Reaction Videos are Cheap

If any of my friends read this, I want to apologize in advance but I can't stand reaction videos of any kind, I am not alone. I am not talking to reacting to Nintendo Directs only, but essentially unboxing videos, testing make-up, reacting to a trailer, etc, anything that is just a mere form or cheap marketing to obtain popularity based on your reactions even if they look fake.

We can think on the direct marketing perspective, based on product testing to understand the satisfaction with a product i.e. there can be a video made based on how a certain type of make up behaves and the content creator can give their opinion after an organized script to let the potential users and customers know what are your experiences based on your test and product demo; instead of going and make a video that you look unorganized and make the Nintendo 64 child a more serious salesman of an outdated product.

Probably the reason reaction videos are so popular it lies on the primitive aspect we encompass as human and great primates, we can think of  mirror neurons and mirror behavior, we gain pleasure by watching someone else reacting to an X situation that can mirror our own experiences and probably (again) is one reason people seek on those videos, because they feel empathy.

As we mentioned before, we have to understand there are different reaction videos and the concept itself can be used to show products as well cultural scenarios as the tasting of food and places, the concept can be used to sell travel plans but also to educate people on the different cultures that are beyond their cul-de-sac's and how they influence their daily habits of food as well clothing; but the concept gets lost instead of sitting with content that is easy to digest and almost forgettable.

There is one Youtuber I admire, I know their name through a friend, they are quite knowledgeable towards gaming itself, but they centered their content exclusively on reaction videos, and going through their list on Youtube to see their statistic I saw only their reaction videos are the ones that get the most views. Over time I saw that their original content and even let's play content has less views than the reaction videos and I found interesting on how they switched from original content to almost solely let's play and reaction videos to try to stay somewhat relevant.

Is almost a death sentence to any creator, why? Because you are setting your popularity on your looks to create reaction videos and probably after any potential audience see too many of your videos you are going to be on a popularity limbo because reaction videos don't contain any replay values, reaction videos are just mere extension of entertainment segments viewers can watch it once and there is no reason to repeat it them because they don't contain any informational value.

Even so, there is a moment when viewers can see how fake the videos involving reaction turn to be, if you don't have a marketing plan and you set yourself as a brand crying and screaming because of the new game is coming up, it can be difficult to take you seriously whenever you want to diversify your portfolio within your content, people aren't going to take you seriously enough to know you can create something wonderful but also people tend to be greedy and their modes and habits change over time.

Reaction videos at the end are forgettable, as a product per-se in 10 years they will be forgettable, they don't even contain meme content as the Nintendo 64 kid that can be used on the popular culture, instead the reaction videos are a cheap way to bring people which on a long term won't even be as active, they relegate original content on the side and honestly they don't contribute to anything original or new but instead clutter the space of whatever could bring something interesting to content creation.