I’ve been on a horror kick lately. I finally watched Barbarian. A film I wanted to see two years when it premiered, only to completely forget about until it resurfaced on Prime recently.
Barbarian is the latest in the “socially conscious” horror trend, which started with Get Out in 2018. Even our horror film franchises have to be woke nowadays. I recall a much simpler time. A time when all you needed was a mask, preferably a white one, and some maniac with a knife. A little cat and mouse. Some butchered coeds. And there you go, you had your movie.
Of course, the slasher tropes started by Halloween and Friday the 13th were tired and formularic even by the late 1980s. This is why Scream was such a refreshing hit back in 1996. It playfully toyed with the genre conventions in a fun, meta way, with characters using them as a “rulebook” to help ensure their own survival.
Don’t go off alone.
Never say you’ll be “right back.”
Never, ever have sex.
Scream was the shit back in the day. It not only kickstarted the teen slasher craze all over again, it helped director Wes Craven get back in the game. It was a mega jackpot win for screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who wrote the script on spec. It’s unlikely his record for most commercially successful spec script not written by a writer/director will ever be broken. The Scream franchise has scored nearly $1 billion at the box office alone. Imagine that. Being some rank nobody 31-year-old screenwriter and you have a pdf file on your rickety old PC computer that’s worth billions. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. And he wrote it in a weekend.
Two sequels quickly followed the original hit. Then the franchise went dormant for awhile. This is back before reboots and requels and prequels became a big thing in horror. In 2011 Wes Craven directed Scream 4. That was followed by another movie lull, though the TV series Scream ran from 2015–2019. Until finally Scream (the fifth film) and ScreamVI came out back to back in 2022 and ’23, with plans for a seventh on the way.
It isn’t just Scream’s almost 30-year longevity that’s amazing, but the relative high quality the franchise has maintained. Most horror series fall apart after the original. Some keep chugging along despite being objectively goddawful, i.e. Halloween, Saw, Hellraiser, etc. With the exception of Scream 3, every installment in the franchise is fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Final Destination, with its clever teen-killing conceit, sits mainly in the sub-50s on RT.
So, what’s Scream’s secret? Why has it qualitatively lasted for so long while so many others have pathetically limped from one refresh to another?
Scream has some built-in requisite elements that act as quality control. Every Scream film has its gimmicks — mainly a twisty whodunnit plot with multiple meta references. A balanced measure of comedy, thrills, and melodrama. A tone that strays just outside the lines of realism into cartoonism. This precarious tight rope act isn’t easy. The latest two films are meta inside of meta; referencing the in-movie Stab series, which itself is a self-aware horror film that replicates scenes from the first Scream. The whole self-referential effect becomes like an MC Escher staircase, but with blood and knives.
‘Scream’ (1996): Dimension films.
Scream has also served as a recurring mirror of the current state of horror, if not the cultural subtext influencing the genre. In 1996, it was quite innovative to introduce a beloved B-list sweetheart like Drew Barrymore, only to brutally kill her off in the opening. By 2011, the franchise had to adjust that formula with multiple twists, with mixed results. The latest two films have followed Hollywood’s latest diversity push, replacing the mainly White teen cast in the previous four with two leads of Hispanic origin — Jenny Ortega and Melissa Barrera — and assorted minority back-ups, with hardly a White male in sight (save for villainous roles, of course). All while letting OG Scream-ers like Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox reenter on occasion.
It all makes for a nice adaptive organism of a franchise that can constantly reinvent itself to fit the times. I wonder what sort of State of the Horror Union address a Scream re-re-re-boot might make come the 2030s or even 2040s. The latest sequel already transplanted us to the Big Apple, à la Jason Takes Manhattan. Ghostface in Space is just a matter of time.
These days, it’s not enough to just throw another set of endangered teens out there and watch them get butchered in obscene ways. Scream films are a thinking man’s slasher flicks, dare I say. At the least they offer something a cut above your typical violent bloodletting. I find myself strangely looking forward to the next one.
