Another Great Time-Waster

Last year, I was searching the internet for a certain scene in a movie but wasn't having any luck finding it. After checking again later on, I stumbled upon something called a “reaction video” where a person or persons use a camera to record their experience watching a television show or film. Such videos feature short clips of the program's content or they partially obscure the image of the TV show or movie in question to avoid copyright infringement but often the gist of your favorite scenes remain intact. To me, it was like watching an abridged version of what I had already seen with enough content remaining to still make it an enjoyable experience.

After searching around, I found the particular scene I was looking for. However, I was very intrigued by the person reacting to it because this was their first time watching the movie. They were young and had never seen or heard anything about this film before so watching them react to it was like fondly remembering my first time seeing this movie. I'd laugh when they laughed, I'd be blown away when they noticed a small clue in the film that I had missed, I'd feel closeness when they agreed with my opinion, and I'd roll my eyes if they totally misunderstood something.

After watching this reaction video, I began to wonder how other YouTube users reacted when they watched the same movie for the first time. Falling down this rabbit hole was pretty easy. I think these videos gave me a sense of validation too because these young people thought a movie made in the early 1990s was way better than anything Hollywood produced nowadays. In fact, a few of them even lamented, “I wish we had movies like this today.” Oh how I shared that viewpoint! It's been many, many years since I've gone to an actual movie theater and felt that sense of magic that was so common back in my youth. Unfortunately, most mainstream movies now are plagued by cheesy franchises, bad writing, and an over-reliance on crappy CGI.

After watching several of these reaction videos, I wondered how these people would react to other movies and TV shows that were my favorites. Soon, I was searching entire playlists on YouTube to pick out which videos I wanted to see next. Each one was usually 30 to 40 minutes long so it did take a big bite out of what little free time I had. However, with my 3^rd shift job leaving me tired all the time, this seemed to be the perfect distraction before going back to work.

Some reaction videos were hosted by just one person while others featured groups of people together. Some of my favorite videos were hosted by husband and wife teams who were a little on the geeky side and it was amazing how well they got along and were in tune with each other. I said to myself, “I'd want a wife like that.”

To make money, these people had Patreon accounts and for a fee, members could watch these videos ahead of everyone else. They could also see exclusive content not available for public viewing which often included reaction to the entire movie. Some “reactors” had day jobs while others managed to make it their full time job. Now if you had told me when I was in my 20s that there would be people who got paid to sit on their butts and watch their favorite TV shows and movies all day long, I would have thought you were crazy. My years as a couch potato back then never got me much of anything!

I sometimes wonder about the ethics of all of this. A screenwriter, a director, actors and a whole bunch of other people behind the camera put in long hours to create these movies and TV shows and now other people were making money off of their creativity under the pretext of fair use. What also started to bother me was how invested I became in these reaction videos. I probably laughed more by watching them than I had laughed hanging out with friends in recent years. I felt more emotions from watching online videos than I did from interacting with others in real life.  The internet was already a great time-waster but now I found one more thing to whittle away my days.

For Lent this year, I chose to give up watching all reaction videos. It's been manageable but not easy as new content comes out every week and Easter is still far away. I think Lent is a very important time for self-reflection that allows us to examine our faults and think about the areas of our lives where we can do better. It bothered me that these videos were filling a void in my life that should not have been there in the first place. These reactors weren't my friends but I was certainly looking forward to seeing them as if we were.  Also of great concern was this pattern of work, eat, sleep that was taking over my life and leaving so little time to do anything productive around the house especially since my job wasn't very fulfilling or profitable.

Is society so starved of meaningful connections that we have to turn to the online world? While there's no going back, I sometimes think about how life was like before the internet, smartphones and other electronic trappings. We may not have had information on demand, but we seemed to be living life in the moment more often instead of craving emotions from the strangers on our screens.

Salt On An Open Wound

Some of the “friends” on my Facebook page are anything but friends and it still amazes me how people you have almost no connection with will think it's totally appropriate to send along a friend request. I find such relationships (if you can call them that) are rarely balanced. Several years ago, I was chatting on a public Facebook page when a woman who I had gone to middle school with saw what I wrote and asked if I was a former classmate of hers. I said yes and in no time she was sending me that friend request. I thought it was strange she reached out to me because in middle school I had almost no interactions with her.

Despite my better judgment, I accepted her request and we reminisced on the messenger for a little while about the teachers and fellow students we once knew. After this initial contact, we stopped interacting for the most part. Her path in life as a married woman with adult children was as different from my life as her hobbies, political beliefs and favorite music were. Whenever she posted anything to Facebook, it never resonated with me. Whenever I posted something, she rarely reacted. So now two people with little in common had a connection that seemed to serve no purpose.

She would often post photos of her many social activities whether it was vacationing with her husband or going to a concert with friends. As a lonely single guy, I found this content to be annoying to look at. Every now and then she'd post a video from one of her favorite 80s heavy metal bands thinking it made her look like a rebel. A few times, I'd post a song from some obscure dark metal or goth band to see if I'd get a reaction from her. I never did.

This Valentine's Day she posted two memes and really bothered me. The first said: “I LOVE MY HUSBAND EVERY DAY. NOT JUST ON VALENTINE'S DAY.” Hey, that's great for you but there are people out there who have never been married and don't have anyone to love romantically.

The second meme was more vulgar and reminded me of why many Massachusetts residents live up to the nickname Masshole. It said:

 This person had lost their mother many years ago and I suspect she posted this as a way of saying we needed to put our problems into perspective. However, I lost my dad years ago too so even though we shared the same kind of pain, her post still angered me. Not only did I think it trivialized the real pain of loneliness, the vulgarity of her post was like a giant up yours to single people in general. I found these words to be incredibly insulting and had to respond in the comments section by saying, “At some point in their lives most people have had a mother on Mother's Day and a father on Father's Day but there are some people who have NEVER had anyone to love on Valentine's Day. This post is like salt on an open wound.”

It was so easy for someone who was happily married for such a long time to be critical of those who still longed for even a fraction of the kind of love she enjoyed. I was ready to call her out on that point and many more. After signing out of Facebook, I braced myself for yet another keyboard war but when I signed back in later on that night, she had not said anything. This was the other reaction I anticipated.

It was easier for her to ignore what I wrote than to admit she might have crossed a line. This “friend” thought it was better to answer with silence than to ask why I thought she was being insensitive. The lack of any response made me wonder why I even had her on my Facebook page in the first place. This same person would sometimes post about the importance of seeing the warning signs of mental illness and depression in those around you. Too bad she didn't take her own advice.

To add further insult to injury, one of her friends responded to my comments by saying she understood what I was going through. Then she talked about how she was unattached on Valentine's Day just like me. If you thought this might have been the start of a romantic relationship, think again. As this woman continued to describe herself, she dug herself deep into a hole she couldn't climb out of. She described herself as being weird. (Ladies, if you think that's a terrible opening line for a guy, then you shouldn't use it either!) Then she talked about her dysfunctional relationship with her parents and then mentioned being divorced with kids. Needless to say, I didn't respond to her comments.

Interactions like these illustrate why I think Facebook has cheapened the art of having meaningful connections with others.  My "friend" might not have intended to be meanspirited but often times people who have never experienced prolonged loneliness and isolation have no clue how insensitive they can be.