ABSTRACT
A young boy screams in terror, slaps the computer screen violently, and runs, sobbing, out of the room. A college student laughs, covers his face in horror, looks back at the computer screen, and then runs to the bathroom and vomits. A group of teenage girls screams with pleasure, hyperventilates, and giggles uncontrollably. These scenes of intense affective and bodily display are among the prized moments in a popular form of Internet video termed “reaction videos.” Disseminated primarily on sites like YouTube, this phenomenon has been addressed in sources like The New York Times and https://Slate.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Slate.com. A search on YouTube will turn up innumerable examples of different types of reaction videos, as well as parodies of the form. In reaction videos, friends, acquaintances, and family members set up a camera or Webcam to record one another’s reactions to various media—including scary prank videogames, extreme pornographic videos, and trailers for popular movie franchises—all of which are selected for the intensity of the various responses they can provoke. Reaction videos emphasize the details of the subjects’ expressive reaction to the content they see on the computer or TV screen. This content, however, often remains concealed from view for the spectator watching the reaction video itself.
