When Netflix gave viewers the option to watch its shows at different speeds, a feature YouTube have had for years, writers, viewers and filmmakers bristled: who would want this? It's one thing to speed up or slow down a silly meme, but to do so to a film would surely be against the intended viewing experience curated by the artist, right? Well someone has finally made the case for "speed-watching" Netflix's content, and as you'd expect, it's led to a lot of strong reactions.

The "speed-watching" martyr is Vulture's Nicholas Quah, who yesterday published "The Case for Speed-watching How I came to love watching TV shows really fast. (I swear I’m not a monster.)"

"How I came to love watching TV shows really fast. (I swear I’m not a monster.)" Here, @nwquah's case for speed-watching https://t.co/10F4ZKRLKn

— Vulture (@vulture) August 3, 2021

Quah concedes, "Many of the writers, directors, and actors who work with Netflix initially reacted to the tool with frustration, and I can see how it would come off as a Machiavellian strategy" before diving into his argument: "I have very much welcomed the feature into my relatively able-bodied life. 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."

In essence, Quah makes the argument that as a cultural junkie who wants to take in as much culture as possible, watching movies and television series at 1.25x or 1.5x speed allows for more hours in the day to consume more. Shows that are generally "trash" are also prime candidates for "speed-watching." Quah cites the sci-fi series Manifest as an example of a show that was not good but had an interesting premise, so he speed-watched it. He concludes:

I’m not trying to defend myself. I’m aware that I’m gleefully contributing to the further commodification of everything under capitalism. I understand that this isn’t how these artistic and media creations were meant to be experienced and that, in a perfect world, each work would be taken exactly on its own terms and everybody would be adequately supported by their societies so they would have more free time to do things like, I don’t know, watch more television shows and read more books. But this isn’t a perfect world. In fact, it’s a world that largely sucks. I have a deep hole in my being that I feel compelled to fill with all this stuff, and I don’t have an infinite amount of time. So I’m trying to make the best of what I’ve got.

Vulture helpfully provided some examples of what "speed-watching" film and television looks like (though frustratingly, they didnt post clips of what dialogue sounds like):

"At 1.25x speed, the dialogue on TV shows doesn’t sound comically hastened," writes @nwquah. "To my ears, the speech just flows more freely, with an artificial layer of added pep" https://t.co/TDNj6NMKgZ pic.twitter.com/E5LNsB8qVy

— Vulture (@vulture) August 3, 2021

After the article hit Twitter, it divided the film-centric portion of the site, which, as many Twitter users know, is one of the most combative corners of Twitter.

Hey fr if you watch shit like this willinging never ever try to talk to me, i will assault you https://t.co/9jvA50UWI9

— Little Mac's Punching Bag (@pixelmbg54) August 4, 2021

WATCH FASTER SO YOU CAN COMSUME MORE MEDIA https://t.co/fBcQMhXm42

— 💀 Jordan 👽 (@DragonBallPee) August 3, 2021

this article is cool because it shows what’s wrong with tv (too much content that it’s become a chore to watch everything) and what’s wrong with online journalism (writing insane opinions so the website gets hate traffic) https://t.co/WK2VZdMqiE

— will (@____will_) August 4, 2021

Every day we get closer to movies becoming high budget vines https://t.co/TxGKck3dMY

— Newposter (@Newposter2) August 4, 2021

The majority of people seem to think speed-watching is madness, but if you have a Nextflix account, you could always try it out and see for yourself.