These videos are compilations of physical objects being manipulated in certain highly specific ways: melted, smoothed, extruded, carved, sliced, dissolved. Frosting piped fluidly over a layer cake. Molten glass slowly ballooning from the tip of a blowpipe. Crayon wax swirling in a factory vat, propelled by the rhythmic swoosh of a giant paddle.
“Ooooooh,” I whispered to myself. “This is it.”
YouTube and Instagram are home to thousands upon thousands of these videos. Their titles are expository and sometimes grammatically spotty: Oddly Satisfying Video That Will Put You in Absolute Calmness, 1,000,000 Dominos Falling Is Oddly Satisfying, Satisfying Floam Crushing Compilation No. 6.
Some of the videos are compilations of reused clips — baking tutorials, pottery demos, factory tours. But many are purpose-built. Knives slice bricks of colored clay into immaculate rectangles against a white infinity backdrop. Disembodied hands knead stress balls or stir paint in hypnotic circles.
The videos seemed to scratch an itch I didn’t know I had. If I watched long enough, I felt lightly hypnotized, as if one of those disembodied hands had reached in and massaged my brain. (...)
But just what makes Oddly Satisfying so oddly satisfying? While the videos have yet to become the subject of major scientific inquiry, there are some theories. It may have to do with symmetry, patterns and repetition, which our brains seem to find inherently pleasing. It may have to do with a sense of “flow” — the state of being completely absorbed in an experience. Or it may be related to the “autonomous sensory meridian response,” or A.S.M.R., the phenomenon of deriving a pleasurably tingly sensation from certain auditory stimuli, like tapping or whispering or crinkling, which is itself a bit of a mystery.
“There may be something in the physical exploration of slime, or soap, or frosting in these videos that scratches a need to learn about how those materials behave,” Emma Barratt, a British psychology researcher who wrote one of the earliest papers about the autonomous sensory meridian response, told me. “Getting that information may be what’s innately satisfying.”
Whatever the neuropsychological explanation, it’s clear that Oddly Satisfying videos serve as a form of self-care, to use another term that has spiked in recent years. While it’s a journalistic cliché to talk about “our anxious times,” it does seem that the early 21st century is doing something to our heads.
by Emily Matchar, NY Times | Read more:
Image: YouTube
