My Thoughts

I normally don’t write about such things as I normally don’t care about what people are posting on YouTube or on social media but this one hit me hard. Over the last decade we know that reaction channels have become a thing and they have all kind of become self proclaimed experts on everything. We as an audience don’t question their credentials or their expertise on a subject and just view their videos and put them on a pedestal. The biggest gainers of this wave have been foreign Youtubers. The channels which had hardly any subscribers or views jumped on the Indian bandwagon to increase their popularity.

There have been a lot of them who have propped up recently. There are a few channels who actually give respect to the content they are watching and to the culture of the people whose content they are reacting on but not everyone does that. Recently I saw a reaction of a Tamizh trailer reaction by an American reaction channel. The trailer was of the movie Amaran, a movie which is close to the heart of all the Indians. A story of courage, valor and sacrifice of Major Mukund Varadarajan. I have no issues with people watching something and saying it is not for them or they did not like the content they are watching but to outright make fun of what is happening on the screen is appalling.

Making fun of the person who isn’t alive and his family who went through tremendous pain shows what sort of people we have been supporting. The way they were laughing at Sai Pallavi, who is actually playing the role of the wife of the Major, Indhu Rebecca Varghese was horrible to watch. Knowing very well that this a story about a real life person and about his family and to still make fun of the characters in the movie is a new low. You don’t have to actually be a Army family to understand loss of human life and the impact it creates on the immediate family. One of the reactors says she does not connect to the sentiment as she is not from the region is the most ridiculous comment I have heard in recent times.

The fact of the matter is that all countries have their Military forces and this is a universal story. Even if we cannot resonate with their pain we can all relate to the loss the family faces when they lose a loved one. Here is a story of a wife who lost her husband, a kid who lost her father and parents who lost their son and all you could do is laugh at them? This is poor. I am sorry I have lost all respect to that channel and I at least will not watch any videos from any of them in that panel. I don’t have issues people criticising content of the film based on the making or the story etc but to make fun of characters knowing very well that this is not a work of fiction is something I cannot get past. People need to realise that none of these people have any attachment or connection to our films but just do it because they get lots of views and subscribers. I am not saying everyone is bad, there are very good ones who actually take an effort and these people are not them.

I don’t want to mention their channel or any names here as that is not my intention. When you watch something like that you just can’t look past it which is the reason for my rant.