A term used to describe a type of film just released but not worth seeing other than for the temporary comfort provided by the theater’s climate control system during a heat wave.
“with the trailers indicating the film’s dubious quality, and its low Rotten Tomatoes score, he designated Wrong Turn an air conditioning movie.”
I’m not sure if the above term has ever been used before. If not, I’m coining it now.
There have been several points in my life where I’ve been forced to stay outdoors, or simply couldn’t stand being at home, while also being bored enough to waste my money on absolute junk films I had no real interest in seeing. All of which coincided with summer time heat waves.
Air conditioning movies serve an important purpose. One might even say a humanitarian one. They get you out of the murderous heat, at the cost of seeing a (usually) bad film. Often these films are matinees of movies that have been in theaters for a few weeks. Or they’re being shown at those dollar theaters six months after they premiered. So they often only cost a few bucks to see.
Fun Fact: One of the big draws movie theaters used in the past was air conditioning to get people in the door. Back before TV’s became ubiquitous in American homes, people would spend all day at the theater catching news reels, Three Stooges shorts, Looney Tunes, and movies, of course. It used to be relatively cheap, too.
Nowadays, you can’t sneeze in a movie theater without spending $100. And God help you if you’re seeing something in REAL ID 3D, IMAX, IMAX 3D, UltraScreen DLX, D-BOX, PRIME, RPX, Cinemark XD, DreamLoungers, attending a Movie Party, Dolby Cinema, ScreenX, 4DX, The Void, 70mm, or BigD.
Yes, you can now go to the theater to get your fill of BigD. No wonder dating is dead.
Here are five air conditioning movies I’ve seen.
Wrong Turn (2003)
Source: By The poster art can or could be obtained from 20th Century Fox (All US rights, UK DVD)Pathé (UK theatrical)New RegencySummit Entertainment (non-USA)., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1380504
Boy, if ever a movie had a perfect title to describe what it felt like to drive to go see it.
I remember little about this film other than it was part of the early 2000s resurgence of the “killer hillbilly” horror genre originally started by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in the ’70s and renewed with 2001’s Jeepers Creepers.
Oh yes, one other thing. The moment the group of young people split up to look for help after their cars break down in the woods, some girl immediately offers her boyfriend a BJ. Hey, I don’t recall reading anything about that in any wilderness survival guide. Maybe it’s only in the ladies version.
Unlike Chainsaw, which was perfectly plotless, perversely original and shocking for its time, Wrong Turn is your predictable paint by numbers teens-get-slaughtered-by-maniacs film, only this time somewhere deep in the woods. It came out not long after the Scream and I Know What You did Last Summer renaissance. Lacking neither the smarts of the former, nor the bosomy charisma of the latter, Wrong Turn premiered during a time when all it took to sell a horror film was to slap a hot teen girl in a halter top on the cover looking moderatly distressed.
Apparently, this awful but profitable 2003 release launched a direct-to-video franchise and even a freaking REBOOT. There’s a Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort that came out in 2014, followed by Wrong Turn in 2021. Hmm, I wonder if some producers weren’t inspired by the same name style Halloween reboot in 2018? We can only gue$$.
I rate Wrong Turn a perfect five out of five air conditioners.
If you weren’t alive during, or don’t remember the time when Tom Green was everywhere on MTV, you sorely missed out. I’m still not sure his whole rise to fame wasn’t an elaborate CIA psyop designed to lower America’s IQ by ten points. Though to be fair, you could say that about virtually any social media star nowadays.
Freddy Got Fingered is a subtly brilliant meta deconstruction of the gross-out comedy genre. I know it’s hard to believe that about a film with a title about sexual molestation. But by the late ’90s, Tom Green had risen high enough to earn a blank check from MTV to make anything he wanted.
So what does he do? He makes a “film” with some of the most ridiculously disgusting gross out scenes ever put to celluloid. There’s a scene where he delivers a baby, and then proceeds to swing the infant around the hospital room by its umbilical cord. A scene where he gets sprayed by elephant cum. Then there’s a recurring gag about a young kid who keeps getting seriously injured.
