I get misty watching corny TikTok clips, algorithmically designed to make me choke up. I mean, hell, I even tear up during overly sentimental commercials. I’m an easy mark.
So it might not be surprising that the last movie that made me cry didn’t make me do so in the traditional sense. Over the past year I’ve grown addicted to other people reacting to movies on YouTube. There’s a whole sub-genre of YouTubers who make money by watching videos and reacting to them on camera. Most of them claim to never hace seen the movie before and their emotional response to the scenes are often closer to that of an infant than an adult human.
I was watching a mashup of these reactions early today; a mashup of react tubers watching the ending of Band of Brothers where the identities all of the living survivors are revealed. I don’t know whether it’s the crying of the reactors or the actual content of the scene that made me cry, but I cried regardless.
I never really thought about it, but I think I’m sort of an unwilling empath. Other people’s sadness and hurt have a tendency to rub off on me.
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