A significant corner in the bottomless abyss of content that is the YouTube sphere is space inhabited by professional ‘reactors’. You might have heard more often and favourably about live gaming, and live streaming content. With reaction content, however, skills and know-how are optional. In these videos, YouTubers watch and film their reactions to new and old trailers, movies, songs and shows, and release these videos online. Many of these reaction videos don’t even include an educated review of the media being reacted to.
Craze for Validation
For years, reaction channels on YouTube have been steadily growing, in number and popularity. Several reaction channels exist just for Bollywood content — where content creators from across the world spanning Spain, USA, UK, Pakistan and others, react solely to Indian media in each and every one of their videos. If it is a newly-released film today, it is a highly requested Coke Studio music video tomorrow. Where is the appeal, you ask? Audiences are drawn to reaction videos for the same reason they are drawn to most other things on the internet — a yearning for community with anonymity, friends, and the notion of an ever-widening scope for reach and communication.
Popular reaction channels like CineDesi (24.7 lakh subscribers), ChaatNChat (1.72 lakh subscribers), and Our Stupid Reactions (14.2 lakh subscribers), among many others, have not only garnered impressive audience bases, but their fan following in India is also vast. So much so, that these YouTubers have travelled to India to do fan meet-and-greets, make acquaintances with Indian film stars and YouTubers as well as the country’s culture, which they have heretofore only experienced through the screen.
While these aforementioned reaction channels include in-depth reviews and breakdowns of the films and content they react to — delving into the performances, direction, production, music and more — they are in the company of several other reactors who run their channels merely on exaggerated exclamations and generic observations.
Significant subscriber bases aside, these numbers are not an entirely accurate representation of their popularity, as views often do not translate to subscribers on YouTube. ChaatNChat, which apparently has less than 1.75 lakh subscribers, can garner 3.8 lakh views in under a month on a single video. Each of the aforementioned YouTube channels start their videos with an appeal to their audience to make the effort to subscribe if they are regular watchers of the respective channels. As popular as these reaction channels are, there is also a catch. While reactors try to simulate a watch party kind of setup, YouTube does have regulations regarding copyrights, spam, and repetitive content.
Accordingly, reactors are only allowed to show a certain percentage of the film in their reaction videos. Replaying the whole thing and releasing it in a video under their channel’s banner amounts to copyright on YouTube. Watching a reaction video is like watching highlights of a match with an online pal. They become a weekly constant on your watchlist. You know how they speak, what they look like and even what movies and music they enjoy, but you can never sit down in person and watch a full length film from start to finish with them.
Navigating Copyright Barriers
For this, too, reactors have a solution. They create parallel accounts on Patreon, a platform for sharing exclusive work and building community. On this site, reactors use a different format. While on YouTube the videos do feature parts of the film in question, on Patreon, the whole reaction is uploaded and audiences are expected to throw up on the movie on a separate screen and hit play with a 3-2-1 countdown from the reactor — this lets them watch the entire movie with the reactor, without any cuts or interruptions.
The conversations in the comments sections of these videos are multifaceted — there is camaraderie, judgment, discussion, discourse and argument as well. Viewers who are familiar with the content being reacted to, or the native language of the film, take it upon themselves to inform the reactors where they went wrong with pronunciation, where they missed context, and even what they should watch and react to next.
Rick Segal, one half of the Our Stupid Reactions duo (A YouTube channel that reacts almost solely to Indian media and content), was so touched by the film Gully Boy that to the delight of their fans and subscribers, got a tattoo of the film’s tagline ‘Apna Time Aayega’ in Hindi right across his forearm. Jaby Koay and Achara Kirk, from CineDesi have made several trips to India, guest starred on Indian podcasts and comedy shows, and interviewed several Indian film stars for their channel. Often, CineDesi has had to reupload years old reaction videos on popular demand from their audience. ChaatNChat runs a rolling list of audience recommendations, which they announce ahead of time and release in parts over a few days, with early access behind a paywall.
Reaction channels, while conceptually absurd, appear to scratch an itch for many, not to mention acting as another agency for Indian film and music to reach global audiences. Adding another fold to the community movie watching experience, albeit in highlights.