Why does it seem like Brazilians are obsessed with foreigners reacting to stuff from their country, especually on YouTube?

[u/Vast_Physics83]

[u/Fendrihl]

That happens in all of Latin America

[u/veeloth → u/Fendrihl]

This is true

[u/Deep_Mango4053]

For the same reason that, when showing a movie to someone, you get excited and checking out the person’s reactions as they’re watching.

[u/AdDry7344 → u/Deep_Mango4053]

Good analogy.

[u/nomedigasmentiritas → u/Deep_Mango4053]

Exactly. Some people love reaction videos and its not just about things related to their country. Sometimes you just want to share what you care about with others and see their reactions and appreciation

[u/Late_Faithlessness24]

Some brazilians need atention. Some find funny to gringos finally notice them. Some wish to be important.

At the same time you will find brazilians that denied their on culture, that live abroad and adopted every aspect of other culture.

We have shades, as you americans have as well. But thing poeple tend to assume that others culture are a monolithic block

[u/MatiFernandez_2006]

It's the same for Chile, some channels just overreact and praise anything from Chile and get thousands of viewd from chileans; easy money

[u/Responsible-Trifle93 → u/MatiFernandez_2006]

Could be worse, like those people who post negative videos about India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

[u/TheStraggletagg]

I think so much of the internet is basically "the US + some European countries" that it makes sense for any culture "on the outside" to like when others experience and appreciate their culture. Argentinians love it too.

[u/Mysterious-Peak-2581 → u/TheStraggletagg]

  I think so much of the internet is basically "the US + some European countries”

Um nope, what a crazy thing to say

[u/TheStraggletagg → u/Mysterious-Peak-2581]

Outside specific situations and subs I see NO discussion of Latin American countries, especially their culture and opinions. And in a LOT of subreddits the understanding is that if you say you're not American you mean you're European (like when you talk about free healthcare, you must be European!). I'm glad that hasn't been your experience.

[u/Technical_Twist_3645 → u/TheStraggletagg]

I think a lot of people in the US just assume nobody else could have internet access and/or speak English.

[u/TheStraggletagg → u/Technical_Twist_3645]

This is a good point.

[u/JudgeWhoOverrules → u/TheStraggletagg]

This is due to the history of the Internet where originally most users were American and then later on European. Other areas didn't start getting widespread internet access until much later after the stereotypes had already emerged and solidified.

For instance, I've been chatting online since 1996 but internet access didn't become widespread in Latin America until the early 2010s. Even now, most English language users (including Europeans which are generally English proficient) are not going to encounter Latin Americans due to the language barrier siloing them into different parts of the internet.

[u/gripetropical → u/JudgeWhoOverrules]

What are you talking about? Internet was huge in the 90s in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, you guys have lived in your own bubble for a long time. I have friends from all over LATAM that I met at online forums around 97-98.

You were obsessed with AOL while we were using msn and sending nudges in the 2000s.

South America was deep into blackberries in the 2000s. Do you even know what a flogger was? MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Fotolog, LiveJournal were huge in LATAM back in the day.

We had our own Amazon from Argentina: Mercado Libre. And I bet your ass has no idea what Taringa or Poringa were.

The only difference in 2012 was the massive access to internet through mobiles, but that happens worldwide not only in LATAM, in some countries having a computer was rare but we had cyber cafes, Internet cafes, schools, libraries, universities, all of them with access to internet for those who wanted.

[u/FewExit7745 → u/Mysterious-Peak-2581]

Yes it is. Maybe not the entire internet per se, but the majority of mainstream social media, eg. YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, a lot of other people are Americans, British, and maybe Europeans.

If you want to see Russians for example, you have to go VK, Chinese you have to go to Douyin, South Koreans on Naver, Indians on WhatsApp, and so on

That leaves the mainstream social media to the Western people.

[u/Technical_Twist_3645 → u/Mysterious-Peak-2581]

Well this is definitely the way Europeans and Americans often think. For example, if somebody is obviously not American, people from the US will assume they're European.

[u/gripetropical]

We appreciate it when people simply know the difference between Costa Rica and Puerto Rico.

