And, of course, there are those No Context accounts that even programme-makers have dabbled in. Deep within this feedback loop is a meme culture that means, if you’re quick enough to put a funny screengrab online complete with caption, you could be looking at likes and retweets well into five figures. Take Love Island, which spawns a new glut of Instagram influencers every series. Increasingly, social media is the lens through which people watch TV – and TV then pushes them back to social media. This sense of grabbing audiences’ attention through text rather than visuals led New York Times writer Amanda Hess to point out that “viral video-makers are reanimating some of the same techniques that ruled silent film over 100 years ago”. “From an industry perspective, we’re always looking for the ‘thumb-stoppers’ – bits of short video that will make people stop what they’re doing and watch until the end.” Up to 85% of Facebook videos, she adds, are watched without sound – and thus with subtitles.Ī throwback to the silent era … Parks and Recreation. “There’s nothing worse than sitting somewhere quiet, only for some viral content your mum’s put on Facebook to start blaring out at you,” she says, adding that subtitles can hook in casual viewers. That figure may be 13 years old, but the regulator says: “Our understanding is that subtitle use has increased as the use of smart/mobile devices has increased, as more and more people watch programmes or videos on commutes.”Ĭhristina McDermott, a social media manager, explains the shift in more detail. Besides, with TV shows often plagued with claims of unintelligible ambient sound (Shane Meadows’ The Virtues being the latest), it’s little wonder that subtitles seem to be all around.Ī startling Ofcom study from 2006 estimated that, of the 7.5 million UK TV viewers using subtitles, only 1.5 million had a hearing impairment. Joy of text … The Good Place with subtitles.Īmong the many replies DG received were lots of teenagers and people in their early 20s who said they liked using subtitles because it allowed them to multitask. (“Wait, who’s Lord Mormont again? And he’s different than Ser Mormont?”)Įlsewhere, TV memes with captioned dialogue have become the norm on social media No Context Twitter accounts – which divorce a show’s script from its original meaning – are springing up. In a piece for US site The Outline earlier this year, journalist Sean Neumann claimed that closed captioning saved his relationship with Game of Thrones, by allowing him to read and process the huge amounts of information in each episode. What was once a question of accessibility and a mainstay of foreign-language broadcasts is becoming an inescapable part of visual media. Even the people who said they didn’t really like them at the cinema said they’d tolerate them if it meant deaf people could attend more screenings.” One woman even told DG she used subtitles when she was too stoned to listen to her favourite shows.Īs the tweet and its many replies made clear, it’s not just deaf people who rely on subtitles in 2019. ![]() I was really pleased though, because there was overwhelming global support from people of all ages for subtitles. “I was out for lunch with my mum and my phone started going crazy. ![]() “I was confused at first when I saw it had gone viral,” says the 30-year-old blogger and campaigner from London, who prefers to go by her Twitter name. ![]() This recent post by (AKA Deafinitely Girly) swiftly garnered close to 75,000 likes and a deluge of replies. If you’re hearing and using subtitles on Netflix and TV, and would quite like them at the cinema, please retweet to help normalise their presence!” “Lots of my hearing friends use them, too. ‘S ubtitles aren’t just for deaf people,” read the tweet that started it all.
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