My Journey into Degenerative Reaction Content
No look at anything in particular and therefore no spoilers. Just bizarre behaviour. Apologies in advance.
My life is consumed by art. Whether that be film, television, video games, music, or any other category you can think of. I spend the majority of each day flicking between various of these but recently a delving into insanity has happened on a daily basis for the past few weeks. To be quite honest it started a couple of years ago but it went away and I thought I was cured. Then the disease came back. With vengeance; with a higher severity. It is the disease of reaction content.
My brain is scrambled at the best of times but now I have truly lowered myself to that of the meth-addled, TikTok using, vape smoker that is a Zoomer. Gone are the days of watching three films in the day to catch up on stuff I missed out on to watch in the cinema. Gone are the hours deep into the evening watching a number of episodes of a television show that has caught my attention. And gone are the afternoons of listening to new albums from artists I love. Now all that happens is reaction. Reaction to things I’ve already watched. But why? Why am I watching a group of people watch through the entirety of Death Note whilst they occasionally comment on the show? Why see Inception be condensed into a fifty minute video that doesn’t show the video component for half of that in order to avoid copyright? Why do any of this instead of doing what I actually want to do? It’s a question I’ve been thinking of for the last few weeks. I only know this: I hate what I have become.
When it started a couple of years ago, it was simply a clip. I would have looked up some great scene from a season finale of a show I liked and along with the clip came the same video but only in a small section of the window with the rest of the screen being taken up by some twenty-something ready to fake emotions till they get the perfect thumbnail. I clicked on a couple and I devolved instantly. Gone was the appreciation of pacing, and the love of silence to fully appreciate the art. In was the tension of waiting for ‘that moment’ to pass and seeing another person’s reaction that would only either reach my own or fall flat (because different people have different emotions). Clips turned into full videos. Full videos turned into subscribed channels on YouTube. I had fully metamorphosed. As I said, I did recover for a bit. I stopped watching certain channels until they all completely disappeared from my subscription box. I used the ‘don’t recommend this channel’ option to remove the ability to see those that I had started to enjoy watching — hoping that this would leave the only reaction content recommendations to be the subpar. Even my blended brain wouldn’t pick those. But then, a few months later, my brain remembered the incognito window existed. Lost were the days of freedom and sensible but small YouTube content. The reaction content was back. And now I had to readjust the volume and turn off auto-play every time I indulged. It’s gotten to the point now where I use another email account, and therefore another YouTube account, to hold the subscriptions of the unsatisfying yet addictive content. So now I ping between the two accounts, making sure to not allow one to infect the other. But what has caused this devolution into absolute degeneracy? Was I secretly a Zoomer the entire time? Why am I asking a lot more questions than normal? Fuck knows. But we can at least look at some of the potential causes linked with this type of content.
First is the idea of the comfortable. This one isn’t fully linked to reaction content per se but these channels are constantly uploading their reactions of popular content not only released in the last year but also the modern, and not so modern, classics. I’m coming back to re-watching numerous things I’ve already watched rather than the new releases and since I feel bad for re-watching so much instead of watching the new, I end up watching reaction content to minimise the amount of time spent doing so. But in the end, I get dragged into the hole of watching more and more from the same channel and inevitably find a new channel to watch and consume the same films and television shows but with slightly different faces and different words occasionally splattered across the video.
Second is the concept of loneliness. I’ve always been a fairly lonesome figure but I enjoy my own company and am comfortable to sit by myself for a number of days or months. However, I am still human. My brain is programmed to require that social stimulation. And it may be that my absent social life brings out the need for an incredibly poor substitute like reaction content. But it’s also likely that simply having that extra viewing with people who have never seen, or at least not seen for a while, the film or television show. It does end up meaning that I prioritise those creators that I do actually like the personality of but it doesn’t reduce the fact that it is not fulfilling content and ultimately can be comparable to eating processed and/or unhealthy food.
And third is the attention or focus that I put into something. With this kind of content, it is fairly easy to just put on a video, move it to another monitor, and then go on with the expansion of the factory in Factorio or killing another boss in the latest story game I get round to. Or even to do some writing like this. This is the one that angers me the most. The fact that half the time I watch this content, I’m not even paying that much attention to it and it simply sits in the background as I go about other tasks — not always ones that are productive in any way either. It goes to that idea of wasting time. I should be doing stuff that’s actually going to be helpful but instead I end up watching these pointless videos. Ultimately, all these end up being excuses to do what must be down. I must not hesitate. I should show no mercy.
In this I have been fairly damning of the content of reaction channels to the point of calling it ‘degenerate’. And, although I stand by that description, it is in no way a castigation of the creators of these channels. These are people working for a living, either their essential avenue to survive the world or a hobby that has given them a new way to enjoy their life with an audience or additional cast member. In some ways the content is a little lazy as some may describe. It is, in the end, recording yourself sitting in front of a computer monitor or television. But there are some hidden qualities to the content that I do feel I have to put forward as a small apology for my contentious feelings toward the content. For example, the editing and video maintenance in general is likely an absolute nightmare. Making sure that you show enough of the film or television episode so that the audience is satisfied whilst making sure that you don’t show too much content to anger and trigger various copyright claims. Stuff like reaction content is on the edge of pushing what is original content, what is fair use, and what does or does not affect the original artists’ rightful income. We could get into various debates as to capitalism and the intrinsic value of art but the topic is so mired in ambiguous laws and ethics that it isn’t something I’m fully convinced of either way. But I thought it was important to emphasise the importance of being kind to these creators. Because even if you view the content as lazy, or for me degenerate, there are still people behind this reaction content; still people creating their art.
So what is to be done about the hole of despair I have found myself in? I still do occasionally watch some of the new releases but I’m behind and I’m getting further and further behind as I write each of these words. Burning the channels from the alternate YouTube account will likely only lead to watching them in incognito again. I guess the only thing is to attempt to phase it out. Slowly reduce the amount whilst increasing the amount of new releases. Taking those moments of needing something on another monitor to put on a new album or the radio. Instead of watching something again through random YouTubers, watch something new with a friend. And instead of clinging to the comfortable, reach out to the new and unexplored areas of media. But then again, I’ll probably just end up re-watching House again.
Everybody lies.
-Boad
