Have you heard the word, G.O.A.T? It is an acronym for Greatest Of All Time, and a newly coined word trending on memes on the Internet. The word is used with a goat picture and “I’m the G.O.A.T” written next to it online. According to SmartZzang’s survey of adolescence language use last year October, over half of responders replied, “I use abbreviations and slang because it is convenient to shorten words.” In the same survey, most responders agreed that “we may use abbreviations and slang unless it is coarse.” Plus, people prefer acronyms to long sentences, and today’s media often has a short running time as it develops. Likewise, the world prefers shorter things these days. Then let’s dive into various cultural aspects of shortening and its reasons with CAH!

1.Fast and Short Trend

 Tik Tok Fever! Youtube Shorts, and Instagram’s Reels

 TikTok has an enormous influence and role to fast-culture life. TikTok is a platform where we can make ‘short form’ videos and share them. As the major purpose and method of this app is the ‘short’ structure, users scroll through videos and stop depending on their preference. Also, compared by other platforms that request long-time editing such as YouTube. TikTok provides a service where we can produce, edit, and share all in one app, which encourages more people to use it. Also, since the videos are shown ‘randomly’ not by ‘by popularity,’ anyone can be a superstar. So ordinary people can easily stand out and gain popularity through this app. Thanks to these advantages, Tik Tok users soared as 1 billion. Instagram and Youtube also support similar features, which are Reels and Shorts, respectively. First, in YouTube, there are ‘Shorts’ corner where people can upload videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds. According to the Wallstreet Journal, the monthly viewer counts of YouTube content ‘Shorts’ exceeded 1.5 billion people which made it clear that these ‘Shorts’ are a trend now. Furthermore, in Instagram Reels, people can share short videos to a maximum of 90 seconds. After the appearance of the Reels, there were controversial issues that the identity of Instagram, “picture sharing” is falling behind and the Reels is just an imitation of Tik Tok. According to the Guardian, the petition of ‘Save Instagram’ that Tati Bruening started in July received over 275,000 signature and the controversy gained more traction. In response, the CEO of Instagram explained the displaying videos on the app as saying, “I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video overtime.” As he said, in the video-centered world, the short length but valuable content of media gets the public’s attention.

Shortened Digital Content

 Not only social media, but also other digital content shows this shortened length. Recently, YouTube dramas that captivate people who want fast and affordable length videos take the center stage of YouTube content. 'Trading in person in Korea', one of the most viewed videos of a huge YouTube channel NERDULT with 1.41 million subscribers, is 2 minutes and 7 seconds long. Another sketch comedy YouTuber, ‘ShortBox’ uploads short videos of about 3 minutes on average. Web dramas such as Short Paper, and Pickgo present drama stories in 5 to 12 minutes videos. One of the reasons this omnibus form of scrappy but hyper realistic narrative short videos are beloved is that viewers are looking for light and eye-catching episodes. This applies to music as well. According to UCLA analyzing 160,000 songs, unlike in the 90s when the average length was 4 minutes, the music of the 2020s averages only 3 minutes and 17 seconds, which is about a minute shorter. We can find the latest hits in the chart are no more than 3 minutes, such as <Hype Boy> by NewJeans, <After LIKE> by IVE, and <Shut Down> by Blackpink. Why are they short? It is not only because the longer they are, the more boredom generation Z audiences feel, but the shortened platform of marketing makes them shorter. Through Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, musicians should promote their latest music and give the public a strong impression in 60 seconds, therefore the music gets shorter. In this way, the public now prefers shorter things in variety of media.

 Abbreviating Words

As mentioned above, people these days also tend to speak briefly. The National Institute of the Korean Language (NIKL) conducted research on ‘The survey of Korean people's linguistic consciousness’ in 2020, and it showed among 5000 people from 20 to 69 years old, 81% of respondents use slang. Not only the annually updating neologism, but people are used to condensing the first letter of a long sentence and use it as a word on the Internet. For example, we use ‘ASAP’ instead of ‘As Soon As Possible,’ and ‘BRB’ instead of ‘Be Right Back.’ According to ‘DOOIT SURVEY’s 2019 survey online, 26% of people using Internet language make use of the shortened words. Likewise, people these days cut down words both in reality and on the Internet.

2. Causes of Fast Culture and Concerns Toward It

According to Mezzomedia’s 2019 Target Audience report, the most preferable length of media when watching for teenagers, as the mainstream consumers of culture, was below 10 minutes length of a video. One of the reasons for preferring these fast cultural aspects and shortened media content is overload. The cultural information through media is overflowing, so the trend naturally became to attract viewers in a short time. However, this type of cultural characteristic raises concerns. According to Trendmonitor (Embrain)’s 2021 survey about short contents, among the list evaluating overall awareness of short-form content, 77.8% of responders answered ‘yes’ to ‘I think provocative content would be largely produced in order to draw attention.’ In addition, people look for the key point. These days, they avoid long articles, as there are memes such as ‘TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read).’ Also, there are internet websites following this cultural feature that summarizes long articles into a few sentences. In this sense, people don’t even approach to read long articles and just ask others for a summary. An expert from Life in Digital criticized the digital environmental and video-centered information accepting culture as the literacy problem in an interview with Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization Journal.

Everything is short these days! People yearn only for the core in the flood of information in media. The overfull short-form content and platform force people to click on concrete and straightforward videos in the media market. Practically and effectively, extracting the favorable information in a short period became the trend for today’s era. Moreover, fleeting online words and habitually reading the bottom line of an article made everything into a short vocabulary. In modern society, even where the trend cycle changes fast, let’s not pass by crucial things only for speed!

* For those who think this article is too long or want the article summary; please check out the short version of the article in CAH Instagram account: @cauherald.