Atomized Societies and the Proliferation of Reaction Video Channels on YouTube
A few years ago, I considered writing (on another blog) a post about why atomized societies require celebrities and “influencers” to levels that are inconceivable in more traditional societies. This is not to say that societies in more traditional parts of Asia or Africa don’t have celebrities of their own. But in those places, celebrities are not a part of everyday life to anywhere near the level seen in western countries. Celebrities in those countries only exist to provide a steady stream of entertainment in the form of scandals and fuckups in the otherwise socially busy lives of people. Now.. I do have a long explanation for why atomized societies require celebrities and “influencers” to function in a manner even remotely approaching a normal society. But that is best left for another post or maybe even a short series.
This post will try to tackle something related, but which can be covered in a single post. Over the past few years, but especially over past two , many of you might have seen a huge increase in the number of YouTube channels devoted to “reactions” of people to everything from movies and TV shows to clip compilations made by other people or even to content made by other YouTubers. There are those who believe that such content is gaining prominence only because YouTube is recommending them to everyone and their dogs. While that is certainly possible, I have a more interesting and depressing explanation for the massive rise of such apparently meaningless content.
YouTube (henceforth referred to as YT) promotions are themselves insufficient for creating persistent trends. If YT algorithm decided to promote clips of fat and ugly people shitting on their toilets, it wouldn’t start a persistent trend of such channels growing in size and number because, beyond the initial shock value of such content, they do not satisfy any emotional or intellectual need. People watch clips of cute pets such as dogs, cats or otters because it makes them feel happy. Similarly people watch clips about esoteric topics such as 8-bit computers and older computer technology, astrophotography or geology because they are interested in those topics. My point is that YT channels which gain and maintain subscribers do so because they cater to some need of the audience, even if that need is not obvious or sometimes trivial.
With this out of the way, let us talk about the exact point in time when these reaction channels really exploded in numbers as well as subscribers. In an earlier paragraph, I said something along the lines of “but especially over the past two years”. Well.. what big event occurred in West over the past two years? Yes.. it was COVID-19, or more precisely all the ineffectual lockdowns and useless public health theater to allegedly control it, which made its impact much worse than it would otherwise have been. Some of you probably know that those stupid responses caused a lot of damage to people on many levels from a massive increase in small business bankruptcies, old people dying lone in nursing homes, massive disruption of schooling (especially in “blue” parts of USA) and much more- including social problems which might take a few more years to fully manifest themselves.
One of the interesting effects of those many dumb and dangerous policies instituted during the COVID-19 was this whole “social distancing” bullshit which, among things, caused a shutdown of public gathering place such as bars, restaurants, cafes and theatres- in addition to home gatherings. A lot of the useless “laptop class” also took this opportunity to keep collecting their paychecks while sitting at home. To make a long story short, all of this created a massive increase in number of people who wanted to interact with other people but lacked sufficient opportunities to do so in person. This is why all those reaction YT channels catering to every interest from older movies, TV shows, music and even the content of other YouTubers got their audience. They are filling the role of proxy acquaintances- the type we often end up hanging with in bars, restaurants or at movies.
That is what I was referring to when I wrote that “channels which gain and maintain subscribers do so because they cater to some need of the audience, even if that need is not obvious or sometimes trivial”. Which brings us to the next inevitable question- is this just a passing fad or will it become established and bigger? While there are those who want to believe that this is a passing fad, I think otherwise. YT channels devoted to reaction videos have been steadily growing over the past decades. In the beginning, they were usually short clips produced by small professional outfits and often polished in their production values. However such semi-pro content started losing audience share to more amateur and amateur-looking content, because this form works better if people in videos look and act more like normal people that actors.
If you have followed this trend you might have also noticed that the audience numbers and engagement of such reaction channels has kept going up in spite of the removal of most stupid COVID-19 related regulations. I, for one, am not surprised because these channels provide the simulacra of normal human company in highly atomized and dying western societies where even basic human interactions now require effort and money. Dumb COVID-19 related regulations might have accidently provided an extra growth spurt for these channels, but the underlying need they serve was always there in atomized western societies and had been getting more acute for the past few years.
What do you think? Comments?