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| Image courtesy of www.reddit.com |
Of course, this goes for many types of people but for the purpose of this article, I am talking about reaction channels, the kind where they take a video and just watch all of it without any effort at all to change it in order to warrant the viewer to go watch the original video. It's one of the worst kinds of videos to make, and along with all the other shit that YouTube won't enforce their own policies on, I came across a few channels that I actually like that don't go against all these policies.
One of these channels was GradeAUnderA, a YouTuber who I used to be a huge fan of. He would poke fun at the small things in life with his funny MS Paint characters, and also pick apart arguments and channels that the majority of YouTube disliked, like reaction channels. I used to think GradeAUnderA was bulletproof and hilarious, and that didn't last long, but we will get to that.
With the shite on YouTube that was reaction channels, a man came onto the scene and started to make videos, this being Reactor.
The Reactor channel was created to satirise reaction channels, the man behind the channel David Richter, made reaction videos that were as low quality as possible with the most inane commentary, this prompted many visitors to his channel to point out the obvious, "Another reaction channel! Get off of YouTube" etc. As you can tell, the satire was highly convincing.
Other things he did was satirise the lack of care that a lot of these reaction channels, like in one video when he would walk out the room whilst the video was playing, he would return seeing the video had ended and acting clueless, then ending the video. He even reacted to a video that he himself made, forcing the laughter that these 'reactionists' (genuine word that these guys call themselves) would do.
He was proving how terrible reaction channels really were and everyone believed it, but Reactor wasn't done, he had more tricks up his sleeve.
When Reactor came onto the scene for me, it was whilst I was still a fan of GradeAUnderA, and it was when Grade mentioned in a video regarding copyright infringement that a guy took his copyrighted material to put together a fake advertisement for himself. It wasn't until a few months later that this peaked my interest, and that was the first time I saw anything of him.
What I saw was that Reactor had taken voice clips of Grade and spliced them altogether and put it to easily recreated imagery of Grade's video style to make it sound like Grade was saying that Reactor was a channel worth subscribing to, also stating how he and Grade were friends in real life, which they weren't. But even better than that, Reactor paid $600 so that the video he created would appear as an advertisement on Grade's channel, so when someone clicked on Grade's channel, Reactor's fake Grade video would play. This highlighted an easily abused system on YouTube, but also kind of highlighted a hypocrisy on Grade's part.
Reactor had begun doing this because Grade had been denouncing reaction channels, and according to Reactor himself, this was intended as a joke. Grade however didn't like this and went to Reactor's channel to attack him, calling him pathetic and a loser after seeing Reactor's joke making the front page of Reddit. Remember this detail, I'll get back to it.
For the next few months, Reactor's trolling further escalated as he saw Grade attacking a lot of YouTubers for whatever reason, which I at the time for the most part agreed on, but very quickly I began getting put off of what Grade was doing. The first time I noticed that Grade wasn't such a bulletproof guy, he made a video criticising Markiplier, PewDiePie and Matthew Santoro who had all denounced YouTube Drama.
Whilst one of my favourite YouTubers 'I Hate Everything' pointed out that their arguments were flawed and actually dug into their points, GradeAUnderA didn't do this. He instead insulted Markiplier saying that we shouldn't listen to him because he's a retard and has bright red hair (That he dyed for charity by the way). He went on to say that PewDiePie shouldn't be listened to despite being the most subscribed YouTube channel because another channel that held that for a long time was Fred. The lesser said about Fred the better but it doesn't take away from his arguments.
Finally, Grade exposed Matthew Santoro as being a plagiarist which of course, I won't defend Santoro for but I feel like if Grade had all the right intentions, he would have exposed Santoro in a separate video and not as a way to denounce him as someone who we should listen to and agree with.
This was the first video of Grade's that proved he wasn't what everyone in the YouTube community had set him up to be, and a few months later after the video demonetisation had began kicking in and he called out a lot of YouTubers for complaining (Even though Grade complained many times before on so many things), that was when I decided to unsubscribe from Grade. I am so happy that I did, because I realised then how toxic this guy really was, and that is what makes the Reactor saga that so much more hilarious.
When Grade began making a lot of these videos, whether or not I agreed with them, one thing was for certain and that was that these videos garnered more traction than any light hearted comedic videos. So Reactor decided to use Grade's own words against him, in a video where he again spliced together Grade's videos to put together a fake collaborative effort between the pair.
The video began with Reactor being downbeat, and then Grade stopping in the middle of his video to ask what was up, Reactor going on to say that he didn't know if he would ever get his channel to be big at all. He asks Grade if he could help, and this is the genius part, in a lot of Grade's videos calling out whoever he was calling it, the points he would make, Reactor took these segments and spun it to showcase how hypocritical Grade really was.
Then the final showcase of easy trolling by Reactor himself, you know how I told you that he made it to the front page of Reddit? He put himself there. By using countless accounts and changing his IP address, he made it to the front page of Reddit with his fake Grade advertisement that he put on Grade's channel, also with a kid recording his computer screen showcasing this fake Grade advert whilst on Grade's channel and Reactor took that to the front page of Reddit as well as also making that video an advert on Grade's channel too! Finally, the video I just mentioned above he also got to the front page of Reddit, and this is where it all comes to a close and summarises the whole situation.
Reactor begins to grow bored of the channel.. which is incredible as it was so easy for him to troll the internet. It was so easy for Reactor to showcase how terrible reaction channels are by making videos as bad as possible that were believed to be real. It was so easy for Reactor to showcase GradeAUnderA as being a drama fuelled and toxic dick who would hear a comment from a nobody calling him a drama whore and actually fan the flames by getting pissy about it, and going to a channel with 37 subscribers when he had over a million to start drama over a clear joke. It was so easy for Reactor to show that Reddit can be broken and have any video you want on the front page.
Reactor was one of the most incredible examples of satire and trolling, and before he left his channel, he published a fake article on the Huffington Post which was up for over a year saying that he had been arrested on charges of major copyright infringement against GradeAUnderA. One of Reactor's friends Mumkey Jones uploaded an update video on his channel, again further mocking the situation saying that Reactor and Grade were good friends, why would Grade do this to him? Clearly playing off the trolling that had brought Reactor this far.
It wasn't until a video that Mumkey created was recommended to me on YouTube that I did bare witness to Reactor's satirical heroics and I was amazed. Even though he was not uploading, I subscribed to the guy and now he's returned with a bang, mocking the trends that exist on YouTube today with his first video back, saying he broke out of prison.
The stuff this guy did was incredible, and I have no idea what Reactor intends to do to mock YouTube culture today. I'd love to see the guy mock all types of YouTube content, whether it be the clickbait vloggers, GTA abusers, gamers, commentary, all corners of the site need to have the piss taken out of and I reckon David 'Reactor' Richter is the guy to do it.
For now, he seems to be finding his feet and I'd hope he's reading this. Reactor, if you're reading this, I was in your Mayweather/McGregor pre-fight stream saying you were a hero to me. I'd like you to consider trolling all types of YouTube content genres, someone needs to prove how bad these things are.
As for the rest of you, thank you so much for reading. If you want to see more of what I have to offer, follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat or put your email in the 'Follow By Email' option in the top right to have my new articles sent straight to your inbox.
Alright! That will be all, hope to see you all again here soon. So until we meet again.
Luca.
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