When my wife enters the home office, or the home craft room depending on which one of us you ask, I will often hear her say “You need to put your heaphones on”. This might be because she will be about to watch a crafting Youtube video or have a video call with one of her crafting friends, both of which she likes to do on speakers rather than headphone/a headset, and she doesnt want me interupting her conversation. However, the most likely reason is because of what I am litening to, or more accurately, how I’m listening to something.
A fair few years ago I was watching some videos about laptop repairs. The video contained all the information I needed and was very clear and well produced, the only problem was that the narrator was talking so very, very, slowly. So I increased the playback speed to 1.5x for the remainder of the video. Soon I found I was finding the same slow behaviour on other videos, again I would increase the playback speed, often skipping ahead to get beyond the sponsor segues, dead-air, or “like and subscribe!” sections. It didnt take long before I was just applying 1.5x speed on all videos. This new speed became the new norm but it too started to feel like it was too slow, so I increased the speed again to 1.75x. Rinse and repeat the same scenario and before long I’m up to 2x speed, which is the current maximum for Youtube. I started doing the same for Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services, if there wasnt a playback speed option I would look for alternate playback software or I’d change service completely. My wife describes this as “Listening to Chipmunks” and she makes it very clear how annoying she finds it.
Honestly, if there was a faster setting on Youtube I would use it. Every now and then there will be a surprising video where the narration will be very fast and I will have to dial the speed back a bit, but those are unfortunately rare. I will nearly always enable closed captions but the playback speed is now the first thing I look for or setup as a default setting. I recommend everyone give it a try and if you stick with it you’ll be able to ‘doom-scroll’ through videos at an even faster rate.
There is a downside. In my working life, when I attend meetings, I find that I’ll start to wonder why everyone talks so slowly. I understand why things must go at a certain pace to make the subject accessible for all, but I daydream of a real life playback speed dial. This isnt that much of a problem as it only bothers me, but what is a problem is that when I have to present, I find myself talking faster than I most likely should and I have to remind myself to slow down. I receive plenty of feedback, ranging from “Wow you covered a lot there, I tried to keep up.”, to simply, “You like to talk, a lot.”. I actually dont like to talk a lot, I just get enthusiastic about getting as much infomation shared as possible. I do get quite paranoid about it so I always make sure I have a documented and detailed version of the content I am presenting ready to share. I can at least acknowledge a problem I am causing myself.
I work with some smart people, I don’t often need to ‘dumb-it-down’, but I really do need to ‘slow-it-down’.