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The booming world of rapid, vertical mini dramas has generated a multi-million dollar mobile entertainment industry. It’s also fuelled worker exploitation, low wages, and suffocating schedules.
Is TV getting dumber? In today’s post-literate society – an era Rose Horowitch deftly explores in a recent piece for The Atlantic – how we entertain ourselves is a hot topic.
From the second-screen problem to the rise of AI-generated content, the general consensus is that yes, the things we consume have become less intellectually stimulating.
No medium reflects this shift quite like the micro-drama. These bite-sized videos have flooded social media over the past few years, having first taken off in China. Thanks to their tiny budgets and even tinier production timelines, the vertical drama (named for its 9×16 dimensions designed to be watched on a phone) has become very big business.
These short series usually focus on melodramatic love stories directed at a YA audience. They feature self-explanatory plots and acting that – to put it mildly – is far from moving.
But the micro-drama does what it says on the tin. The videos are designed to be half-watched while viewers multitask. Perhaps they fly through multiple minute-long episodes whilst cleaning the house or cooking dinner. Micro-dramas also make for great background noise when working from home.
As Adrian Horton explored, micro-dramas have found their success in emulating the biggest studio dramas – shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty, and Off Campus – only they’re smaller in every sense. This might mean poorer acting and shoddy production, and far from fleshed out narrative beats. But it also promises viewers the kind of entertainment you can – quite literally – watch with your eyes closed.
Until recently I’d have argued that watching TV or scrolling on social media was a brainless task. Onscreen entertainment was invented to provide the kind of relaxed, effortless watching that one seeks to escape the mental strains of daily life. Now, the micro-drama is proving that even staring at a movie or series requires effort – and in our short-form world, that effort is something to be circumvented.
Each 60-90 second episode ends on a juicy cliffhanger, making optimal viewing for anyone with a microsized attention span.
Depressing? Perhaps. Horowitch speaks at length about what the degradation of our attention spans means for society as a whole. It will, she argues, fundamentally change the way we think, what our politics look like, and how we interact with one another. But for now, micro-dramas are bringing in billions of dollars. For Hollywood executives, that is.
