealing other people's content and adding themselves in the corner. There are, however, some exceptions. Ex. Buckethead Nation (Dad reacts to...) "Buckethead Nation" adds a twist to the react videos which makes it interesting to me. For the most part, however, I agree with you.
Pranks, I typically do enjoy, though. Even though most are fake.
 
I am guilty of this I've done a few myself but it is kinda sad that we use someone else's hard work and take it as our own.
 
Can't really blame people on what they want to do. If they want to make a reaction video just for fun then let it be. It's more so the freedom of making whatever content you want as long as it doesn't break the YT guidelines.

However I know what you mean. There has been a blow up of reaction videos lately. Some are actually very entertaining.
 
I believe that the majority of reaction channels do what they do just as an easy way to get subscribers and earn money. These individuals can not be bothered to create their own content so just record themselves reacting to other people's. I have even seen in the past a channel using the same video reaction over different videos. This is pure lazy and is the reason why people have such bad opinions of reaction channels. I don't doubt that there are some reaction channels out there who do a good job and do something more, but these are just hard to find - I haven't found one yet, but I don't really watch reaction channels anyway.

But I'm all for people doing what they want. It doesn't affect me
 
I kinda consider it as stealing, especially if you're not really doing anything other than literally just watching the video.

I'd be curious how to go about it. I don't really.... react much when watching stuff. I just watch it. And I don't want to purposely overreact either because that would be fake and defeat the purpose of it. I think the only things I really do react to are watching the WWE pay per views. I do yell and swear at the tv when someone I can't stand wins, or someone I do follow loses their title, and my jaw just dropped when the Undertaker retired.

I do know that you have to kinda... show something of what you're watching, or else you're kinda leaving the viewer guessing as to what exactly you're reacting to. But I still kinda feel it's stealing views from the original material, or the original material is something that just aired live on TV or whatever, so it's not legally available to buy on DVD yet or whatever, so it's kinda stealing from the companies that produced them. Plus I dare not show footage of WWE PPVs.
 
Most of them are fake, rehearsed, and overly dramatic. I like the ones where you know the person hasn't seen the video before and there's a good and honest reaction.
 
lol exactly that's the way I am with my lets plays and anything I do really....kinda why I usually do terrible in games, lol. but it is fun to see it for the first time and the reactions that come with it
 
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