And those are just some of the scenes I remember. I’ve suppressed the rest just like I did with all those Bill Cosby Jell-O commercials from the ’80s.
Oh hell no!
This so-called movie is essentially one man giving Hollywood the finger. Tom Green could have produced a solid high-concept comedy. He could have been like Mike Myers and done his own Austin Powers. Or like Adam Sandler and his many man baby comedies. He could have done a clever Shakespeare-inspired teen comedy like 10 Things I Hate About You. Comedy was easy in the ’90s and early 2000s, because you didn’t have to compete with the internet and streaming platforms. Seriously, there was a five-year period where Cameron Diaz having cum in her hair was the absolute height of yucks. Good times.
Instead, Tom Green made Freddy Got Fingered. For that, I feel he deserves some credit.
I rate Freddy somehow six out of five air conditoners.
Man, what a run by Sacha Baron Cohen. After his 2006 film Borat made fifty bazillion dollars, and inspired bad impressions at parties for years to come, he popped out this little satirical nugget in 2012.
The Dictator follows an evil despot named Aladeen from a fictional North African nation called Wadiya who fish-out-of-waters in NYC after escaping an assassination plot. Like Freddy Got Fingered, this too has some weird gross-out set pieces, including a scene where Aladeen and his new hippy girlfriend Zoey (played by Anna Faris) somehow share a handshake inside some woman’s birth canal. Don’t ask me how that event came about, it’s down there with Cosby’s Pudding Pops.
The film did make a few notable contributions to the national lexicon and the meme pool cyberspace. Including a clever bit about being HIV Aladeen, a gag about Gen. Aladeen wanting his rockets to be pointy because it makes them look scary, and Aladeen and an associate freaking an American tourist couple out during a helicopter ride over the city.
It feels somewhat loathsome to consign any film starring baby-faced Anna Faris to the lowly status of “air conditioning movie.” The Dictator is a servicable enough comedy, afterall. I actually saw it during a time when I was homeless and living out of my car. The film served as a vital escape and refuge in a dollar theater during a nasty July heat wave. Considering Faris’ lengthy career powered by such films as the Scary Movie franchise and 2007’s stoner comedy Smiley Face, The Dictator is high brow by comparison.
But if I’m being honest, I never would have checked this out had it not been for the fact that it was 100 degrees outside, the local library was closed, and I wasn’t about to sit in my car all afternoon listening to Carly Rae Jepsen sing Call Me Maybe for the umpteenth goddamn time. So off to The Dictator I went.
I rate The Dictator four out of five air conditioners.
You know, I’m not quite sure of the precise moment when Hollywood slid into the barren wasteland devoid of creativity in which it currently resides. But if I had to pick a time, I’d say it was right around when it decided to make a movie based on the popular board game Battleship.
Now, at first glance you might be thinking if you were going to adapt any boardgame, Battleship makes the most sense. It’s got conflict baked into it. Besides, it’s not like you can do anything with Connect 4, Operation, or Hungry Hungry Hippos, right? With Battleship you’ve got war. You’ve got guns. You’ve got senseless action and explosions. All the ingredients you need for any successful summer popcorn film. Transformers was also popular at the time, so you had a similar toy-based property raking in billions. You’d be insane NOT to green light Battleship with a $200 million budget.
Well, there’s this whole thing called a “plot” that has to make some sense. And there’s these things called “characters” you need to have in your story in order for it to work. In Transformers, you have two sides — the Autobots and the Decepticons — locked in combat, and represented by two strong characters, the awesomely named Optimus Prime and Megatron. As silly as the whole franchise is, it kind of writes itself. Good robots smash evil robots. It’s like poetry.
But what do you have in Battleship? Nothing, really. So they had to concoct this whole cockamamie story about an alien invasion and the aliens using some cloaking technology that makes them hard to detect, in order to shoehorn in the whole gameboard conceit of having to guess which grid number to launch missiles toward. It’s all too complicated and stupid to comprehend.
