Netflix Knows You Secretly Love Villains

The Punisher
Netflix
Netflix

Sure, you might not be willing to admit to friends that your big weekend plans revolve around binge-watching the newest season of Daredevil -- but Netflix knows. And scary enough, Netflix also knows that villains, and not heroes, are motivating your choices on what to watch. Now, they're telling everyone.

According to Netflix's global manager of creative services Nick Nelson, the company has been working for years to find a way to merge "big data with creative" in order to tell subscribers as much as possible about a show through a single picture. Among the user habits Nelson outlined Tuesday, he revealed that users are more likely to click art focused on villains, rather than heroes. Netflix doesn't reveal if this makes viewers bad people, but chances are you aren't re-watching The Dark Knight because you think Michael Caine is the best Alfred (even if it's true).

They note that using recognizable characters, particularly polarizing ones, create more clicks. Within that framework, villains perform better, particularly inside the kids and action genres.

As an example, they highlight the two images that performed best in testing for Dragons: Race to the Edge, even though, obviously that one practically sells itself.

Netflix Dragons
Netflix

Netflix shared a few other interesting notes about viewer habits, including how images are the dominant way users determine what they'll watch, and that images take up 82% of a user's focus while on the site. (Though, at this point, there's not much else you can look at on the home screen.) Amazingly, each film gets only 1.8 seconds of attention as users scroll past, so the image has to grab your attention in a hurry. 

Additionally, Netflix discovered that strong emotions and faces drive viewership, and a single recognizable character in a show image outperforms an ensemble image of the whole cast. You'll notice new thumbnails for The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt focus on solo images of Elie Kemper or Tituss Burgess expressing big emotions. The same goes for the plethora of character promotions in advance of the second season of Daredevil.

The whole villain-love thing possibly explains the decision to give Jon Bernthal's The Punisher its own show, too. Netflix, however, doesn't mention whether or not they think Francis Underwood is a hero or a villain, and their answer might totally be skewing the data.

Tell us Netflix, is it OK to love an evil person?

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Dustin Nelson is a News Writer with Thrillist. He holds a Guinness World Record but has never met the fingernail lady. Follow him @dlukenelson.