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タイパ taipa
Was that worth my minutes?
What does taipa mean?
Time performance: コスパ, but the currency is your life. It is why videos get watched at double speed and endings get spoiled deliberately.
Example
動画を二倍速で見るのはタイパ重視らしい。
Watching videos at double speed is apparently about time efficiency.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
Culture note
It took off in the early 2020s and is now completely ordinary, to the mild horror of directors who wrote those pauses on purpose.
The story behind taipa
タイパ was built on the mould of コスパ, swapping money for minutes, and it arrived in the early 2020s to name a genuinely new problem. Subscription services made the supply of stories effectively infinite while the day stayed at twenty-four hours. Something had to be rationed, and it turned out to be attention.
So people watch at double speed, read the ending first to decide whether the middle is worth it, and skip to the clip that contains the scene everyone is discussing. Older viewers wince. Directors who wrote a silence on purpose wince harder. But the word itself is neutral, and plenty of people who use it also sit still for a three-hour film they trust.
Video
Get taipa in your pocket
タイパ is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
