In defense of "speed-watching" Netflix

Vulture

Netflix's speed-watching feature was initially met with pushback from the creative community outraged that viewers would be able to watch in a way their content wasn't intended. "Don't f*ck with our timing," tweeted Judd Apatow. "But I have very much welcomed the feature into my relatively able-bodied life," says Nicholas Quah. "Indeed, it has turned me into what could be called a 'speed-watcher,' and though I feel self-conscious about having become this sort of person, I’m also in a better place for it. I suspect this admission may be reprehensible to you. Totally, I get it. That said, I’m not arguing that everybody should be speed-watching for leisure. This certainly isn’t me presenting my preferences as a moral stance on behalf of some extreme consumer-empowerment ideology. I’m empathetic to artists who feel annoyed that their work is being experienced in ways that don’t fit their original intention. Indeed, I feel similar things when a reader tells me they mostly skim my podcast columns because they’re too long. (How dare you?) What I am saying is that speed-watching has helped me navigate a very specific problem. Let me explain. People often say there are too many podcasts; that’s supposedly a defining problem for the medium. This is a boring person’s interpretation of an interesting opinion. The same protest can be made about any other well of culture: There are too many TV shows, too many films, too many books, too many video games, too many musicians, too many sports, too many blog posts, and so on. Such abundance can be overwhelming, but it’s a wonderful thing. It means lots of people are making stuff, and there’s lots of stuff for all sorts of people, which, in the aggregate, is generally a better situation than not. When that abundance does become debilitating is when you have the specific compulsion I have, which is a sweaty, hobbling desire to take in as many TV shows, films, books, podcasts, news stories, sub-Reddits, subcultures, live sporting events, and other things as I possibly can — while trying not to neglect the basics, like loved ones, job responsibilities, and hunger. Consider it a kind of bizarro FOMO but for cultural life. I wouldn’t say it’s the healthiest thing to have, nor would I argue it necessarily translates to a particularly strong grasp of those cultural objects. But that’s how my brain is wired, unfortunately." He adds: "If there has been a fundamental change in my relationship with Netflix — which so far is the only service to offer accelerated playback aside from YouTube TV — it’s that I have become far more likely to try new things these days. Most of what I speed-watch — typically at 1.25x speed — are shows that some would call trash, although I detest the word. (And to the extent that I use that word, I’m pro-trash; I think there’s value in it.) The sci-fi series Manifest was certainly not a good piece of television, but I was interested in the premise — a great candidate for a speed-watch. I have been more willing to dip into an ungodly number of generic Netflix docuseries and, through those excursions, have been able to discover a few I genuinely enjoyed. This may be a heretical thing to say, but I speed-watch a lot of anime. Ditto for certain types of reality television (though, as a big fan of the genre, I keep most of them at 1x to savor the drama)."