What Is a Short Video?

Ax pulled up the social statistics annual report of humanity’s last decade. The data volume on the holographic screen made his terminal emit a faint hum—UAB equipment rarely made sounds, which meant the amount of information it was processing was nearing the edge of marginal computing capacity.

He skipped the preface and table of contents, jumping straight to the “Time Use Survey” chapter. Humanity’s statisticians had carved the twenty-four-hour day into categories: sleep, work, leisure, housework, eating, transportation—each with detailed tracking records. Ax scanned the tables, his gaze stopping at the “Leisure” column.

Leisure was further subdivided into “Physical Leisure” (exercise, reading physical books, face-to-face socializing) and “Digital Leisure” (streaming videos, browsing social media, short-form videos).

He tapped open the detailed data for short-form videos.

A curve chart popped up. The horizontal axis was years, starting from the year short-form video was born and ending the year human civilization ended. The vertical axis was “Daily Average Usage Duration,” in minutes. Ax watched the curve begin at the lower left—Year One: fifty-eight minutes—then climb to the upper right in an almost perfect exponential growth curve. Year Five: one hundred twelve minutes. Year Ten: two hundred five minutes. Year Twenty: three hundred ninety minutes.

He swiped right to the end of the curve. The second-to-last year: seven hundred forty minutes. The last year: seven hundred sixty-two minutes—twelve point seven hours.

Ax leaned back in his chair—he had already seen these numbers in the preliminary data, but seeing the same data from the perspective of an annual report felt different. He closed the chart and opened another chapter of the report: “Attention Threshold Measurement.” The author of this report was clearly a scholar from the mid-period of the short-form video era; the wording was still fairly calm, but despair leaked between the lines. The report pointed out that before short-form video was born, the average sustained attention span of humans in a lab setting was about twenty minutes. Fifty years after the birth of short-form video, that number had dropped to under thirty seconds—and was still shrinking. At the end of the report was a footnote: “The experimental subjects for this study were aged eighteen to twenty-five, born after the birth of short-form video, and had never experienced attention patterns from the ‘pre-short-form-video era.’ Some subjects could not complete a sixty-second attention test, exhibiting clear anxiety symptoms around the forty-fifth second, including but not limited to: involuntary finger swiping, eye wandering, and verbal expressions of ‘I want to see something else.’”

Ax read the footnote twice. He recalled a study of an ancient human civilization he had read in the Academy library—fifth-century BCE Greek scholars had regarded “sustained focus on one thing” as the highest virtue, considering it a prerequisite for rational thought. Twenty-five hundred years later, their descendants couldn’t even hold out for sixty seconds.

He scrolled down and found another file—a timeline of humanity’s top technological breakthroughs, overlaid with the user growth curve of short-form video. He didn’t read the details carefully—he had already seen them in the preliminary data. He flipped directly to the commentary the report wrote for the timeline: “At the time short-form video was born, human civilization simultaneously possessed three breakthrough technologies: nuclear fusion, quantum computing, and gene editing. Notably, in the subsequent seventy years, the core application directions of all three technologies were concentrated on the short-form video ecosystem.”

Ax stared at that sentence, his finger hovering over the touchpad. Humans had to pass a traffic test just to be born—that was stricter than the UAB interview. He remembered Zoltan’s words: “At least it’s better than a rock.” But a rock doesn’t optimize its own reproduction strategy; it doesn’t design its offspring to be better at being consumed. A rock is just a rock. And short-form video—short-form video made humans voluntarily, systematically, and with maximum efficiency transform themselves into more perfect consumers, not even sparing unborn children.

He closed the timeline and rubbed his brow. Uniform white light fell from above, casting no shadows, no corners. Suddenly he found the light very uncomfortable—too uniform, like some deliberately designed environment that gave you no chance to get distracted. He remembered that human short-form video platforms were probably designed the same way: no pause button, no natural break points, no gaps that allowed users to ask themselves, “What the hell am I doing here?”

His gaze returned to the search results list, and he continued scrolling down. He tapped open a report titled “Short-Form Video Content Ecosystem Analysis,” dated sixty years after the birth of short-form video. The author team came from the last university still operating in human civilization—a name he didn’t recognize, probably established near the end of civilization, specializing in the study of short-form video phenomena.

The report’s abstract was only one sentence: “Short-form video has become the primary form of humanity’s information environment.”

