You're watching videos too slow

 My relationship with shows and my regret about rushing them

(Oh boy, this blog is soooo late it’s surprising I even found my previous writing notes on it. Anyways, now that I found this under the rubble, I’ll be fixing it and sharing it now. It’s not my most interesting blog so feel free to rush :))


I care a lot about maximizing efficiency, and sometimes efficiency is simply speed. And for speed, sometimes 2x is also too slow, even though it is the upper limit on YouTube videos. *dramatic drum roll* Here comes Video Speed Controller - a chrome extension which allows me to control the speed of a video by a factor of 10% and works on every single website. Then the speed you set for one video stays consistent across platforms. 



(This is from Eminence in Shadow, 10/10 suggest it if you’re looking for something really stupid but funny which doesn’t require much thinking)


What does this mean for me? I fly through anime at 2.5x speed, and usually finish an entire season in a single sitting. Something for YouTube videos, documentaries and every movie I watch on my computer.


The benefits are evident, it is just so much faster and I am able to cram a lot more content in the same time. I have saved countless hours through this, and sometimes I just want to get a show done with. I don’t always watch shows for enjoying the show, sometimes it is just because I want to talk to someone about it and I need to finish it really quickly. Watching something at 2.5x speed helps you remember enough about a show for at least continuing a conversation about it, and for me that is frequently enough. Then sometimes I just need some random inspiration so I try something out of my comfort zone, like with this show it was the Issekai genre (trope of being transported to some other magical world). 


Then there are the negative consequences…I don’t end up enjoying the show to the same extent as someone who watches it at 1x speed. Especially for movies, a lot of time and effort goes into shooting the perfect scene, but I completely miss a lot of details when watching them faster. Then once you get used to such speed, anything at 1x speed feels painfully slow again. This effect follows into real life too where sometimes I wish I could just speed up the person talking to me because it feels like they’re talking too slowly when I’m the one who’s gotten used to an unnecessarily fast speed. 


This is the current balance I have adopted - Any academic content which I need to finish, I watch at 2x speed. This way I don’t miss any important information and still save time. Whenever I’m watching something for entertainment, like a movie, I keep it between 1.5x to 2x speed. If I need to get through any content which I find boring, I speed it up anywhere from 2.5x to 3.5x depending on how attentive I am at that moment. 


So now that you’ve read all of this, it should be worth your time right? 

Well from this blog you get 2 take aways:

  • An advertisement of ‘Video Speed controller’ chrome extension which is really helpful to save time
  • An advocation to go watch Eminence in Shadow if you are really bored and would like to embrace your cringe pre-teen phase for some time

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