Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I used to watch other people watch movies. I can remember those days clearly:
For my teens and most of my 20s, I didn’t really watch a movie unless I was alone while it was playing. If there was anyone else with me, instead of watching the film, I watched other people watch it.
I wanted to see how they reacted. What did they think of the plot? The characters? Did they think the movie was funny? Sad? Scary?
…
I’m surprised in hindsight that they didn’t notice or call me out on it — “What are you looking at?”, “Stop staring,” “That’s so creepy.”
But they didn’t.
They were usually engrossed in the movie.
I Thought Watching Other People Watch Movies Was a Weird Impulse #
Anyway, as you can see if you read that essay I linked above, I thought watching other people watch movies was a weird impulse. Something personal to me, maybe indicative of a niche quirk I had.
I realized recently that this isn’t the case at all. It turns out that there’s a whole subgenre of videos specifically created to fill that void. They’re called reaction videos. In them, a YouTube personality literally sits there and watches another video and reacts emotionally (and provides a bit of commentary). And they’re very popular on YouTube.
The funny thing is that I’ve known of the existence (and popularity) of reaction videos in passing for many years now. I just never made the connection to my past.
And all of these years, I had taken the fact that I liked to watch other people watch things as a sign that I was missing something important that came easily to other people.
Nope, I probably just pathologized a normal trait. It happens, you know. Especially if you find yourself around judgmental people at a time when you’re just growing and developing. You can come of age thinking that something is a defect that’s instead just a common characteristic.