Video trend helps relieve daily life pressures

Watching activities online, such as scraping soap, rinsing cars and trimming cow hooves, doesn't require much thinking, yet these videos have brought audio-visual pleasure to many people that helps to relieve stress in their real lives.

Zeng Xiaoyue, a 24-year-old master's degree candidate in biology at Zhejiang University, likes watching such videos because she enjoys the sounds.

"The other day, I happened to watch a video showing a man cooking feed for pigs. He doesn't speak, he just chops vegetables. The chopping sound relieved my pressure," she said.

Her pressure comes from writing a thesis and seeking a job upon graduation. She used to seek help from a psychological consultant because she was diagnosed with depression at a hospital.

Lots of people like Zeng love to watch these types of videos for relaxation. On a video platform, video clips themed "scraping soap" and "repairing cow hooves" have more than 1 million views.

In some such videos, people cut, pinch, tear, scrape, squeeze or press objects in which things are being destroyed. Other clips that have similar effects of decompression show manual labor or production, such as washing carpets, cutting cow hooves and repairing cosmetics powder.

Their movements are usually simple, repeated and smooth, giving the audience enjoyment from their visual and auditory senses, which meets the needs of obsessive-compulsive-type people.

People who are diagnosed with OCD aim to restore chaos to its original appearance or give it a new look. This kind of destruction and reorganization relieves pressure and stress.

The videos show a comfortable ending and leave viewers with a satisfied mood and strong before-and-after contrast which maximizes the release.

Autonomous sensory meridian response is another popular type of decompression video, which focuses on giving a tingling sensation by amplifying subtle sounds.

Video creators whisper, chew, blow or touch something to make smooth and slow sounds.

To cater to viewers, videos for releasing stress present various points that satisfy a variety of people.

Some people love to see squeezing acne and pulling out blackheads, which others feel is so disgusting that they can't watch. Some people love to watch an excavator work, even for a whole day, but some people find that boring.

These videos appeared as early as 2013 on the forum Reddit when someone first coined the term "oddly satisfying" in describing the videos, which has grown into a community of millions.

In the era of short videos, these types of videos have become more popular. Last year, videos with the hashtag "Oddly Satisfying" on Tik-Tok received billions of views.

Reports have shown that people nowadays are more likely to fall into depression.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25 percent, according to a scientific brief released by the World Health Organization in March.

In March last year, levels of anxiety and depression in people aged 18-24 were assessed higher than those in other adult age groups, according to the Report on the Development of Chinese National Mental Health (2019-2020) released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Psychology.

Lin Chun, an expert from the Chinese Psychological Society, told Beijing Evening News that watching these types of videos makes people highly concentrated on and immersed in the situations that are filmed. As people in the videos do activities, the audience also experiences a sense of control, rhythm and achievement, making them relaxed and happy.

For example, videos of people destroying an object, such as scraping soap or pinching slime, can help directly destroy the "dam" in people's minds, allowing emotions to release instantly and eliminate stress, Lin said.

Videos that show repairing actions allow brains to associate sensory information to form a stable and predictable sense of order and control, which counteracts the anxiety and stress of the audience, Lin said.

However, Zeng, the student, said that while watching the videos, she feels quite happy and uplifted. But after that, she still relies on herself to adjust her moods.

"From a long-term concern, it won't bring me too much happiness or solve my pressures. It is still up to me to figure it out and make peace with myself," she said.