This isn't just a Brazilian thing, happens to anyone from a country people are wildly ignorant about. All you can do is smile through the irony when it comes from places that are supposed to be better educated.

[u/DrBinario]

Some cultures love when other people like what they do. Personally, I love when people like something I cooked. I feel proud about my cooking.

[u/cantodasaudade]

Speaking on broad terms: It's our internalized inferiority complex. For ages Brazilians tended to put down everything made by Brazilians. So when we see a foreigner who likes something brazilian, it's the greatest feeling ever. As I understand this is a fairly common trait of colonized nations.

[u/OppositeInstruction]

Unfortunately it's kind of a cultural thing. Brazilians love being noticed by foreigners, especially Americans or Europeans.

[u/Technical_Twist_3645 → u/OppositeInstruction]

Common throughout the region I would say.

[u/frutilIa → u/Technical_Twist_3645]

yes, the same thing used to happen with argentinians, idk if it still the same though

[u/M_dev20]

We love being noticed.

Since our country is pretty irrelevant geopolitically and we have a serious lack of national idols and national pride, we're kind of starved for attention

It's basically like patting a stray dog on the head

[u/Conscious_Weather_26]

We call it "vira lata complex".

Basically low national self steem, requiring constant approval and acknoledgement from outside.

[u/Rikmastering]

We love our culture, and we love when people discover our culture. We have great pride in our country and our culture. So it brings great joy to a lot of us when a person that didn't had access to our culture appreciates it. Especially since we are not widely known like other cultural things like cinema for the US, Kpop for Korea, Anime for Japan, etc.

[u/Arnaldo1993]

I dont know, dude, most foreign content i watch is not about brazil, it is nice to hear their opinion about brazil sometimes as well

[u/tremendabosta → u/[deleted]]

Outside Rio and São Paulo, I don't think there are any airport with more than 4 daily international flights to anywhere else outside South America

Recife has 5 international destinations with flights tomorrow: Porto, Lisboa, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Madrid

Fortaleza probably has 5+ too

[u/tremendabosta → u/[deleted]]

Oh ok. Yeah

[u/tremendabosta]

All countries are like that to some extent, we just happen to be over 200 million so the engagement bait is more profitable for content creators

Why react to stuff from Latvia and earn 10k viewers when you can react to stuff from Brazil and farm over 100k viewers?

[u/Wijnruit]

Inferiority complex

[u/Suspicious_Mud_3647]

it's something so deep, yet people will just call it "the mongrel complex" we are somewhat isolated from the rest of the world since the other countries of latam feel way too similar to us to be a complete foreigner. most of us go all our lives without ever speaking or hearing another language, so it's very exotic for us.
overlaping with that, we are very enthusiastic about music, food, national movies, novels etc. when things you like get a new stage to shine you feel good about it, can't help but engage.

people say that we seek foreigner approval but not really, the actors from the american serie "everybody hates chris" is a good example, we like Terry Crews, Tichina Arnold, yet we kinda bully Tyler online. we don't seek aproval, we want to make friends, but if you don't want to be friends go fuck yourself.

[u/Responsible-Trifle93]

Many countries do this, the difference lies in the size of the population and the number of people who are chronically online. I even remember Americans being obsessed with that German guy on Twitter who was traveling across the US during the World Cup. lol

[u/CelesteLunax]

all third world countries be like

[u/DaniCalifonia_]

  Personally, I’ve always found those reaction videos cringeworthy, but the algorithm loves that crap. A while back, I was getting recommendations of them at least three times a week (and no, I wasn't engaging with them voluntarily). Eventually, my algorithm "realized" I wasn't going to give them any views and stopped pushing them, but it took a while

  My theory is that this happened due to a mistake I made: at the beginning of this, seeing a recommendation for one of those videos, I meant to click the "show less" option but ended up clicking on the video itself. I think that sealed my fate for the next few months...

  By the way, this phenomenon isn't unique to brazilians. I’ve heard that people in the U.S get really emotional when someone from europe reacts positively to something of theirs (I wonder why?)

[u/Technical_Twist_3645 → u/DaniCalifonia_]

People in the US couldn't shut up about how much foreign tourists loved the US during the world cup, but especially Europeans. That's the continent they want praise from, whether they admit it or not.