On React Content and Parasocial Relationships
On React Content and Parasocial Relationships
The Vortex of Virtual Human Interaction (When It Gets Dark)
If you have spent any time on YouTube or Twitch you may have come across so-called “react” channels or streams. That is, people who create videos of themselves watching another video so you can watch them watching something else.
React content is essentially a review, but in real time — as opposed to a structured and presumably well-considered video essay (interspersed with the obligatory memes, of course). While there has been controversy as to whether certain streamers are actually adding value or they’re just stealing content, it’s not necessarily a totally vacuous exercise.
There is a lot of it, though.
For instance, a peculiar sub-genre of this phenomenon I encountered recently is young black self-described Christians who react to old white guy comedians like George Carlin.
George Carlin and his acerbic views on religion will be a familiar figure to many, but in point of fact I started down this particular rabbit hole by stumbling upon a reaction to the comedy of Dave Allen. Dave Allen might be a bit more obscure to US audiences, hailing from Ireland and having peaked in popularity in the 70s with his show “Dave Allen at Large.” I’m familiar with that show because my local PBS station aired it prior to running Doctor Who. As the venerable British sci-fi show was broadcast at midnight on a Sunday, well past bedtime for a school night, and given the vagaries of videotaping using a timer on a VCR in that age, some of the Dave Allen skits and his sign off would inevitably end up on my recording (as would lengthy segments of PBS pledge drives, much to my chagrin).
It’s actually Doctor Who react content that I indulge in the most.
Part of the appeal of this particular sort of react content for me is admittedly that there is a nostalgia aspect to it — rewatching old episodes of a favorite show with the benefit of vicariously experiencing someone’s first response to them — that magical moment between not knowing and knowing that cannot be replicated. When you’re so familiar with something that it’s comfort food, seeing how somebody else experiences it for the first time gives it some novelty. It can be particularly interesting when they have a take about a given story that is quite a bit different than mainstream fandom opinion. It also helps when you’re watching someone with a big personality and who is really engaged with the material.
This is why I consider Marie Claire my favorite Doctor Who react streamer.
Hailing from the South of England, Marie Claire’s level of investment is kinda phenomenal. She goes the extra mile not to be spoiled as to what’s coming next. While she’s familiar the new series of Doctor Who that started in 2005, she went into watching “classic” Doctor Who utterly blind, starting from the very beginning. While she does have the benefit of knowing certain characters and monsters because of the revival series, she doesn’t necessarily have any context for when they appear or depart or other important program milestones. To keep her reactions “pure,” she regularly and adamantly admonishes her followers to not comment on future episodes and will even avoid looking at the title at the start of a new adventure.
One has to admire the patience it takes to start with the very first episodes of a show that started airing in their early 1960s. Given the glacial pacing of the early serials which could be several 25 minute episodes in length, not to mention incomplete (owing to how the BBC at one point wiped and junked older material), it takes some real gumption to go through the entire catalogue. There are some older historical episodes that I haven’t even taken in end to end through whatever audio and visuals survive.
Still, she’s stuck with it and has nearly completed the series (as of writing she’s published her reaction the 1st episode of the last story of the penultimate season on her Patreon). She readily accepts the show for what it is, such as its tendency to be more like a sort of stage play in its earliest incarnation, and she has a fondness for those wobbly sets and less than stellar visual effects for which the series is often lambasted and lampooned.
Compacting 26 years of television into weekly reviews makes the regular comings and goings of the cast a feature. Marie Claire will be quite stand offish about new Doctors and companions, gradually warm to them, and then become visibly upset when they depart. If it weren’t genuine it would seem over-the-top.
She also loves to make predictions as to what will happen next (Will the next story be set on Earth? Or on a space ship? Will this companion or Doctor be leaving soon?), which for an audience who knows all to well what the future portends, makes for an interesting dynamic as we know how those predictions are going to pan out and how behind the scenes drama is impacting what’s happening on screen. Given the prohibition on spoilers, one can but wait in anticipation as to what her reaction will be. Perhaps this is how a Time Lord feels at times.
The effect of all this is a sort of weird vortex of parasocial relationships — me watching her watching my favorite TV series as she gets to know its characters and becomes immersed in the fictional world that I already have great affinity towards. Over time, as a viewer you feel like you get to know your virtual host as they talk about what’s happening in their own life. As a bond, it’s illusory, but when the host talks about us all as being part of a “big crazy fam-a-lam” one gets the impression that maybe the reactor buys into it more than the audience does.
In the context of my songwriting and music career, such as it is, this has been food for thought. As the music marketing gurus will tell you, feeling that there’s some sort of personal or emotional connection with an artist is one of the reasons that people will listen to that artist’s music. From my observations of some of the Internet’s more rabid fandoms, I’m just not so sure I want to live on that end of the parasocial divide. It sounds kind of intense.
