She created her own ambience channel in late 2013, hoping she could give others the same peace of mind she found. “I had them on in the background very often, and I used them to meditate as well, to just shut everything down around me and bring myself into a calm space,” she said.

“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,” Ms. (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. “You know what’s going to happen, and it’s predictable in a very safe and soothing way.”Īmbience videos provide a respite from the “ hypermediacy” of the internet, she said - a break from the constant bombardment of ads and emails and the self-inflicted burden of dozens of open browser tabs. There’s no narrative you have to keep up with in order to be a part of it,” Ms. “As soon as you have entered this universe, you don’t have to give it any more thought. Helle Breth Klausen, a doctoral student at Aarhus University in Denmark who researches digital media, including A.S.M.R., classifies ambience videos as a kind of “self-medicating media.” (She also includes in that category Spotify playlists of soothing sounds and meditation apps like Headspace and Calm.) “I leave all of my thoughts outside my bedroom door, turn on my ASMR Room, get in bed and read, and completely lose myself in a different world,” she said. (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. Of the ambience genre, she said: “It gives you at least a little piece of what we’re missing.” ‘Harry Potter’ and Chill Elizabeth, 31, misses the random conversations she used to have with strangers and the little moments she’d witness, like an engagement that played out on the other side of the window while she was working at a Starbucks. Lindsay Elizabeth, a freelance copywriter from Central Florida, fell headlong into the ambience genre last year because she wanted to recapture the experience of working in coffee shops. “I have a subway ambience, where a person said - from New York, I think - that they weren’t able to take the subway in a year and it was nice for them to listen to this ambience because they like taking the subway and they miss it.”

“I’ve gotten comments that emphasize how helpful these videos were to them during the pandemic,” said Melinda Csikós, a 33-year-old ambience creator from Budapest who operates the YouTube channel Miracle Forest. They are part of a long tradition of audiovisual products and programming designed to make a space feel a little more relaxing, a little nicer.Ĭonsider the black-and-white footage of a crackling yule log that the New York television channel WPIX debuted on Christmas Eve 1966 - grandfather to the many digital yule logs available today - or the rise of white noise machines that fill a room with the sound of crashing waves, chirping crickets or falling rain. Welcome to the world of so-called ambience videos, a genre of YouTube video that pairs relaxing soundscapes with animated scenery in order to make viewers feel immersed in specific spaces, like a jazz bar in Paris or a swamp populated with trilling wildlife. Or maybe, you’ll feel so relaxed, you nod off to sleep. You might look up from time to time to see a book drifting through the air or stepladders moving around on their own. Rain falls outside, a fire crackles across the room, and somewhere offscreen, quills scribble on parchment. Picture this: You’re in the Hogwarts library.

Studio ambience at night