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Vertical Dramas

2026-02-02 19:13:10.803718+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments

Oh, this is fascinatingly exploitive: AV Club: Inside the hideous, exploitative, but still addictive world of vertical dramas. In China they're referred to as "duanju".

To feed that addiction, they’re going to pay through the nose. Vertical drama apps are built to obfuscate the sense</span> of how much you’re paying, with “coins” purchased in bulk, in amounts from hundreds to thousands. Individual episodes might cost upward of 60 coins per two-minute piece of footage—and given that each drama has 70 or more episodes, this means the viewer can easily spend $20 or $30 to watch 90 minutes of some of the cheapest slop imaginable. People are paying much more to watch Tricked Into Having My Ex-Husband’s Baby on their phones than it would cost to see Sinners< in IMAX.

Via Sensible Endowment.

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