Not all TV is meant to be compelling. In Norway, public broadcast network NRK popularised a genre called slow TV — live coverage of mundane activities like knitting, cross-country train rides, and fishing.
Now, The Guardian reports, Spain has jumped on the dull television bandwagon, launching a new online streaming channel called Napflix that’s designed to bore viewers to sleep. Napflix launched last week, and was co-founded by Victor Gutierrez de Tena and Francesc Bonet, who both work in advertising. On the website (which is designed to resemble Netflix), the two describe their video platform as an online source for “the most silent and sleepy content selection to relax your brain and easily fall asleep.”
De Tena and Bonet scour the Internet for the most monotonous footage imaginable — two-hour physics lectures, chickens cooking on a rotisserie — and re-publish it on their channel. But since different things bore different people, Napflix’s creators make sure to compile a variety of video types, which they sort into a variety of genres including sports, education, music, and documentary. Sometimes the two even select something based on how sleep-inducing its soundtrack is.
“We choose the content based on how boring it is, or for the elevator music that sometimes goes with it,” de Tena told The Local Spain.Unlike those expensive sound machines designed to lull you to sleep, Napflix is free. And even if the channel doesn’t encourage slumber, it might still inspire you to develop some relaxing (or dare we say dull?) interests that help you disconnect from the daily grind. — Source: www.mentalfloss.com
