I often lovingly refer to myself as a D1 procrastinator, and as such, I spend an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through Instagram reels. After spending an extensive time on social media, it’s safe for me to say that the internet rabbit hole is deeper than you might think. By now, I’ve seen a little bit of everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly.Â
One kind of internet video that’s recently caught my eye is known as a “vertical drama” or “vertical short.” These videos are called vertical dramas because they are shot in a 9:16 portrait format to be easily consumed on your smartphone. They consist of multiple episodes that are one to three minutes long each and end in cliffhangers to keep you scrolling to the next one. You can watch them on pretty much any platform, like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Whenever I’m scrolling through my socials, I see one about every twelfth or thirteenth swipe.Â
I’m not going to lie; some of their storylines are so outrageous that they’re a little bit addicting to watch. With titles like “My Sister is the Warlord Queen” and “The Double Life of my Billionaire Husband,” it’s hard to look away from entertainment that is meant to be absurd. I mean, with only seventy-two short episodes, how am I supposed to not watch all of them in a single sitting? The lack of budget is also one of my favorite parts of vertical dramas. They almost always have a terrible production value, but for some reason, it still works.Â
Even though I will admit that there are some amusing qualities to vertical dramas, I do think that they have their issues. For one, I’ve noticed that more and more of them are replacing actors and low-budget camera crews with videos generated by artificial intelligence. The rise of AI in spaces that are meant to be filled with creativity is incredibly disheartening. Relying on AI for entertainment risks losing the human touch that makes media worth watching. It is also worth mentioning that the use of AI by the entertainment industry is a privacy concern, considering that AI analyzes private data to generate the content that is statistically the best.Â
Another issue I have with vertical dramas is their actual content. The fact that each episode ends on some type of cliffhanger contributes to their appeal, and it’s incredibly easy to watch episode after episode. Before you know it, hours have passed by, and all you’ve done is watch reels. The content is also especially trope-heavy without any real substance beyond that. I’ve also realized that some of these dramas glorify miscommunication and abusive circumstances for the sake of being “enemies to lovers” or “slow burn.” They put a rose colored lens on relationships of unequal power, and that can’t be healthy to consume.
There might be good vertical dramas out there, but we should be on the lookout for the bad ones. Even though they might be entertaining to watch, they might not be too healthy for our consumption. With a million things that there are to watch on the internet, I am sure that there is something better than a vertical drama.