PROVO, Utah — With finals wrapping up around the country for students before winter break, BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library wanted to help students stay motivated and focused with a set of videos introducing a virtual “study buddy.”
Each of the two videos released Monday is an hour long and shows students sitting in different parts of the library and studying for an hour.
The library’s twitter feed, which is known for its more humorous tongue-in-cheek tweets, says it’s copying the wildly popular Japanese trend “Study With Me,” which has garnered millions of views and inspired other students and internet content creators to film themselves quietly studying.
Paul is doing his biology homework in one part of the library.
And Sara is reading Radium Girls in another corner.
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The trend was popularized by one of Japan’s largest internet stars, Hajime Shacho, who has over 6 million subscribers. Hajime released a video released in late 2016 that is mostly silent where he never speaks. That video has racked up more than 3.5 million views.
Not in school anymore? No worries! There are also plenty of people who film themselves for hours just doing their desk work.
The trend has drawn comparisons to another interesting internet trend called ASMR, which features soft repetitive noises like crumpling paper over and over again or typing on an especially clicky keyboard – background noises that are supposed to help with focus or sleep.