Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
- Netflix's mobile app allows you to watch at 1.25x and 1.5x speeds.
- People told me they use this for reality shows like "Love Is Blind," or while watching at the gym.
- Our modern appetite for content might mean we've stretched our brains to watch faster and faster.
Consider the delicate, nuanced performances of a Netflix series like "The Diplomat." Now, imagine that sped up by 50%, "Chipmunks"-style. This might not appeal to you, a cinéaste who savors the art of the flickering screen. But for some people, this is the dream: They're watching Netflix at 1.5x speed.
But ... why? What craven need for speed goes on in the dopamine-wrecked frontal cortex of someone who watches stuff at super speed? I talked to some people who do.
The most common explanation: They only use the 1.25x or 1.5x settings for certain shows. Netflix's "Love Is Blind" was mentioned several times as an example of something great to speed watch. I tested it out on the reality show, and, to be honest, I can see the appeal. It's a show that has lots of long, dramatic pauses and little visual action — just two people sitting on a couch talking. At 1.25x, the voices weren't unnaturally high, just … faster.
I asked Netflix how many people use these speed-watching settings, but they didn't provide the data. Netflix added the feature to its mobile app and web browser versions in 2020. (The feature isn't available on smart TVs.)
My sense is these speed watchers are in the minority, but I've discovered they're passionate about their habit.
There are the reality show watchers who just want to get things like "Love Is Blind" out of the way quickly. And others just want to be able to consume more in their TV-watching time — a sentiment Nicholas Quah wrote about for Vulture in defense of his own speedwatching habit.
It can also be situational, it seems. A few people said they do it only at the gym or on the elliptical, like the TV equivalent of listening to uptempo music while you work out.
Already, many podcast and audiobook listeners listen at slightly sped-up speeds. (I think 1.2x is perfect for podcasts.) YouTube has a way of speeding up videos to 2x, which makes sense because a lot of YouTube is just someone talking — and they're incentivized to make their videos looong. Quite a few truly impatient people told me that they use a Chrome extension that allows them to speed up any video — to 5x.
I imagine that our fractured content consumption landscape has something to do with all this speed-watching.
Young people consume content on their phones in strange and weird ways (RIP Quibi; you were ahead of your time). I've found myself sucked into those "brain rot" videos on TikTok where a dramatic clip from a show plays in a split screen of someone playing with slime or playing a video game.
Our modern, insatiable appetite for video content might mean that we've adapted and stretched our brains to watch faster and faster. That's an optimistic way of looking at it; the other way is that our attention spans have dwindled to the size of a grape.
As much as I'd like to accuse these speed watchers of being monsters, I have to consider my own preferred method of watching movies: at regular speed, on the big TV — but looking at my phone the entire time.