Recently, I’ve been trying extra hard to distance myself from short-form content. The scrolling had gotten to a point where I could no longer stand it. It was just taking up way too much time. So, after reaching my self-imposed time limit on Instagram, I decided to do something more productive with my free time—watching a movie.
I pressed on Netflix, ready to embark on a cinematic journey— but suddenly, I noticed something strange. My eyes drifted toward the bottom of my screen, where I saw a new tab labeled “Clips.” Out of curiosity, I pressed on it. Little did I know that this was Netflix’s new short-form content feature, where you can scroll through clips picked out of their wide catalogue of movies and shows.
After 30 minutes of scrolling, I broke out of my trance and came to a very disheartening realization: they got me. I had once again fallen victim to mindless short-form content.
When TikTok began taking off in 2018, people were mesmerized by its unique style of entertainment. Although we are all familiar with it now, the format of endlessly scrolling through brief videos was very new to the general public when TikTok went to the forefront of social media. Now, it has become increasingly apparent that TikTok was a Pandora’s Box for the entertainment industry.
More recently, it has become a trend for apps to start incorporating short-form content into their platforms—though, more often than not it is completely unnecessary. For apps like YouTube and Instagram, the implementation of short-form content makes sense, as it increases the variety of content creators can make on their platforms. However, many apps have applied short-form content into their platforms, regardless of how strange or nonessential it is.
For example, Spotify gives users the option to scroll through songs relating to their favorite genres. The aim of this feature is to expose users to new music that is similar to songs they already enjoy. Although this application of short-form content is beneficial to the user, it does feel awkward for a music streaming platform. It feels weird to scroll through thirty-second clips from various different songs when Spotify already presents users with a plethora of curated playlists with the exact same music. Songs are already short, so why even have a feature that’s only utility is shortening the music further?
In addition to Spotify, The New York Times released their own short-form content in October. On its mobile app, users can now scroll through video clips of The New York Times’ latest stories. Not only is this feature useless, as users can see the exact same stories by scrolling through its homepage, but it also feels a little problematic to me. When I think of short-form content, I usually associate it with lighthearted content, meant to be consumed quickly with little thought being put to it. It feels strange applying this kind of content to serious and often saddening news. Scrolling past these stories quickly and trying to consume them as fast as possible seems disrespectful to the people or tragedies they are discussing. Putting serious issues like those shown in The New York Times into a short-form format trivializes them.
Strange applications of short-form content extend beyond its addition to already existing apps. There is also a short-form streaming service called ReelShort. ReelShort has full, original movies and shows that can only be watched by scrolling through each scene individually, watching many ads along the way. Of course, this is a horrible way to view any sort of long-form media, and it’s only worsened by the sheer amount of ads the user needs to view in order to watch one piece of content.
Short-form content has worked its way into every medium of entertainment. It appears in most mainstream apps and websites, and is spreading faster than ever. I think the overapplication of short-form content is pretty scummy. It serves as a way to manufacture engagement without having to generate better content, and as it spreads, it becomes more difficult for consumers to avoid it and to control their bad habits.
