If there’s a word for it, I don’t know it: a sense of comfort derived from the sole company of a simple repetitive presence. Sitting alone next to the constancy of a flickering fire. Staying up late with nothing but an old radio tuned to a lonely station. Doing homework alongside the steady breathing of a sleeping cat.

I’ve cherished moments with such companions long before “lo-fi” or “3am vibes” were part of our vocabularies; I think many have. It’s why the boom of looping animations set to lo-fi music makes sense: the genre capitalizes on a secluded comfort we didn’t know everyone else shared. 

Lo-fi’s Heart

I recently learned that the most characteristic tempo for lo-fi (60-95 bpm) is the same as the average heart rate. No matter the pace at which your day is moving, lo-fi syncs with your autonomic nervous system.

It isn’t as though a lo-fi playlist affects someone on an unconscious level because individual tracks are forgettable; the genre’s agreement with the human’s parasympathetic needs are what let its beats watercolor the backdrop of your mind. In rhythm and composition, lo-fi is a soundtrack that compliments the mellower colors on your mental canvas, instead of attempting to paint its own bold scene.

Blending cozy anime, ASMR, and chill hiphop vibes, it’s not hard to see how YouTube’s lo-fi video genre was poised for the widespread popularity it’s experiencing in a stressed-out world. But it’s not simply a one-way consumer mentality which keeps listeners coming back. The communities which gravitate to lo-fi seem to both explain and sustain the trend. One look at the videos’ comment/chat sections displays what I mean. 

With life-affirming comments frequently addressed to “whoever’s reading this” or some other indiscriminate identifier, the user interaction nearly always emphasizes hope, rest, motivation, encouragement, or affirmation. Lo-fi people are feeling people, deeply aware of their experience of their own wellbeing as well as the significance of that experience in others. They know the burnout, the mental health struggles and the self-doubt as well as anyone else tuning in does—and they can project their imaginations into the headspace and wholesome surroundings that can feel like the cure for it all.

The videos supply the raw material, the community affirms the narrative. Lo-fi’s comment culture both reveals who’s showing up and gives others a reason to keep doing so.

Unlimited Capacity for Goodwill

One almost gets the feeling that some commenters are trying to convince themselves that the willing of good to another can be boundless, that magnanimous superlatives stacked upon one another can’t exhaust the depths of the hope that one can hope on behalf of the world. The burden we carry is universal, such an ethos may be saying, and the solution ought to be every bit as universally accessible.

After all, can’t the small things and common comforts speak to us in the middle of our exhaustion of an endlessly restorative rest?

At the risk of sounding like I’m talking about a religious movement, I think there are several fundamental tenets that make this “lo-fi state of mind” tick at all of its chill 70 beats per minute. The “worldview” of lo-fi videos almost universally presupposes responsibility, exhaustion, perseverance, and comfort. Each of these qualities is assumed to be present in the life of the viewer, and a video’s animated subject serves as an aesthetic proxy for the viewer’s self. 

Responsibility comes first, because there is usually some task which the video’s subject is bound to complete. Be it the study of Lofi Girl’s never-ending notebook, or Sleepy Dad’s protracted prayers before a desktop triptych, lo-fi characters are duty bound. 

Perseverance in the face of exhaustion is the next, simultaneous quality almost always found in such videos. As long as somebody somewhere in the world has been studying, so has Lofi Girl been, flipping her pages tirelessly as the minutes become hours.

Comfort is the final, most definitive feature of the lo-fi way of being. As one 8-bit knight takes his lonely repose by a kindled flame, a text scroll proclaims, “It’s OK… You can rest here by the campfire. Tomorrow you go back to your quest!” For all the weariness of the journey so far, rest returns to re-center the adventurer. Responsibility and exhaustion are granted conditions of every life; in a lo-fi world, so is the promise of comfort. 

Beautiful Unimportance

This comfort which is lo-fi’s chief tenet shares DNA with that sense of companionship I’ve felt at the box fan’s droning, at the shortwave radio’s hum and crackle. It’s a sense like an understanding, a calming space shared in simplistic, wholesome company. 

It’s a type of comfort that can become keenly desired in trying times…

When my wife’s pregnancy with our oldest daughter started to become concerning late in the third trimester, lo-fi kept me company every hour I spent away from her at work behind a computer screen. On my daily commute home, lo-fi playlists accompanied me like they were holding the hand of my anxious mind, reminding me that my heart was still only beating this fast, no matter what the world around me felt like. 

Directly following birth, more health concerns for our family became our reality, and we awaited an “all-clear” which would still be some weeks in the coming. I remember longing for the pleasure of insignificant things to return. I recall so desiring life’s mundane comforts—the tiny, common joys. Time spent re-watching an episode of our show, a slow morning with coffee on the couch… 

Comfort is about beautiful unimportance. Comfort exists in the space where there is the capacity to inhale and exhale without the threat of harm. Lo-fi perpetually enshrines a belief that the comfort we can find—especially comfort in the middle of difficulty—is a fundamental reality.

The lo-fi worldview says that the common joys are real, that the mundane comforts are not a lie; it says that, somehow, something like a slow morning with a hot mug in the living room isn’t gone forever—and it can’t be.

It says that your very body by which you experience this life isn’t lying when it informs you, this really is the only tempo you can know. Slow down; rest a bit.

The lo-fi state of mind knows that comfort is as universal and undeniable a truth as exhaustion. 

And at the end of the long day, when exhaustion moves on, Comfort will still be keeping you good company.