Reaction content has been around for years, but has recently risen in popularity which has led to a blurred line between fair use and profiting off of someones work.
What is reaction content?
Over a decade ago, TheFineBros was a popular YouTube channel, showing kids and teens reactions to viral videos and sharing this on the platform. These videos were getting hundreds of thousands of views, proving to be one of the more popular creators in the early stages of YouTube.
Skip forward a few years and people like Adam22/NoJumper were using reaction content as a way of promotion, charging new artists a fixed amount to play one of their songs on a live stream. Sharing his opinions on submitted songs helped to build his reputation in the industry and helped to boost the career of some talented underground artists, which he could then invite onto his podcast to create a stronger bond between the rapper and a large potential audience.
Popular Youtube content creators also jumped onto this, creating seperate channels to host their reactions to top 10 lists and other compilations. It takes a minimal amount of time to film, it’s an easy edit and it performs well – arguably better than some of the content that hours of planning and big budgets are put into. As long as the reactions make up a larger portion of the video than the original content, it can be claimed as fair use which allows the creator to generate revenue from these videos.
Why do we have this obsession with seeing people’s reactions?
I’m not a psychology expert but I think there are three reasons that this content is so popular.
- For some of us who struggle to form a solid opinion on particular subjects, seeing someone else react to it helps to influence our decision. It’s also likely people use reactions as their own opinions without anything to back them up, and that scares me.
- Confirmation bias. We discover that an individual has similar opinons and beliefs to ourselves, so watching their content provides the validation we need to say that we have the right opinion.
- Sometimes, it just adds value to the content. Hearing the creators insights or humour mixed in with what could be a boring video makes it more entertaining, and pushes us to watch reactions over the original pieces of content.
There was a slight issue with reaction content for a while though, with reaction added as commentary it was locked to particular demographics that could understand the language it was provided in.
Then came Khaby Lame
It’s safe to say his life has taken a massive turn in the last couple of years. Losing his factory job in the pandemic, Khaby started making TikToks at home, which has somehow led to him becoming the face of Hugo Boss.
Khaby began reacting to life hack’ videos, you know, the type that require things you don’t have or make no sense at all. This was something that was already popular among creators, but there was a twist that made Khaby’s reactions suitable for a global audience.
He was silent.
There was no language barrier for this content. Instead, what we all think when seeing these life hacks was being visually shown to us. Across the world we liked that, receiving the validation we seek when proving ourselves to be smart and logical. It shot Khaby into the spotlight – becoming the second most followed individual on TikTok.
The Twitch Thing
I’m not one to watch live streams very often, if at all – so this is all based on bits and pieces I’ve seen on various other social media platforms.
Live streams are the preferred form of content for some, engaging with the creator in real-time can help to build a stronger relationship and loyal fanbase. Streamers do various things such as play games, talk, ASMR – and more recently, they’ve begun reacting to videos and feature-length films.
Repeating my earlier point, if the creator is adding value to the original content being watched, there’s not a huge issue with this. However, some streamers have been caught putting on movies and leaving their desk while still playing. We all know that it’s not exactly legal to stream any content owned by others, and it’s starting to create a bit of a stir in the Twitch community.
I’m not really sure why I’ve taken the time to draw the hero image and write this up. It was just something sitting in my mind so thought I’d share. These are things that a lot of people are probably already aware of, but it was nice to put it into my own words.
Zak Michaelwaite 
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