YouTube is a weird and wonderful monster of a website that continues to thrive and grow despite the likes of Facebook and Twitter doing their best to bring native videos to their platform.
It was once simply a hub to upload your shitty-quality clips recorded from one of the first mobile phones to use video or a digital camera, but now it has essentially replaced television for an entire generation. As more and more content creators are taking to YouTube to publish regular shows and vlogs, it has become clear that if you can develop a following, there's a lot of money to be made.
'Reaction videos' are stupidly popular. The phenomenon of watching someone watching something is alien to most who grew up without the internet, but it absolutely dominates the YouTube scene, and as so many know of the financial rewards to developing a loyal fanbase, A LOT of people are trying to put their own spin on it. Even TV stations are trying to keep up, what do you think 'Gogglebox' is and where that came from?
It makes sense, right? We at Balls.ie are regularly looking for the view of an Irish sporting achievement or defeat from a foreign land, because the appetite is always there. 'Who has been saying what about us?' It's a very Irish thing in general.
So inevitably, when someone sets up a sports reaction channel and starts reaction to sports clips, someone is going to come along and ask them to check out Irish sports that don't pop up on the radar over in the US. I know this because YouTube, as if being Irish and a sports fan was the only criteria it needed to know, offered me something very interesting in my suggestions tab...
A video of an American guy reacting to Brian O'Driscoll's career highlights.
It seemed absurd at first, but I was too intrigued to skip it. I clicked in, watched the intro, and then sat there as some chap vaguely familiar with the core concept of rugby gave his reaction to some of the Dricko moments I vividly remember from being a rugby fan for the past 10 years.
It's a strange feeling, hearing Ryle Nugent talk through a clip you've seen a hundred times already, but hearing things like:
Uuhhhh got 'em!
So I wondered to myself what else is out there...
There's a Marine by the name of 'The Heartless Buttface' who reacts to rugby videos and has one about Brian O'Driscoll, and there's this reaction to the raw speed of Bryan Odriskoll from a Seattle Seahawks fan...
Yeah, he got speed, that boy is faaaaast.
And it's not just Brian O'Driscoll, although there does seem to be a lot of the former Leinster man. Hurling, of course, features heavily.
We have a weird pride about the sport of hurling when it comes to telling a foreigner about it. It exists even in people who don't follow it regularly. This sport, surely tougher than anything their nation can offer, is so tough that other countries are terrified to play it. But can they even watch it and understand it?
This one, titled GAA's Biggest Hits and Tackles, pronounced "Gah's biggest hits and tackles", offers up someone entirely new to the sport discovering it's physicality.
Damn, that shit broke, bruh!
And there's many more.
It's clear to see why, as these channels are literally people asking other people what they would like to see and then making the content, so clearly the demand for reaction videos in Ireland is extremely high. There must be a significant group of people finding these sports reaction channels and asking them to focus on Ireland, otherwise the video doesn't get made.
These people are not making money off of these videos, but they are doing them in the hope of striking gold and building a following.
If you can't understand why people would be interested in watching something like this, it's easy enough to explain. Watching someone's reaction, their genuine reaction, can evoke the same feelings in you. The 'Gogglebox' example best illustrates that point, as you'll feel the same feelings as those you are watching, even if you can't see the subject matter. The same rings true for YouTube reactions, in five minutes you could be laughing or crying with a stranger.
And as for Ireland, the old burning ears have always been there, although you can't say it's just a small nation with an addiction to recognition and approval. If you do, then how do you explain the Irish reaction to American football currently sitting at 2.7 million views?
Reaction videos are just another form of people watching. Big Brother changed the landscape of television when they realised that humans are very comfortable just watching other humans, and silently judging of course, and reality TV exploded.
If you listen to people that follow trends and have a good understanding of the tech industry, such as entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, they are predicting that television will die out in the near future. What TV did to radio is what the internet is doing to TV. Replacing it as the main source of entertainment. Whether you believe that or not, the viewing figures in online content compared that of television is the reasoning behind that prediction.
People are trying to find new ways to engage audiences, and as someone who spends a lot of time surfing YouTube looking for interesting content, I found it slightly surreal that a sort of sub-culture of foreign reaction to Irish sports exists.
It's a bit mad.
