In the early days of cinema, transitions were polite. Scenes would dissolve into one another like memories melting. We used "wipes" to turn the page. We used "fade to blacks" to gently suggest the passage of time. These transitions were designed to smooth over the edges, to comfort the viewer, and to hide the artificial nature of the medium.

But the modern internet has no time for politeness. The Dissolve is dead. The Fade is dying. We are living in the era of the Hard Cut.

The hard cut—the instantaneous switch from Frame A to Frame B with zero transition—is the most violent tool in the editor’s arsenal. It is a collision. It smashes two realities together without warning. And in 2026, it is the only transition that feels honest.

The Jarring Reality of the Feed

Why has the hard cut become the default language of the digital age? Because it mirrors the experience of the internet itself.

We do not "dissolve" from a cat video to a war crime footage on our Twitter feed. We scroll. The context switch is instant and brutal. Our brains have adapted to these sudden shifts in tone. A gentle cross-dissolve feels antiquated, almost melodramatic, like a soap opera from the 1980s. It feels "produced."

The hard cut, by contrast, feels "raw." It says to the viewer: “I am not going to hold your hand. We are moving. Keep up.”

This brutality serves a narrative function. It creates "Juxtaposition." By slamming a shot of a screaming politician directly against a shot of a silent, empty room, the editor forces the viewer to reconcile the difference. The lack of a transition forces the brain to build the bridge. The meaning is generated in the spark of the collision.

The Comedy of the Smash Cut

Nowhere is the hard cut more powerful than in comedy. The "Smash Cut" is the visual equivalent of a punchline.

• Character: "I will never wear a chicken suit."

• Hard Cut to: The character wearing a chicken suit.

If you used a dissolve here, the joke dies. The dissolve implies time passing, consideration, and reluctance. The hard cut implies instant, unavoidable fate. The humor lives in the immediacy.

YouTubers and TikTokers have mastered this. They cut mid-sentence. They cut mid-scream. They cut before the action is finished. This creates a frantic, chaotic energy that mimics the absurdity of modern life. It acknowledges that the universe is random and abrupt.

The Aesthetic of Disruption

The hard cut also serves as a "wake-up call." In a long video, the viewer’s attention begins to drift. A smooth transition lulls them into sleep. A hard cut—especially one that changes the audio environment abruptly—snaps the attention back.

It is a Brechtian technique. Bertolt Brecht, the playwright, believed in "alienation effects" that reminded the audience they were watching a play, preventing them from getting too lost in the illusion. The hard cut does this. It reminds the viewer of the edit.

In a world filled with deepfakes and AI smoothness (as we discussed in the "Uncanny Valley" blog), the harshness of a hard cut feels like a stamp of authenticity. It shows the seams. It admits that this is a constructed piece of media. And paradoxically, by showing the seams, we trust the fabric more.

We have stopped trying to make the edit "invisible." We are making the edit a percussion instrument. We are banging the drum of the hard cut, and the audience is marching to it.