ASMR

A piece in the New York Times on the use of ASMR or ambient rooms. These are animated scenes, with sounds (often it's falling rain...) to conjure up a mood. I noticed that there are a few on Disney+ channel as well.

The genre is a close cousin of A.S.M.R. (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos, which are meant to evoke the pleasant brain-tingling sensation that some people experience when they hear sounds like hair brushing, nail tapping and soft whispers.

A YouTube channel here. If you can't get away for real, then this is the 'next best thing' perhaps.

And here's one for the Geographers, that last for 10 hours...

From the NYT piece:

Ambience videos provide a respite from the “hypermediacy” of the internet — a break from the constant bombardment of ads and emails and the self-inflicted burden of dozens of open browser tabs. (Hypermediacy can be defined as the act of viewing, consuming or interacting with multiple forms of media at once.) Paradoxically, a person has to wade through YouTube’s buffet of suggested videos just to locate an ambience video that will shut out the world.

“I think it’s quite interesting, that the same medium that can make you anxious and stressed out can also bring you back and save you from that very same feeling.”