The Cult of Reaction

February 23, 2023 11:30 AM

Yet much of the anxiety provoked by today’s reaction economy consists in the possibility that, in our desperate hunt for feedback and our need to give feedback to others, we allow ourselves to be steered in directions we did not consent to, and may not wish to go. This has echoes of the mid-20th-century fears of advertising, PR and propaganda, with the difference that now, in the age of reaction chains, we are drawn towards controversy, absurd public spectacles, endlessly mutating memes, trolling etc. In these showers of feedback, much of the appeal is in the sheer quantity of reaction being circulated. Feedback mechanisms, which the cyberneticians viewed as instruments to achieve autonomy and facilitate navigation, turn out to be a trap. from The Reaction Economy by William Davies [LRB; ungated]
posted by chavenet (14 comments total)

please hit the like and subscribe buttons, and turn that notification bell on
posted by clawsoon at 12:00 PM on February 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

One thing that MetaFilter does well is to offer me things that are good, which I can appreciate -- instead of Things That Are Shitty Which I Must Excoriate.

Appreciation, and the discussions that creates, are pretty much the opposite of dumb, angry Internet Reaction, because you need to consider the subject and find a way to relate to it.

The very best threads here are appreciations of a topic or a person.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:40 PM on February 23, 2023 [20 favorites]

I'm trying to decide whether I buy the author's connection of reaction to reactionaries. An intriguing thesis if true, but part of me is thinking that if it weren't for the happy alliteration, it might be a longer trip from the insights of Arendt and Fromm to Twitter likes and Youtube reaction videos.

But I'm not sure.
posted by clawsoon at 12:52 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Seems very strange to formulate this in terms of the individual, reflective response when the greatest danger is clearly how it fosters the formation of potentially violent mobs who don’t have to come together and occupy the same physical space and time to generate, sustain, amplify, and enact their mass delusions.

And it completely fails to draw the conclusion obvious even from the political examples he chooses to discuss, that the greatest danger by far is from the far right.

Murdoch and Fox? Not even mentioned.
posted by jamjam at 1:22 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really just do not get the appeal of "reaction videos". So many of them feel like cheap ways to generate content: I'm gonna play this existing piece of media in a way that won't get automated copyright strikes, and put myself in front of it doing cartoonishly exaggerated reactions to it. I'd rather just watch the thing myself without someone clowning around in it.

I may also be pretty low on mirror neurons, I dunno.

I'm definitely glad to have left the Twitter reaction economy, though. Man that's a nasty machine that feeds off of human misery to generate ad views.
posted by egypturnash at 2:23 PM on February 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

I really just do not get the appeal of "reaction videos".

It's an attempt to recreate the emotion of sharing something you like with a new friend. Will they like it? They do! We have a bond! This is great!

...except now we have screens instead of friends, so we do it there instead.
posted by clawsoon at 3:06 PM on February 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

I really just do not get the appeal of "reaction videos".

I will sheepishly admit to having spent a lot of time watching reaction videos of late. Entirely all “first listen” videos of people listening to famous songs for the, inexplicably, first time. They’re interesting in that “how could you have lived to your age and not heard any of this before?” way.

They’re especially interesting when someone with a particular specialty (like a voice coach or a symphonic composer) does one and focuses on their area of expertise.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:56 PM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Part of the tragedy of Twitter (not so much Instagram or YouTube, which were always ad machines from the start) was that it was thought of as an engine for political change on a mass scale. A lot of users across the world had the idea that if enough people expressed their desire for something, it would lead to material change. Change in government system, better material benefits, a more open society in whatever direction.

That's not necessarily so, even in democratic societies that ostensibly represent the interests of their citizens. What's left of that energy post-Trump is mostly directed against various subgroups and online enemies. Very negative vibes and very sad.

(Also, how can you follow up Trump? The posting president? You can't!)
posted by kingdead at 4:00 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like reaction videos from experts who can teach me something interesting about something I love. Why do I like that song? Harmonies! Why is that example of mounted knights wrong? They have stirrups and shouldn't! How did they make that? Well, magic. And sometimes we just have a primal need to see people be gleefully, innocently dumb I guess
posted by Jacen at 6:32 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Part of the tragedy of Twitter...was that it was thought of as an engine for political change on a mass scale. A lot of users across the world had the idea that if enough people expressed their desire for something, it would lead to material change.

Thing is, Twitter actually accomplished all that. Just not in the way many (naively) hoped.

Giving hate groups a way to easily unite on a world-wide scale was never going to end well for the rest of humanity. The tragedy of the babelfish, and all that.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I can't stand reaction videos where it's just someone emoting in a wildly exaggerated fashion. You don't have to be Charlie Cale to recognize the amount of bullshit that gets posted as someone reacting to seeing Star Wars or listening to the Beatles for the first time. The sad part is, a lot of the expert-reacts-to videos now do this too because nonstop facepalms and desperate cries of "why? why? why?" are what bring in the clicks. Audiences seem to value seeing someone react in an extreme manner more than they care about what a person is reacting too or what they even have to say.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:56 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

And don't get me started on the whole sub-genre of reaction videos that includes the glurgy works of Dhar Mann and all those exploitative shorts where people pretend to care about the unhoused and do nice things for clicks. I've come to refer to those as the "feelies" because they only exist to provide a cheap hit of emotion for people to react to.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:03 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Reaction videos taught me two things:
1. Generally speaking, reactors don’t actually listen to the lyrics.
2. Generally speaking, viewers don’t actually listen to the reactors.

I found a small channel with two college kids who listen to songs and then remark on them from a songwriting and music production perspective. They were “in conversation” with another channel where the reactors did a lot of YouTube Face (and the thumbnails showed it). I watched that channel and it was very obvious viewers wanted a “facial reaction where this sheltered woman realizes what the lyrics of “Centerfold” are about”. (She didn’t; her partner explained it to her; cue YouTube Face.)

I returned to the college kids and watched their reactions to the Kink’s “Lola”. They enjoyed it. They listened to the lyrics; they got the “twist” and they discussed it and made jokes without YouTube Face. First comment on the video: “When you completely miss the meaning of a song.”. Some commenters said “No! The youth are different now, it’s not a shock to them, that’s why they didn’t do YouTube Face!”. Like because they didn’t scream “WHAT” and replay the track and give YouTube Face, they had missed the point of the video — by thinking people wanted their actual reaction and opinions.

It was really really obvious what the “money shots” of reaction videos was; I had a brief vision of how stupid this was making the world; I went and did something else.
posted by Hypatia at 6:57 AM on February 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

I had a hot take but by now it has cooled somewhat.
posted by k3ninho at 11:52 AM on February 25, 2023 [1 favorite]