Then you have quite possibly the dumbest opening to a summer “blockbuster” in history, with director Peter Berg ripping off that viral YouTube video about some guy crashing through a store ceiling of a convenence store. You’ve got Taylor Kitsch, the King of Flops, whom Hollywood was desperately (and inexplicably) trying to make a thing back then. Poor Liam Neeson must have been blackmailed or something. And Rihanna was in it too for some reason.
I don’t even recall this movie even being worthwhile even as a mild diversion. In fact, I think I even left early I was so bored. Yes, it was preferable to sit in the burning heat in my car than watch this turd of a film.
I rate Battleship two out of five air conditioners.
An honorable mention goes to Hannibal, the 2001 sequel to 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Except that was a film I actually wanted to see, and I recall it came out during the winter, so there were no heat-related considerations in watching it. I do remember about a third of the way through realizing that it was clearly going to fall far short of the original, in which case it’s the only film of these five that transformed into an “air conditioning movie” while I was watching it.
You know, we’re lucky to live in a time where air conditioning movies are largely a thing of the past. Like polio and lobotomies. You rarely have to go to a theater to see anything anymore. With movies streaming earlier after releasing, and video on demand, and good ol’ piracy, we can all suffer to our heart’s content at home.
Still, what are your “favorite” air conditioning movies? I can’t be the only one who’s endured here.
Man, it’s 2022 and hustling a substantial side income has never been so easy.
How easy are we talking here? How about watching movies and TV easy? That’s not too hard to do, is it? I mean, it doesn’t get much easier than that, except maybe for sleeping. And no way would anyone catch big bucks while catching some big Zzzzs, right?
Anyway…this niche does not JUST involve watching movies and TV. It’s also about reacting and providing some commentary, and preferably doing so at least somewhat humorously, and maybe with a little personality.
That’s right. I’m talking about the Movie/TV Reaction niche on YouTube.
By the way, if you prefer to watch someone else react to a video from a TV host who retired decades ago, there are a dozen others for your nostalgia-mongering pleasure. Seriously. And they all have thousands to even tens of thousands of views. That’s bonkers.
Really, just type in the title of any movie/TV show or any type of media into YouTube and then put “reaction” afterward, and there are bound to be tens to even hundreds of accounts. Many of which have tens of thousands to even hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and fresh uploads. That means they’re literally getting paid to watch movies and TV.
But wait. How come YouTube hasn’t banned reaction channels for posting copyrighted content?
Obviously you can’t just upload a whole movie or show to YouTube and throw in some occasional observations due to YouTube’s copyright rules. So reaction YouTubers skirt around this issue with good ol’ fair use. Shaun Poore, a popular blogger and software developer, provides some non-lawyerly guidance about fair use, which shows how these types of channels have proliferated in the last few years due to this loophole:
1. Playing an entire episode of Rick and Morty and videotaping yourself laughing isn’t fair use. At a minimum, you need to be providing serious commentary on the episode.
2. The video’s focus needs to be on you and your commentary, not the copyrighted material.
3. You should always be on the screen.
4. The copyrighted material shouldn’t be full screen or played in its entirety.
The reaction video racket is not without its risks. Which is why you’ll see YouTubers blur out the movie or TV show, or only show short segments, to avoid YouTube demonetizing them, or striking their account down altogether.
To be clear, if you’re interested in jumping into this reaction niche, make sure you do your own due diligence on copyright and fair use, and be sure to always follow all of YouTube’s rules.
Of course, this low-effort easy-peasy type of “content” creation has attracted its share of haters and controversy. Redditor KingLordship posted this in /r/NewTubers:
I just really hate the fact that people spend days to create something then a reaction channel sits there and says two words throughout the video, gets monetised, paid and gets a crap ton of views for no effort at all.
Far be it from me to argue with a guy named “KingLordship.”
Then there’s this dude Tanmay Pendse from Quora, a self-described “High Tier Cinephile,” who responds to the question, “Why are there so many ‘reaction channels’ on Youtube?” with this bit of blunt honesty:
This is the stupidest from these trends. “Reaction Videos” they suck.
