The ins and outs of Snapchat’s discovery tab content

Snapchat has a discovery tab filled with stories, entertainment and other channels that one can view. Sometimes when I’m bored, procrastinating or both, I search through the discovery tab to see what I can find. 

While I come across content that’s very interesting, sometimes I come across content that wastes my time and sometimes really annoys me. 

While I could just avoid that content, I much prefer watching more of it so that I can complain about it on a public forum. With that being said, there are three channels I studied — here are my overall thoughts on them.

Reaction Time

Reaction Time may be my least favorite channel on the discovery tab. It was by far the most difficult show to watch several episodes of. If you haven’t heard of reaction videos, it’s  very simple; someone sees something on their screen, then they react to whatever is on their screen in front of a camera. It’s very basic, but can be done well in my opinion, by using your genuine reaction. Tal, the face behind Reaction Time does not do this.  He forces emotions and reactions to whatever his fan base would find the most captivating. While he will sometimes react to fail compilations or satisfying compilations which are boring and predictable enough, nothing is quite as infuriating as when he reacts to make-up transformations as is the case with his most recent video. His content essentially boils down to him pretending to be in shock every time a woman puts on make-up and turns into an irresistible supermodel. His reaction is the exact same every time, which is both annoying and sends a poor message overall (i.e. you can only be pretty with make-up on). This, along with his dry-as-sand personality, puts Reaction Time at the bottom of the barrel in terms of Discovery tab content. 

Gangster Granny

At the time of my writing this, Gangster Granny is revolutionizing the way we think about beating a dead horse. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Gangster Granny follows a 92-year-old lady, guided by her grandson to make jokes and play pranks that aren’t typically associated with the elderly (mainly for their inappropriate content). Now, old ladies saying and doing things that are unexpected can be objectively funny as can be seen in movies like Airplane! and Blazing Saddles. This is true of the Gangster Granny content as well upon first glance but the joke gets old very fast. We get it, the Grandma says something sexual, threatening or weird but it stops being funny after ten seconds. Apparently, the people who work on the Gangster Granny videos realized this as well which is clear looking at how the content progresses throughout its seven seasons of existence. After a while, saying weird things to passers-by in the hopes of a reaction became more cringeworthy than funny, so the show shifted to a format of a compilation of short sketches. This is when we began to see more of the granny’s real-life grandson, Ross, who is only there to ‘react’ to his grandma’s preplanned hijinks. Eventually, the skits begin to involve other characters and the titular ‘gangster granny’ begins to appear less and less.  One of the most recent episodes actually has no grandma within it at all. If you like this show, I’m glad you get some enjoyment out of it, however, I personally find the show to be a catastrophe. 

Bunchie

Bunchie is a new reality series on Snapchat that follows 13-year-old football prodigy Bunchie, who recounts his day-to-day life and his football development. Even if this was about an activity I was more passionate about, I find it unlikely that it would fare better in holding my interest. The production of the show itself isn’t horrible; most of the shots are fine, the music is good enough, the sound is okay but that’s all the show really is: passible. It’s just about some annoying and arrogant kid going to football practice with probably the most boring drama I’ve ever seen. If you can’t be good, at least be bad enough so there are interesting things to say about yourself. I’d almost rather content be infuriatingly bad than just boring — at least with the former I have something to talk about. It’s difficult to make a show about a topic that isn’t very interesting to begin with. It also seems to be inflating the ego of both Bunchie and his father who has been in every episode thus far. Sometimes shows have room to grow and I’d be happy if this one could prove me wrong.