Your videos better not be giving info like it’s some fucking textbook or sharing your experience as if it’s some teacher boring you out with his life story on Monday morning lecture. Reaction is the product, information is just the excuse to deliver it.
I saw one guy say that if you want to be in the content game, you have to be in the business of making reaction content. Of course, you can make skit videos, but if you don’t have a huge team, you’re going to run out of it pretty soon. But reaction is a gift that keeps on giving. Things keep happening, and you can give your reactions to it. And I think that is a pretty good observation. That hey, you cannot always create something novel, but you can always fend off what’s happening. But we need to expand the definition of what reaction means here. It does not just mean that you record yourself on a screen recording of someone else’s content and put yourself over it.
Humans don’t care about concepts or effects; they care about persons. If they cared about some information, Wikipedia is free. They would have gone there or maybe enrolled in some open course from Harvard or elite universities. They care about people and themselves. They might not care about activation rate or other technical things, but they might care about it if you package it in a way that it tells how it impacts them or you as a person.
Instead of talking about the concept, you have to talk about how it impacted you or what it did for you. That concept or object might have done some good or bad, or it might do something good or bad to the people you are talking to. Another thing is, people care about first-person and second-person sentences. Third-person sentences work only if the third person here is someone really popular or important to them.
You have to react to your own experiences or the potential effects the concepts can have for people in second person.
two typa videos
- vulnerable reaction to self experience or story
- reacting to their problems and experiences via your solution/experience or humour
the first person hooks are about my story and confessions
the second person are overstimming tf out of them by talking about their experience or problem by summing it up in a sentence
You either get naked yourself or you overstimulate them the fuck out.
Nobody wants information. They want to FEEL something.
Think about it – if there are streamers who stream for 12 hours straight, they naturally cannot create content that is original all the time. So they gotta react, but they gotta react in a way that is interesting to others. This is the same playbook that might be used there. When they stream, they can not create content for all that time, right? All they do is react. The reaction is the content, because what they react to is going to keep changing. The subject matter of reaction is transient; it’s not static. It’s going to be something different all the time. So the one constant for which people are tuning is the reaction.
- They are talking about their own experiences by reacting to them in retrospect or recreating them by vivid captivating description or
- Reacting to things in a way that they highlight that whatever they’re reacting to is significant or impactful to the user
Either in real sense or just in vanity – it might be outrage or it might be value.
Instead of sharing valuable information or insight, you have to show them the reaction that “Hey, I got to know this and I understood. Damn, this is what will change everything.” They are not here for the information and they never will be. They are here for your reaction to it, because that is the social proof for that info/ insight. They are here for the moment where you went from stupid to enlightened. Your confession about being a dumb bitch to something elevated.
So if you are making content for your product, you are not supposed to talk about its features. You are supposed to talk about all the emotions and discomfort that was there before you used your product to solve it.
Though Rohkun’s features are about scanning the codebase and creating a map of your APIs, the communication should be about how frustrated you were that Cursor was coding one of the APIs in such a bad way that it was just incompatible with your architecture all the time. It wasted your time, it was to do money. You were so frustrated because nothing was working, but when you gave it the map using Rohkun, it finally worked, and now you don’t have to worry about the problem.
At the start of the content journey of most people, they will upload some video about content creation itself. It is a meta-type video. But I don’t see any video from anyone that has gotten viral where they tell how they have done it, what camera they use, or how far they stand from the camera. None of the logistical or operational stuff is highlighted. And in the one it is highlighted they don’t get that much reach. But the content that does come in front of me, that is made by newcomers, but is doing numbers on internet, is the one where they are reacting to what social media has done for them. They will be talking about how social media changed their life, how before they were struggling to talk and now they can freely talk with anyone. How before this time they were struggling with their career prospects but now brands are approaching them. So, it is still about starting as a new content creator, but instead of logistics, it’s about what it did to them. It is about what the process or concept did to our person.
Thus, content is about reaction first, and the lesson second. The lesson is not the point, the information is not the point, the insight is not the point. The reaction is because that’s what people are here for. Your reaction to things is more interesting than the things themselves. For people, you are not a source of information. You are a distributor of emotions, experiences, and opinions. A Reaction Merchant. And people buy from you or hire you as a consultant because they want to borrow the way you react to situations and problems. People trust each other based on our estimates of how we will react to some situations and the end result that might emerge. If they consistently see that your reactions to things lead to something positive, they will trust you to come in and react to their problems so that they can have such positive outcomes.
You can see this in the form of YouTube videos where they answer the top 10 most searched things about them (Wired does this format perfectly. They’re not selling information (Google exists). They’re selling: Watch this expert react to 50 different scenarios in 10 minutes.), or content format where it says a 20-year industry veteran answers your questions or Alex Hermozi picking up a call where someone will tell him what’s wrong with their business, and he’ll give his advice.