It is literally someone sits in front of camera & recording the reaction of what they are watching.
“I REACT GOOD” ISN’T A TALENT.
And Tanmay said that three years ago in March, 2019. Poor guy must be raging 24/7 now, as the reaction video trend has only increased like ten-fold since.
Hey, no one said side hustling had to be hard or contribute to the advancement of society. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Just make sure to record yourself reacting to the game with outrage, so you too can cash in on this still growing niche.
Besides, science says it’s not your fault you like reaction videos. This 2016 article says “mirror neurons” in our brains could be responsible for triggering empathetic feelings. So when you’re watching your favorite YouTuber react to Freddy Krueger ripping a teenager apart, it’s like you’re bonding. Well, sort of. These feelings help to give (or at least simulate) a sense of communal involvment, even acceptance. The idea that “You’re just like me,” because you like the same movie/TV show I do.
In other words, watching a reaction video gives the illusory sense that you’re watching and enjoying something right alongside someone else. A sort of self-induced hypnosis form of socialization. It’s no surprise that many reaction channels saw explosive growth during the Covid-19 quarantine. Many of the accounts I examined for this article started around 2020, or saw a hockey stick spurt in viewership around that time.
Reaction channels have been around almost since YouTube’s inception, afterall. Starting out with the infamous maze scare prank that was big stuff back in the day. But it goes back even farther than that. Remember America’s Funniest Home Videos? As host Tom Bergeron used to say, “If you get it on tape, you could get it in cash.” Words to live by.
Now that we understand the history, the science, and the controvery behind this reaction channel phenomenon, let’s get down to what’s most important here:
Money.
Do reaction channels make money? That’s a Kool-Aid Man-level “Oh, yeah!”
I examined five of these reaction channels, ranging in size from small to medium. From only a few tens of thousands of subs to a few hundred thousand. Making sure to pick ones that were concentrated solely on “reaction.” Many reaction channels incorporate lengthy reviews of the movies or shows watched. I tried to stick with ones that were more “spur of the moment.” Review channels like Red Letter Media or Chris Stuckmann are obviously a seperate niche altogether. I also did not include movie news-centric channels that only have some reaction aspect, like Beyond the Trailer.
I also tried to pick channels with “average” people, as opposed to people with colorful “YouTube personalities.” I wanted to see what kind of success a “typical” person might encounter with one of these channels. Of course, the more engaging and friendly you are on camera, the more likely you are to attract subs, even for a low-effort niche like reaction videos. And if you’re an attractive female, you’ll have an even bigger advantage. It’s not to say anyone can’t land pay dirt kicking back and watching flicks. As I found, this niche has a huge mix of different types. But the two keys I found are that being funny and genuine led to the best results.
Screenshot by author.
It’s even better if there’s a bit of a culture clash, or “fish out of water” angle in your reaction videos. Take Ashleigh Burton of Millennial Movie Monday, a “millennial who has been sheltered from every classic movie you can think of.” Ashley first started posting regularly in February, 2020, and offers lively reactions on her channel. Here’s a screenshot of her Social Blade details:
Screenshot by author.
For an active two-year old channel with very simple content, that’s not a bad haul from Google Adsense. But as I found, Adsense is hardly the best revenue stream for many of these reaction YouTubers. Check out what Ashley’s bringing in with Patreon:
Screenshot by author.
Patreon gives content creators a chance to earn an additional revenue stream by offering their fans a monthly membership. From what I found in my search, the most lucrative Patreon accounts offered exclusive perks, like behind-the-scenes insights, early access to new content, polls to vote on which movies to watch, or livestreams. Just looking at some of the Patreon accounts was very instructive. If you want the best results, you need to be active about not just producing new content regularly, but also building a community with your fans.
