A few years ago we talked about the “Fasters“, that group of people who did not conceive of their favorite series to less than 1.5x. The same with the podcasts or the audiobooks. At that time, they were the exception, and when asked about social networks, people would be surprised and horrified at the possibility of enjoying the culture in that way.
Today things have changed, and being “faster” becomes quite common: according to a survey of The Economist and Yougov31% of Americans between 18 and 29 years listen to audios for more than 1x.
The greats of the Internet have made it very easy to accelerate everything. YouTube, Spotify or Netflix are Internet giants that They only do not compete against their direct competitorscompete against everything And all looking for one thing: Our sustained attention. They want us to spend more and more time on the platform, not only to prevent us from going to the competition, but because they loyalty more and generate more advertising income per user. In the case of Spotify, for example, earn more money when we reproduce podcasts (and it is common to accelerate them) that when we listen to music, because they save rights to pay the recordings. On YouTube the logic is similar: if we accelerate reproduction, we can consume more content at the same time.
Thus the part is understood the success of rapid consumption of content: these companies and others not only implemented the speed of accelerating reproduction where before it was not so common (outside the audio), but they put the function almost at the level of relevance of pausar or advance reproduction. Thus, YouTube offers to tricks such as leaving the video clustered on mobile or on the web so that reproduction goes from 1x to 2x automatically.
Life at 1x becomes slow. WhatsApp and Telegram know it, and in 2021 they implemented the possibility of Accelerate audios Of our contacts, something that a server values greatly. The feeling with the audios, as one of Your hateorsthere is “there is a lot of detour, pauses, unnecessary repetitions”, and accelerate them to 1.5x offers, in many cases, a more normal cadence of conversation. As in person, with fewer distractions.
Personally, all audios are already reproducing them at that speed, and I feel that I do not lose attention, context or data of what my friends and family explain to me. The audios of some slow -speaking people are compatible with climbing 2x, but it is usually not comfortable. Accelerating everything so much has consequences: when listening again at normal speed, there is some feeling that people are “drunk.” This effect is extreme if instead of accelerating we slowly slow down.
Fomo as a factor of a huge “savings” of time. To understand the effects of accelerating reproduction in different services it is very useful to remember its official figures. According to YouTube in 2022, its users They saved 900 years of video per day Seeing them faster of their original speed. For Linda Stone, researcher at the Digital Revolution, accelerate everything has to do with the phomothe fear of losing things, not to get to everything.
TV, redoubt of respect for creative intention. Of the big platforms (Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and Apple TV+), Netflix is the only one that allows us to accelerate its contents from the official mobile application. The rest, neither in mobiles nor on other platforms, perhaps following The reasons that Netflix alleged Not to offer the function on larger screens:
“We have been sensitive to the concerns of the creators and we have avoided including larger screens, especially televisions.” Five years after releasing the mobile adjustment, Netflix still does not allow reproduction on the smart TV. YouTube does not take it that way, and among its adjustments the possibility of Vary the reproduction of 0.25x to 2x for 15 years.
Do not destroy my work. The rhythm and assembly are key elements of series and films. That they are slow or fast is not a failure, they are a decision with which they reflect an intention. So the filmmakers consider that accelerating reproduction is something devastating for work. In the face of the joy of the “fasters” for being able to accelerate Netflix and “unnecessarily stretched” series, Peyton Reed (Ant-man) and Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Ambverse) were clearly against implementing functionality, to which Aaron Paul joined, despite having worked with them in ‘The way‘.
The effects. The Economist includes the position of different experts and studies regarding the phenomenon. The conclusion of researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada was that consuming content up to 1.5x does not add cognitive differences with respect to doing so at the original speed.
Yes, but. However, when we approach or overcome the 2x speed, the thing changes: the responses to the evaluation of students who had seen evidence at this speed were of much worse quality. Taking this into account, the striking thing is that YouTube is already offering the option to reproduce its videos to 4x speed to premium subscription users.
The experience of a fan. My partner and editor of Xataka José García acknowledged in a talk among colleagues to have seen ‘One Piece‘At 1.5x speed, “in those scenes that I knew they were important, but in which they also did not contribute to me 10 seconds of intense looks”, while “what I knew was mythical (coffee for coffee growers: episodes 483, chapter 1,000 and 1,076, for example) left it to 1x”.
And he did not have the feeling of missing anything with this concrete anime, because “the dialogues are relatively slow and total, I do not understand much Japanese, so with being able to read the subtitles it is worth.” He also points out that something like this was possible at 1.5x, while “A 2x was already another story.” Unlike what can happen to WhatsApp the audios, returning to 1x was satisfactory: “It was weird. He was accustomed to much more accelerated rhythms and yes, I felt that he was going like slow, but I appreciated the details of the animation again, the nuances of some voices … It was slower, but in some way I was enjoying it more, I felt it was more complete.”
Image | Pluto Mossa in UnspashNetflix
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