The phrase “cut to the chase” is not a random invention by some hurried and impatient farmer. Neither is the much more recent “give me back those X seconds of my life”, especially seen in the comments of videos uploaded to the internet or after reading an article, perhaps like this one. From there is born the Wadsworth Constant, a half-serious, half-joking axiom that establishes that the first 30% of any video can be skipped because it does not contain interesting or worthwhile information.
Once the axiom became known, the Internet went crazy and began to analyze itself, showing us several examples for and against the validity of the Wadsworth Constant, in a story about how a meme is born that talks about our experience with the internet and time.
Let's say it this way: the existence of YouTube and the infinity of videos that inhabit it has been the reason for our dispersion. Excessive and mischievous, creator of procrastination and many other evils of which – what follows is a lie – we are not the originators. Millions of videos in there, celebrating our curiosity and eager to explain, entertain, educate, surprise us, or merely make us sing and dance. There they are, with their endless introductions and exaggerated epilogues, trying to stay in our consciences forever, earning the best possible thumbs up.
Videos are to the internet what dots are to i's or popcorn to the cinema. Without them, it would not be the same. As with any fundamental issue in the daily life of a medium, the presence of generalities and characteristics is guaranteed, but since the content is varied and it seems there is no way to draw general conclusions about the videos we watch on the net – with YouTube as the nerve center –, viewing these videos ends up being done without any preparation or special considerations, except those having to do with video quality or subtitles: you press play and consume passively.
Origin of the Wadsworth Constant
The Wadsworth Constant comes to question all this apparent natural calm of video viewing by appealing to a known formula: sensations. Created in October 2011 through a post on Reddit, user grim_fandango uploaded an image titled “And so ends 20 years of frustration” showing how to fold a sheet, step by step. The responses were varied, and when a user asked “how %$#& did it go from step 3 to 4”, one of the answers was a video of a lady showing the process of folding a sheet. After watching the video, a user commented, without knowing it would go down in history, that:
“For each YouTube video, I always open the video and then immediately click the slider to 30 percent. For example, in this video, what I should have done is start at [second] 40. Everything before 40'' was a waste. This is valid for almost all videos in the universe.”
User Redebo was responsible for naming that hypothesis as the Wadsworth Constant, in honor of its creator, the user of Reddit, Wadsworth. Another of the users poorly tested the constant using their own enunciation and understood that it was valid. Another, more attentive to the coincidences of life, celebrated that the one who formulated this axiom was named Wadsworth and not I_Rape_People, which would have complicated and dirtied the name of the constant quite a bit. Your servant now points out an interesting coincidence (which surely has nothing to do with chance), since “Wadsworth”, a common Anglo-Saxon surname, could be taken as a play on words of “What's Worth”, which means “what is worthwhile”.
As Knowyourmeme investigated, the concept of the Wadsworth Constant was published in different reference websites in the births of memes and discursive recurrences, such as Urban Dictionary and others. In fact, a video also tried to spread the birth of the new way of watching videos on the internet. Modanamm, a YouTube user, uploaded a video titled “What is the Wadsworth Constant”. Of course, the first 30% of the video was disposable and then it began to specifically tell what the constant was.
The verifications were done en masse, and of course, what is obvious for you and me, ended the joke of the constant. Of course, the joke/brilliance had to be finished once and for all. It was clear that the Wadsworth Constant had been funny and helped many people avoid wasting time watching introductions, greetings and more, going straight to the point of videos, articles, and more.
However, much more time was lost applying the Wadsworth Constant than was gained, because contradicting the axiom that puts “This is valid for almost all videos in the universe”, the abstract quantity indicator “almost” was enormous. The videos that contradicted the Wadsworth Constant were millions, and so that people would not adopt this constant as logic for watching videos on YouTube (and also to participate in the social joke), many famous and not-so-famous YouTubers created videos challenging the Wadsworth Constant.
What do you think? Can we extract something useful from this constant, is it somewhat true that the initial 30% of almost all videos is useless? How much would we miss by applying this constant? And, most importantly, how concrete is the usefulness of content for each of us? I like introductions, others don't. That already generates conflicts in the constant, but let's open the debate to the wise and intelligent commenters we have here at Neoteo. See you next time!
