One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on “efficiency.”¹ It saturates our professional existence. It haunts our socioeconomic barometer. And it drives our current approach to both creating and appreciating art. It’s insidious, the inordinate amount of power “efficiency” holds over our daily lives, without even drawing much attention to itself, creeping up in unanticipated ways: the life hacks bombarding us on TikTok; the large language models we use to reduce the amount of effort we need to put into writing an email to our colleague; the Trim Silence feature on our podcast player of choice.
[…]I will admit that this is perhaps a weird hill to die on, but I truly believe that Trim Silence is an abomination that should be fully eradicated from existence, as it not only spits in the face of the people who take the time and effort to produce their shows, but also, more broadly, encourages a way of interfacing with art that can only be described as gluttonous.
I disagree that speeding up something is the same thing at all. Playing something at a constant rate (faster or slower) still maintains the editorial choices that the author was talking about.
I speed up plenty of things I listen to, and it’s not (primarily) to get through them quicker.
Across the world it’s the case that city folk tend to speak quicker than their rural countrymen. American speak slower, on average, than Brits. And that’s fine! However, I find it hard to maintain focus when the speech is too slow - so speeding it up allows me to enjoy it like intended.
I definitely agree that the trim silence feature sound awful.