Ax read on. The report stated that sixty years after the birth of short-form video, the total duration of new short-form video content produced globally each day—note: “daily additions”—had exceeded three hundred million hours. Meanwhile, the total daily waking hours of the entire human population—adding up the waking hours of every living person—was about nine billion hours. In other words, during the time humans were awake each day, more than three percent was spent “producing” new short-form video content. If viewing time was included, the number would balloon to an incomprehensible scale.

The report included a chart. Ax looked at it for a long time.

The chart was simple: the horizontal axis was time, the vertical axis was “Total Human Attention Reserve”—summing up the attention of all humans, measured in person-hours. One smooth curve represented total human population—in the final period of civilization, population declined slightly, but the curve was roughly flat. But another curve—“Percentage of Attention Consumed by Short-Form Video”—started from zero and climbed steadily over seventy-three years, finally nearly touching the top.

Ax zoomed in on the end of the chart. The data for the last year showed that ninety-five percent of the total human attention reserve was consumed by short-form video. The remaining five percent was allocated to eating, sleeping, and all activities necessary for basic survival.

He closed the chart, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling. The uniform white light made him squint.

He remembered a saying from one of his professors at the Academy: “The most important resource for a civilization is not energy, not minerals, not technology—it’s attention. Where attention goes, the civilization goes.”

Humans put their attention on short-form video. And then they walked to the end of their civilization.

Ax sat up straight, opened a new blank note, and began recording his findings so far:

1. Short-form video lasted from its birth to the end of civilization: 73 years.
2. Average daily user duration grew from 58 minutes to 12.7 hours, an increase of about 13 times.
3. Average sustained human attention span dropped from 20 minutes to under 30 seconds.
4. The three cutting-edge technologies—nuclear fusion, quantum computing, and gene editing—were systematically diverted to the short-form video ecosystem during the short-form video era.
5. At the end of civilization, 95% of human attention was consumed by short-form video.

He finished the last line, stopped, and looked at his notes. Individually, these numbers were still reasonable—a new technology spreading rapidly, an old ability declining, some resources being reallocated. But put together, they pointed to a conclusion he wasn’t willing to accept.

He decided to set that conclusion aside for now and keep digging. Maybe there was something he missed—some external factor, some parallel technological development, some reasonable explanation for all this. He didn’t want to give in that easily.

His finger glided across the touchpad, and he tapped the next entry on the search results list.

It was a global infrastructure maintenance report from fifty-five years after the birth of short-form video. The cover was grayish-white, with a small line of text below the title: “This is the final regular publication.”

Ax opened the report. The first item was the power grid maintenance status. The data showed that starting thirty years after the birth of short-form video, the interval between regular power grid inspections began to lengthen year by year, from once a quarter to once every six months, once a year, once every two years. By the fifty-fifth year, some regions’ power grids had gone over five years without any maintenance. The report included a world map, with colors indicating grid reliability: green for normal operation, yellow for occasional interruptions, red for frequent failures, black for complete collapse. On the fifty-fifth year map, black and red regions covered nearly half.

Next was the water treatment system. Then traffic signals. Then communication base stations. Each report ended with the same note: “Insufficient maintenance personnel. See Appendix A for details.”

Ax flipped to Appendix A. Appendix A was only one page, printed with a single line: “The daily average short-form video user duration curve and the infrastructure maintenance personnel retention rate curve show a high degree of negative correlation.”

He looked further down. Appendix A contained a line chart. One line went up—short-form video usage duration. One line went down—maintenance personnel retention rate. The two lines crossed around thirty years after the birth of short-form video, then accelerated in opposite directions. Below the chart was a handwritten note—the same scrawl as the line in the “Cause of Extinction” field, but in a different hand: “This is not a coincidence.”

Ax stared at that handwritten line, his heartbeat quickening by one beat. Different handwriting, but the same sarcastic hand-scribble style; Ax instinctively felt it was the same person. He zoomed in on the chart, trying to discern more clues from the handwriting, but the letters were too messy, and there were only five words. He switched to the file properties page and checked the modification history. The timestamp of the last modification was sixty-one years after the birth of short-form video. The modifier’s account had been deleted.

He remembered what AX-001 had said—“Your predecessor did exactly the same thing you’re doing now when they got this case.” That predecessor had spent three months researching and written a two-thousand-page appendix. Could the handwriting in this Appendix A be from that predecessor? If Zoltan saw these numbers, he’d probably say, “See? I told you rocks are more honest.”