The most pervasive things that make the sale are the 7 deadly sins, namely:
- Sloth
- Pride
- Gluttony
- Wrath
- Lust
- Greed
- Envy
And reaction content is what allows you to tap into those way easier than just plain informative content. It is way easier to tap into greed after making content that is reacting to something that is supposed to induce ambition in someone. You can only imagine how convoluted the path would be to get into greed by talking about just plain info. The sins are shortcuts to the limbic system. Reaction content delivers them directly.
This is why the more confident and relaxed you are on camera, and the more naturally you behave, the better your content is going to perform. Because that way each sentence you speak is full of emotions and reactions. Thus, “be yourself” is still one of the best advise when it comes to content creation. People don’t give a fuck about what you are talking about, they care about your reaction. Because some things are objectively more important and they should have more views, but that’s not the case. It’s about the emotions people seek. You’ll see pointless rant videos garner more views than a post that could genuinely save a old couple’s business. That’s the nature of this business. Content value and content reach are mostly unrelated. Attention is allocated by emotional payoff. People open apps to feel something like relief, anger, superiority, resonance, stimulation. A rant delivers that immediately. A useful explanation often delays it.
From claude
Most people misunderstand reaction as:
- Screen recording someone else’s tweet
- Nodding, pausing, adding mild commentary
That’s lazy reaction.
Real reaction is:
- Showing what it did to you
- Showing what it would do to them
- Showing the before/after inside your head
The Two Weapons
1. First-Person Vulnerability (Get Naked)
“I lost $10K because I ignored this…” “I cried in my car after that investor meeting…” “My co-founder quit yesterday. Here’s what I learned…”
Why it works: People are vultures for confession. They slow down for car crashes. Your pain = their entertainment + their learning.
2. Second-Person Overstimulation (Call Them Out)
“You’re building features nobody asked for and wondering why nobody cares…” “You think your startup failed because of timing. It failed because you’re afraid to sell…” “You’re romanticizing the struggle instead of solving the problem…”
Why it works: It’s a punch to the face. They HAVE to know if you’re talking about them. They are stimming tf out.
The Overstimulation Formula
Second-person hooks need to be uncomfortably specific:
Weak: “You’re not marketing enough”
Strong: “You’ve posted 3 times this month and wonder why you have no customers”
Weak: “Validate your idea”
Strong: “You’ve been ‘validating’ for 6 months. You’re just scared to launch.”
Weak: “Focus on your ICP”
Strong: “You’re trying to help everyone and helping no one”
The more it stings, the more they watch. Wikipedia has all the info. Harvard has better lectures. You have something they don’t: your specific reactions to your specific experiences. Most content is missing the emotional and social proof layer in their information content, and that’s what makes it absolutely repulsive to the audience. And that’s exactly what you’re supposed to add. That’s the moat. That’s the content.
Applied to Your Content
You don’t need 120 different insights about startups.
You need to react to the 120 different things that happen while building:
- Customer says something weird → react
- Feature breaks → react
- Competitor ships → react
- You realize something → react
- Advice conflicts with your experience → react
The subject (what triggered you) is always different.
The constant (your processing style, your POV, your emotional honesty) is why they follow.
Informative content: “Here’s how to validate your market”
- Activates: Logic, learning mode
- Energy level: Low
- Emotional trigger: Mild interest
Reaction content: “I found a competitor and panicked, then realized I’m about to be RICH”
- Activates: Greed, fear, excitement
- Energy level: HIGH
- Emotional trigger: Visceral
How Each Sin Maps to Content
1. GREED
Informative: “Competitors validate market size” Reaction: “Bro, when I saw that open-source tool had 10K users, I realized—there’s MILLIONS on the table and most founders are too scared to compete for it”
You’re not teaching validation. You’re reacting to the money opportunity. Greed activated.
2. ENVY
Informative: “Study successful competitors” Reaction: “This 19-year-old just raised $5M for an idea I had 6 months ago and didn’t build. Here’s what he did that I didn’t…”
You’re not teaching fundraising. You’re reacting to being beaten. Envy activated. They feel it with you.
3. PRIDE
Informative: “Differentiate your positioning”
Reaction: “Everyone’s copying the same playbook. I’m doing the opposite and it’s working. Here’s why most founders lack the confidence to stand out…”
You’re not teaching positioning. You’re reacting to being different/better. Pride activated. They want to feel superior too.
4. WRATH
Informative: “Consider different pricing strategies” Reaction: “I’m so tired of founders underpricing because they’re insecure. You’re not helping anyone by being cheap. You’re just training customers to not value you. Stop it.”
You’re not teaching pricing. You’re reacting with anger at bad behavior. Wrath activated. They feel the righteousness.
5. SLOTH
Informative: “Automation can save time” Reaction: “I spent 4 hours doing what Rohkun now does in 30 seconds. Four. Hours. Never again.”
You’re not teaching efficiency. You’re reacting to wasted effort. Sloth activated. They want the shortcut.
6. GLUTTONY
Informative: “Focus on one channel” Reaction: “I tried to be on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube simultaneously. I wanted ALL the attention. Burned out in 3 weeks. Here’s what I learned…”
You’re not teaching focus. You’re reacting to wanting too much. Gluttony activated. They see themselves.