Greta on mute
Like a lot of people, I’ve been following Greta Thunberg over the past couple of months. As the press hype around her has grown to a fervor pitch, I’ve been interested in where she came from.
I was surprised to read on her Wikipedia page that, “Thunberg is known for her blunt, matter-of-fact speaking manner.” Since I’d only seen still shots of her from her Twitter page or in news articles, I’ve never actually heard her voice.
This made me realize that most of my interaction with the internet is done in silence. I spend most of my time online reading things, as opposed to watching videos. When I do watch videos, I keep them on mute, and prefer to follow along with captions.
I’m not alone, as much as 85% of video on Facebook is viewed without sound:
As much as 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off, according to multiple publishers. Take, for instance, feel-good site LittleThings, which is averaging 150 million monthly views on Facebook so far this year. Eighty-five percent of its viewership is occurring without users turning the sound on. Similarly, millennial news site Mic, which is also averaging 150 million monthly Facebook views, said 85 percent of its 30-second views are without sound. PopSugar said its silent video views range between 50 and 80 percent.
For me personally, it’s because I’m usually browsing one-handed on my phone while I feed a baby or because I’m browsing sitting next to my husband and don’t want to bother him.
But I think the idea of watching videos in silence, but with captions is part of a much larger phenomenon. To adapt to this, marketers and Content Creators have really been ramping up the amount of text in each video that they post, something you may have noticed from, for example, cooking videos, which flash the ingredients on the screen.
What’s really interesting is that our public video viewing is going private at the same time as our private conversations are going public. I’ve written before that I’ve noticed more and more people using speakerphone in public:
To me (and, it turns out to a lot of other people), it’s a blatant violation of what a public space is. But, maybe I’m being unfair so I decided to dig into the issue, and found out that a lot of people who use speakerphone in public consider it the same as talking to another human in public. If there are people talking anyway, why does it matter where they are? And yet, for a reason that I can’t put my finger on, it does, to me. Because it feels like I’m listening to a private conversation. The rules of liminal spaces, of phones in public, are new and different than anything we’ve had in society before. Everything is in flux.
So if the private is public now, watching videos in silence must mean we are, subconsciously, in some way trying to reclaim our private spaces and focus our attention on what we’re specifically interested in, instead of the millions of shiny things that flash past every day.
What will it mean for broadcasting, that we can selectively listen to, or not listen to people?
I’m not sure, but I still have never heard Greta’s voice, despite seeing dozens of videos of her at the UN, because I’ve never clicked the unmute button.
Art: Red-haired girl, Moise Kisling, 1918
What I’m reading lately:
Tavi Gevinson, founder of online fashion magazine for teens Rookie, was a constant presence in my life growing up online, and I was happy to see her writing again, grappling with what the internet means now as much as ever
StackOverflow has a new CEO, and his credentials signal for aggressive growth
Apropos of this post, Reddit asks, “People who were born deaf but gained hearing later in life, what objects did you expect to make noise?”
This neural net is naughty
I probably should do an exhibit on them. Name suggestions?
About the Author and Newsletter
I’m a data scientist in Philadelphia. This newsletter is about tech topics I don’t see covered in the media. Most of my free time is spent kid-wrangling, reading, and writing bad tweets. I also have longer opinions on things. Find out more here or follow me on Twitter.
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