So, if we take the average of Social Blade’s estimated monthly earnings, $2,283, and add in the Patreon revenue, we come to $10,236 a month. That’s over $122,000 a year for watching movies. That doesn’t count any donations Ashleigh’s fans send to her P.O. Box. Ashleigh posts a Monthly Live Unboxing livestream where she opens up gifts fans have sent her. She’s received everything from shirts, scarves, cards, books, to Little Debbie Birthday Cakes. In adddion, I’ve seen fans pay as much as $200 for Super Chat donations in Ashleigh’s livestreams.
When you add in Adsense, Patreon, and the donations, it’s possible Ashleigh could be raking in close to $15k a month or more. Not a bad side gig.
Screenshot by author.
Next up we have Popcorn in Bed, whose husband one day pointed out to her that she’d been “hiding under a rock my whole life with how many ‘amazing’ movies I haven’t seen (according to him).” Cassie, who runs PiB, started just a little over a year ago, in January, 2021, but since then has racked up substantial subs, and has some decent monthly ad income:
Screenshot by author.
Like Ashleigh, Cassie has the Patreon hustle down to a science. Check her page out:
Screenshot by author.
While Cassie’s Patreon page above doesn’t show her exact monthly income, there’s a way to get a rough estimate. Going back to Ashleigh’s page, if you divide the number of monthly patrons into the amount she makes each month, you come to about $8.18 per person. Ashley has a membership tier of $3, $8, $10, $20, and even $100. The $100 one is actually sold out. So, at $8.18, it shows she has a pretty committed and engaged audience.
Now, looking at Cassie (Popcorn in Bed), she has four membership levels at $3, $6, $10, and $15. It’s reasonable to think each Patron might be in the average of those numbers, if Cassie’s results are similar to Ashleigh’s. That would mean each patron comes out to $7 a month. Seven bucks times 2,587 total Patrons comes out to $18,109. So, that plus the Google Adsense results (an average estimate of $5,897) equals $24,007 a month. Then you have donations and Super Chats. Cassie also does regular livestream gift unboxings. Oh, and then there’s PiB MERCH.
All told, Cassie could be getting paid $300k+ PER YEAR to watch movies.
Excuse me while I sit here with my mind blown for a minute or two.
To put that sort of income in perspective, according to Medscape Physician Compensation Report, 2019, Pathologists earn an average annual income of $308,000. According to U.S. News, the top 25 percent of lawyers in the U.S. make $189,250 a year. But unlike going to law school or medical school for years, being a movie reaction YouTuber doesn’t involve going into potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.
Now, to be clear, individual results will vary when it comes to YouTube. Ashleigh and Cassie’s success with reaction videos may not be typical. But even doing a cursory glance through YouTube at the numerous reaction channels that exist out there, you’ll find dozens that have north of 100k subs. If you post regularly, engage with your audience, and leverage various revenue sources like Patreon or merchandising, you can make a substantial income with this niche.
But let’s look at a more “down to earth” example.
Screenshot by author.
Shanelle started her channel two years ago in June of 2020, and like many other reaction YouTubers, saw some growth during the Covid lockdowns. Shanelle is also an actress and wants to work in comedy.
Screenshot by author.
But what accounts for the lower revenue and subscription numbers compared to Ashleigh Burton and Cassie of Popcorn in Bed? I suspect this may simply boil down to fewer postings. Shanelle’s updates average out to almost once a week for the last two years. Ashleigh has uploaded 223 videos in about the same time span. While Cassie has done 210 in almost 18 months. YouTube really does reward higher consistency, and this is also the case with reaction videos. This is a niche with a lot of increasing competition. So if you’re not posting heavily, it’s going to be harder to hold onto and build an audience.
But even if you want to pursue the reaction niche on more of a part-time basis, Shanell’s channel shows you can still make a decent side income. Hey, not everyone has the time or interest to sit around watching movies all day, even if it might pay ridicously well. She does not have a Patreon page, a P.O. Box for donations, and does few livestreams. However, in a recent livestream, I noticed she did make some high-dollar Super Chats.
But what if you and a friend want to do a reaction video? Or if you’re in a relationship, and both you and your partner want to score some sweet reaction video cash? You’re in luck, because there are plenty of profitable channels that do just that.
