I'll admit a horrible guilty pleasure: I like watching reaction videos. One topic in particular is the LotR trilogy. People much younger and seemingly right in the strike for the apparently miniscule zoomer attention span can nonetheless pay pretty good attention and enjoy the entirety of the trilogy without any real issues. It's almost like the longer content they'd be expected to put up with usually is a bloated incoherent mess, and they just needed to see a well written story for "TikTok brain" to vanish.
None of these points were an obstacle to any of them.
React content is just comfortable ego reinforcement. It’s meant to affirm your preferences or beliefs by convincing you that other people - especially those from a different demographic - also support the things you like. It’s a black person supporting conservatism! It’s a teenager who likes my boomer music! It’s a guy who is scared by the same part of the movie that also scared me! The product is the feeling you get from someone agreeing with you, and the value of that product correlates with the value of the presenter.
Meanwhile, in reality, black people hate conservatism, teenagers don’t like your music, and virtually none of the emotional reactions you see on the internet are genuine. You’re being lulled into a warm stupor by curated, filtered content that has evolved to target you.
I'll admit a horrible guilty pleasure: I like watching reaction videos. One topic in particular is the LotR trilogy. People much younger and seemingly right in the strike for the apparently miniscule zoomer attention span can nonetheless pay pretty good attention and enjoy the entirety of the trilogy without any real issues. It's almost like the longer content they'd be expected to put up with usually is a bloated incoherent mess, and they just needed to see a well written story for "TikTok brain" to vanish.
None of these points were an obstacle to any of them.
React content is just comfortable ego reinforcement. It’s meant to affirm your preferences or beliefs by convincing you that other people - especially those from a different demographic - also support the things you like. It’s a black person supporting conservatism! It’s a teenager who likes my boomer music! It’s a guy who is scared by the same part of the movie that also scared me! The product is the feeling you get from someone agreeing with you, and the value of that product correlates with the value of the presenter.
Meanwhile, in reality, black people hate conservatism, teenagers don’t like your music, and virtually none of the emotional reactions you see on the internet are genuine. You’re being lulled into a warm stupor by curated, filtered content that has evolved to target you.
Good point. It's mostly creators that have failed us. And ultimately the people who fund and distribute, of course.