[Desk Column] The Era of 1.5x Speed

[Asia Economy Reporter Myung Jin-kyu] The Netflix series that has been watched the most worldwide, "Ojingeo Game" (Squid Game), consists of a total of 9 episodes. The runtime per episode varies slightly, but the total series runtime is 492 minutes. Excluding about 5 minutes of credit scenes per episode, the viewing time is around 450 minutes, which takes just over 7 hours, requiring a full weekend day to watch through to the finale.

If you want to shorten the time, you can set the playback speed to 1.5x. If a scene feels a bit boring, you can press the 10-second forward button, and you can watch the entire series in about 4 hours. For those who haven't subscribed to Netflix or think 4 hours is still too long, there are 1-hour videos edited and created by YouTubers that you can watch.

On YouTube, there are countless videos where Netflix series with over 100 episodes across 4 seasons are condensed into 1-hour videos per season. More and more people find it more enjoyable to watch just the plot summary instead of investing dozens of hours.

There is no time, but there is much to watch. Reality passing at normal speed feels slow and frustrating. This is why people immerse themselves in the digital world at 1.5x or 2x speed. The younger the age, the faster they adapt to and utilize the "speed-up era." They watch online lectures at 2x speed and instead of buying paper books and flipping through pages, they purchase e-books and use the read-aloud function at 2x speed to read the books.

When browsing web pages, if a part is a bit boring or uninteresting, they move to another page, and similarly, when watching movies or series, if it gets dull, they press the 10-second forward button. This is a method widely used by the digitally savvy MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z). While many worry about this trend, the situation was similar 10 years ago.

One of the most popular internet articles 10 years ago was about a funny gag by Kang Ho-dong on the show "1 Night 2 Days" that aired yesterday or what happened to the members of "Infinite Challenge," written after watching TV. Even people who were not very interested in variety shows that required investing 1 to 2 hours on weekends still had to read the articles. Some watched to join conversations with friends at school or work, and many read instead of watching to avoid falling behind trends.

With the rise of the YouTube era, the number of people binge-watching variety shows has significantly decreased. You only need to watch the most entertaining 3 minutes on YouTube. Some broadcasters have even started providing program highlights. Ten years ago and now, there is plenty to read, watch, and listen to, but no time. This is why we live in the 1.5x speed era.

When Netflix introduced the 1.5x speed feature, many filmmakers and creators criticized it as a "policy that goes against the creator's intent," but the number of consumers using it continues to grow. A scene from a past SK Telecom commercial suddenly comes to mind, where actor Han Suk-kyu walks through a bamboo forest and, upon hearing a phone ringtone, says, "When you meet another world, it's okay to turn it off for a while." It's time to log out of the 1.5x speed digital world for a moment and look back at the 1x speed real world.