I never have quite gelled with performing to a webcam as the pandemic required. I missed having that discernible feedback a live audience provides, as nerve wracking as it might be, and its absence brings an inauthenticity to the proceedings I could never quite abide.
And it’s one thing to go up on stage and perform by putting on a stage persona as means of connecting with an audience, it’s another thing to have to project that continuously as part of social media presence to create an “aura of ‘realness’.” All social media seems to be at least a bit performative in a way and I find this simulacrum of social interaction where everyone presents their best curated self exhausting. Doing so even more deliberately simply because I’d like what I’m creating to not echo uselessly into the void… well, ultimately, is this really the way I want to engage with the world?
I suspect the capacity of humans to have parasocial relationships has existed since language allowed our species to effectively communicate about someone else in the third person. This has only been further forged and refined with the advent of art, writing, photography, radio, audio recording, video, and of course, the Internet, the capacity of which to accelerate and exacerbate humanity’s worst tendencies and foibles seems to have no limits. I do wonder whether or not the rise of react streamers is indicative of a larger societal problem with attachment disorders possibly worsened with the advent of years of COVID isolation. In an age where people are increasingly sensitive about IRL social interactions, it is odd to be encouraged to participate in this sort of voyeurism, consensual though it my be.
Still, where the Internet darkens the horizon, it also lights a candle. These days there’s actually that much more of a possibility for some sort of interaction in these otherwise one way street relationships through social media. It’s still quite lopsided with one persona dominating the (possibly monetized) conversation and the available interactions are sometimes just kind of silly (you could, for a nominal fee, control the color of the lights illuminating your favorite Twitch streamer, for instance).
Nonetheless, the continuously scrolling chat forums of a live stream can become a community of their own and the technology allows anyone with a webcam to participate and join in. This was the case with my (mostly) belated In Lieu of Fun community where the hosts would “rapture in” members of the audience.
Anyway, this all struck me as an interesting jumping off point for a song.
What I ended up with is essentially a musical portrait. I chose to crib my structure and many of the verse chords from “My Funny Valentine” as I thought that made for a bit of a joke in of itself. I am quite proud of the bridge though — the fact the descending pattern of half diminished and major 7th chords was able to end on the verse’s opening chord makes me very happy. I decided to use as a refrain something Marie Claire often states herself, that she loves it “when it gets dark” — the “it” in this case being the show.
(At this juncture there’s another potential digression about the popularity true crime dramas and police procedurals with women… but perhaps another time…)
Given the three verse and bridge limitation, it took me a while to convince myself I was finished (I’m still not, to be honest).
I started out trying to play up the more romantic angle and perhaps be a bit coy about what I was really talking about, winding up with this as initial verse as my model:
She sees sun bleached colors blazing bright
Hears worn out chords dance with life
Gives a broken down engine a brand new spark
And she loves it When It Gets Dark
I don’t think it’s necessarily that bad, but ultimately I decided to ditch it to focus more on concrete character traits and make it a little more slice of life/cinéma vérité, though perhaps enigmatic. Plus which, when the rhyming dictionary gives you an option like “Plutarch,” it’s a bit difficult to resist for someone with a touch of a classical education.
After some drafts, I ended up with what is below. You can listen to a (very) rough demo on my Soundcloud.
And there’s much more of my music to check out.
Thank you, good night, and may your God go with you.
When it Gets Dark
by E.G. Phillips
Intro:
Am7b5 GMaj7 Gm7b5 FMaj7 Fm7b5 EbMaj7 Fm7b5 EbMaj7
Verse 1:
[Bb][D] EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
She shares gossip, the weather, and laments her split ends
EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
As she talks to the camera like an old friend
G7/D Cm7
Then sums up her thoughts on the ongoing story arch
Bbm7 Gdim (xx532x)
And she loves it
Gdim AbMaj7
When It Gets Dark
Verse 2:
[Bb] [D]EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
She’s de-termined to avoid any and all spoilers
EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
As she predicts the plots points of passé pot-boilers
G7/D Cm7
Warms slow to new faces but mourns when they depart
Bbm7 Gdim (xx532x)
And she loves it
Gdim AbMaj7
When It Gets Dark
Bridge:
Fm9 Dm7b5
If there’s a grisly murder or
Fm9 Gm7b5
Giants rats stalk the sewers
Am7b5 GMaj7
She’s bubbly and effusive
Gm7b5 FMaj7
And though answers are elusive
Fm7b5 EbMaj7
She becomes intrigued… yes…
Fm7b5 EbMaj7
She becomes intrigued…
Verse 3:
[Bb][D] EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
How she adores those handsome young men on her screen
EbMaj7 Gm7 Fm7 Gm7
Their charm, their sweetness, and yes, their physique
G7/D Cm7
Like figures out of myth or the lives of Plutarch
Bbm7 Gdim (xx532x)
And she loves it
Gdim AbMaj7
When It Gets Dark