The arrival of Web 2.0 has seen the proliferation of ‘reaction’ style videos on sites such as Youtube, whereby one or more people watch a video and superimpose their realtime and ostensibly ‘genuine’ reaction onto the video itself. One particular kind of ‘reaction video’ I would like to consider is the ‘try not to laugh challenge’, whereby individuals react to a montage of short clips, with the expressed intention of not laughing. Viewers are encouraged to engage in the challenge themselves as they watch alongside the ‘reactor’. The video I attached here is a short clip from one of innumerable of the same kind, on Youtube.
The comic potential in these videos is perhaps twofold. Viewers are firstly encouraged to laugh at the clips themselves alongside the reactor, which recalls the laughter of ‘an affectively close we’ that characterises certain laughing collectives, whereby individuals laugh alongside each other in a mutual recognition that something is funny (Hanich, 208). In this case, the laughing collective is comprised of disparate viewing audiences online, alongside the reactor in the video itself, who arguably plays a duel role of audience member and the ‘clown on stage’ (Hanich, 208). Indeed, the laughter of the reactor is also often an object of laughter for spectators, a kind of laughter noted by Hanich, as they grow progressively red-faced in restraint of their increasing urge to laugh, which ultimately escapes in a crescendo of snorts and cackles. However, whilst Hanich focuses on the audible laughter of spectators in the cinema theatre, in the reaction video, we are motivated to laugh because of both the audible and visual representations of someone’s laughter on the screen. Parvulescu expresses this idea by stating that laughter featured in the moving picture has the potential to ‘spontaneously move us to laugh’ (Parvulescu, 134). Indeed, the attempts of this particular Youtube creator to stifle his own laughter; putting his hand over his mouth, the contortion of his face, and the inevitable release of laughter, (arguably) makes us laugh. This speaks to the parasocial logic that underlies reaction videos, as viewers perhaps feel more connected to the reactor, who is often a prominent content creator or celebrity, through seeing them laugh, linking to the kind of intimacy that can be produced by ‘shared humour’ which engenders a ‘feeling of togetherness’, as noted by Hanich (210).
Therefore, perhaps what the reaction format offers is its own kind of spectacle, whereby the vulnerability of the reactor, through their laughter, can produce comedic moments for the viewer to respond to, briefly dissolving hierarchies and creating a kind of online ‘laughing collective’ that produces a one-sided sense of intimacy on part of the viewer.