By Theo Miller
Staff Writer
It is very rare that a product fills me with a questionable, yet distinct, emotion. It lies somewhere between pure rage and profound embarrassment on behalf of the rest of the human race. Quibi is one of those products. Why is it here? What unmerciful god summoned it into existence? Who thought this was a good idea again?
My friends, I am here to suffer so that you do not have to. I paid the $4.99 per month, with ads, so that you do not have to. I sacrificed my brain cells so that yours might be spared. I watched as much Quibi content as I could physically stomach over a two week period. You can thank me later.
Quibi, short for (and I am not making this up) Quick Bites, is a short-form video streaming service designed for phones. It is the brainchild of Jeffery Katzenberg, who you may know as the founder of Dreamworks, and Meg Whitman, who you may not know as the former CEO of HP and Ebay, and one-time 2016 presidential candidate. It launched last month with the help of over a billion dollars in venture capital. It only features original programming, in part due to its commitment to making content ‘designed for phones’. That is a really fancy way of saying that you can watch all Quibi content in either portrait or landscape, and switch between the two at any time. To answer your unspoken question, after the first week it becomes a gimmick. Episodes are all under 10 minutes in length, released every weekday, new shows are released every Monday.
Still following? Good, because this is where it starts to get complicated. Quibi’s content is centered around the idea of watching at times that are normally wasted. Can you not find the time for a 40-minute TV episode? Quibi says “That’s OK, here’s an equally fulfilling experience in 6 minutes instead.” In other words, Quibi is designed for your subway ride to work, or waiting in line for your Starbucks order (remember when we used to do that?).
For your $4.99 a month, you get access to two branches of content which I will rename for the sake of clarity: the Netflix kind and the YouTube kind. The Netflix kind of Quibi show varies widely. There are game shows. There are art shows. There are travel shows. There is Tituss Burgess loading various foods into a bazooka and shooting them at people as part of a cooking competition. Most of it is very loud, cheesy, unnecessarily crass, and utterly frivolous. The comedies are rarely funny. For some reason there are a bunch of shows hosted by rappers pretending to be articulate TV hosts. It is just not good.
Quibi’s YouTube-style content seems like an even worse proposition, if that’s possible. All of it is created in partnership with pre-established platforms like ESPN, BBC, or Polygon. Much of it is just headline recaps. The problem with this branch of Quibi is not so much that this content is bad. For the most part it is surprisingly decent. The problem is that this content already exists for free on YouTube, or if you crave that sweet vertical video, the Snapchat tabloid section. Ads are still there at the $4.99 tier (oftentimes recycled from TikTok), which seems to negate the advantage over either of the platforms I just mentioned.
Quibi’s other problem is structural. When you sign up for Quibi, you pay for access to hyper-flashy unproven content that feels more at home on Buzzfeed than Netflix and, quite frankly, do not get a lot in return. Quibi has no TV support. Quibi has no web support. There is no support for multiple users. There is no content for kids. Watch out for handheld camera movements, shaky-cams, or chase scenes in vertical mode, especially if you get nausea easily. The audio quality is atrocious compared to literally any other streaming service, largely thanks to the compression needed to accommodate two simultaneous video streams. On that same note, Quibi also uses more data, on average about 20% more, than a typical video stream.
The closest thing to a redeeming show that I found on Quibi, which is not saying much, was Most Dangerous Game, in which Liam Hemsworth has cancer, debt, and agrees to be the prey in a Hunger Games-style manhunt on the streets of Detroit. Is the show any good? Quite frankly, I cannot tell. It may be good or it may be that the rest of Quibi’s content feels so clickbait-y in comparison that a standard issue TV show feels like a saving grace for the platform.
In conclusion, please spare yourself the nauseating camera movements, bad writing, screaming, clickbait, TikTok ads, and $5 per month. Or take that money and throw it back to a Disney+ or Netflix subscription. It is worth it a lot more than whatever I just spent two weeks watching as much of as I physically could stand. Stay smart, kids. Quibi, by design, is a frivolous platform for frivolous content. Do not sign up for Quibi. You can thank me later.