If so, why did the predecessor only write one sentence on this chart and leave it here, not including it in the official report?

Ax put that question aside for now and continued scrolling down. He opened the maintenance report for communication base stations. The fifth report began with a summary: “As of the publication date of this report, approximately thirty percent of the world’s wireless communication base stations are in an unmaintained state. It is estimated that within the next five years, this proportion will rise to over sixty percent. At that point, global network connection quality will experience a significant decline, potentially affecting—”

The report cut off here. Not truncated, but the author didn’t finish. The last character was a dash, and then nothing. Ax checked the file integrity; the system reported “File ends here, no further content.”

He froze for a few seconds. The author of this report—probably an infrastructure engineer or civil servant—had stopped at “potentially affecting” and didn’t continue. Didn’t want to write? Didn’t dare? Or put down the pen mid-sentence, picked up the phone, and opened short-form video?

Ax had no answer.

He closed the report and leaned back in his chair. The light from the holographic screen flickered on his face. The search results list still had a long tail waiting for him. He glanced at the timer—four point three standard hours had passed since he started the investigation. He had sixty-seven point seven hours left.

He took a deep breath, sat up straight again, and tapped open the next file.

It was a global population health survey report from seventy years after the birth of short-form video. Chapter One was “Sleep Quality.” The data showed that the average sleep duration of short-form video users had dropped from seven point five hours before the birth of short-form video to four point two hours. The report included a chart showing the statistics of “last action before sleep”: eighty-seven percent of respondents answered “watching short-form videos,” six percent answered “browsing social media,” four percent answered “reading,” and three percent answered “other.” Below the chart was a small footnote: “The ‘reading’ category includes reading short-form video comments.”

Ax couldn’t help letting out a short, unexpected laugh. Not because it was funny, but because it was absurd.

He continued scrolling. Chapter Two was “Mental Health.” Seventy years after the birth of short-form video, the global prevalence of anxiety disorders and depression was four times higher than before the birth of short-form video. The report’s author wrote in the conclusion: “There is a significant correlation between short-form video and mental health indicators, but the causal relationship awaits further study.” Next to it was another handwritten note—in the same hand as before: “‘Awaits further study’ is academia’s way of saying ‘we don’t dare tell the truth.’”

Ax couldn’t laugh this time. He stared at that handwritten line, thinking: if this really was from the predecessor, then they must have abandoned the “objective and neutral” academic mask at some point in the investigation and started directly venting.

He scrolled down to the last chapter. The chapter title was “Statistics on Causes of Death.” Seventy years after the birth of short-form video, the top three causes of death among humans were: cardiovascular disease (related to prolonged sitting and sleep deprivation), accidental injuries (related to attention deficit), and—Ax stopped and read it again—“malnutrition (related to eating behavior disrupted by short-form video).”

The final paragraph of the report read: “Human civilization’s public health system has gradually collapsed under the influence of short-form video. This report is the last one to be published.”

Ax closed the file.

He sat there, silent for a long time. The search results list on the holographic screen kept flickering, but he didn’t tap any more. He needed some time to digest what he had just seen.

He remembered when he first got this case, he thought “invented short-form video” as the cause of extinction must be a typo. Now he was starting to feel that this conclusion might be correct—he just wasn’t ready to accept it yet.

But he still had time. Sixty-seven hours. He decided to keep digging until he dug up an answer he couldn’t refute, or until time ran out.

He reopened the search results list and tapped the next file.

It was a diary from the last year of human civilization—a personal record of some ordinary person. The diary started on a certain day in the seventy-third year after the birth of short-form video. The first sentence was: “Scrolled for fourteen hours today. Really gonna quit tomorrow.”

Ax scrolled down. The opening of each subsequent diary entry was almost the same sentence, with the number fluctuating between thirteen and fifteen hours. The last diary entry was dated only three days before the end of civilization. That entry had only one line:

“Forget it.”

Ax closed the diary and shut his eyes. The uniform white light seeped through his eyelids.

He began to understand why that predecessor had chosen to transfer to the outer spiral arm of the galaxy. But he also began to understand why that predecessor had ultimately written down “short-form video”—because whether you liked it or not, that was the answer.

He opened his eyes and looked back at the timer. Sixty-six point five hours left.

The image of the diary still lingered on the screen, the last two words echoing like some kind of resonance.

“Forget it.”

Ax closed the diary and tapped open the next file—he knew that sooner or later, he would write down the same conclusion.