Screenshot by author.
Frankenstein’s Lab is a reaction channel run by “Frankenstein” and his cousin Rondo, who react to “movie trailers, music videos, sports, tv shows, and everything in between.” The two cousins have been at it for almost five years, having started back in May, 2017, and have built up a decent following since then.
I included this account to show that some reaction channels stretch back from before the Dark Times, before the Covid-19 lockdowns. And also to show that starting a reaction channel is not always as simple as going for the obvious choices, like Marvel movies or Star Wars. You have to stretch out and diversify the types of content you’re covering. Frankenstein’s Lab started to get some traction about a year after starting. It still saw really inconsistent view counts, ranging anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands. Then they did really well with a few videos reacting to comedian Bill Burr, as well as other comedians like Theo Von.
What’s cool about these reaction channels is you’re potentially exposing people to a lot of content they might not have seen otherwise. So don’t be afraid to get really eclectic with your choices, and mix it up. Just because an entertainer or film may have a limited following, you might strike gold reacting to their videos because you’re introducing something different to a new audience. You can also ride the coattails of a new trend or person, too. It was around the late teens era when Theo Von was starting to get popular, so Frankenstein’s Lab rode some of that wave.
Screenshot by author.
Frankenstein’s Lab is a real “workman’s” channel, having consistenty posted for almost five years now. It didn’t seem to benefit much from a “Covid Bump” in popularity. It was already well on its way before then. The two cousins have a small Patreon following. But they do utilize PayPal and CashApp, so it’s hard to say what their channel’s income might be. It obviously pulls in enough to be worth it to keep going.
Screenshot by author.
Finally, there’s ScreenSlurp, run by Australian couple Nick and Em. They started their channel in September, 2020, and have built up a pretty solid following.
Screenshot by author.
While the couple has been successful in monetizing their channel like many others in the reaction niche, and have a modest Patreon membership, Nick appears to be using their growing internet platform to help get a creative project of his off the ground. Their Instagram page has a link to a Kickstarter for an epic fantasy comic called “Creature Dwells” that Nick is trying to produce. As of now, the Kickstarter has already surpassed its funding goal. That’s a pretty cool double win there. You make a living watching movies, and help launch your own artistic career.
So, if you’re an artist or writer, and you’re looking to gain exposure or build a fanbase for your material, consider starting a YouTube channel.
Finally, these five channels are just a very small sampling of the vast number out there in the reaction video niche. Despite its controversy, there are no signs the trend is going away anytime soon. If anything, it’s growing and evolving.
If you’re considering getting into this lucrative niche, here are a few quick takeaways I learned in my research. Some of these tips overlap with what you’d need to do starting any YouTube channel, while others are specific to this niche.
Brush up on YouTube’s copyright and fair use policies, and be sure to follow the rules at all times. No sense in starting a channel if you’re just going to get banned.
Post regularly and often. Hey, you’re watching movies and TV. This shouldn’t be too hard, right? Yeah, I know, there’s this thing called the “outdoors” and “having a life.” But if you want to build an audience these days, you’ve got to rifle content out there like a World War II turret gunner.
Use Patreon! Make sure you offer plenty of extras and exclusives for your audience. You can post full-length movies on Patreon without having to cut them up to satisfy the fair use rule. Ashleigh and Cassie use that feature for their accounts, and it’s done great for them in raking in memberships.
Build a community with your subscribers. That means livestreams, lots of interaction, and maybe even tiny glimpses into your personal life. Remember “mirror neurons.” You want your subscribers to think of you as a cool friend they want to watch movies with. It’s all about building that sense of empathy and connection.
Don’t be afraid to cover stuff that’s not “popular.” You never know what might land. Or maybe your particular take on something is really unique and humorous, and that triggers the YouTube algorithm in your favor. Think of Frankenstein’s Lab when they did the Bill Burr and Theo Von videos. They went from a few thousand views on average, to millions, for those comedian-centered reactions.
Dean Brooks 