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Living as I do without a real fireplace, I've lately obsessed with fireplace videos on YouTube and the elaborate, mutating kitsch aesthetic that seems to have sprung forth from the site’s algorithms. Here are some of my favourites, with commentary.
But first of all, here’s the first-ever televised “Yule Log,” created in 1966 by Fred Thrower, who managed the NYC TV station WPIX: (props to Mental Floss for their history: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/72899/luminous-story-behind-tvs-yule-log)
The most-played fireplace video in my home is "
The Best 4K Relaxing Fireplace with Crackling Fire Sounds 8 HOURS No Music 4k UHD TV Screensaver.” It’s nice and long and has the right soundscape and colour palette for my tastes.
The Best 4K Relaxing Fireplace with Crackling Fire Sounds 8 HOURS No Music 4k UHD TV Screensaver.” It’s nice and long and has the right soundscape and colour palette for my tastes.
If you are allergic to furry animals, as I am, you might be tempted by “A Very Happy Yule Log,” featuring two listless pets, a dog and a cat, who spend about a minute on a cushion in front of a fire before getting up and wandering around the room:
I’m kinda into “Lakeside Campfire with Relaxing Nature Night Sounds (HD)”. I mean, is it any more cognitively dissonant to imagine that you’re outside than it is to pretend that your flatscreen is a fireplace?
And this is where the kitschy fantasizing really starts to take hold. “Rain & Fireplace Sounds | Cozy Cabin Ambience 8 hours | Sleep, Study, Meditation” delivers the promise of holing up in a cabin with a wood-burning stove, a cat, and a storm outside.
“Cozy Cabin Ambience - Rain and Fireplace Sounds at Night 8 Hours for Sleeping, Reading, Relaxation” ups the stakes. Fireplace, candles, cat, storm, even a steaming mug and a book. It’s hitting every signifier of cozy, and appears to be computer-generated.
I find “Christmas Ambience ASMR with Fireplace Sounds [ sleep / relax ]” to be distasteful, if fascinating in how transparently fake it looks and feels.
Let’s take it to an entirely new level. Why settle for a cozy cabin when you can spend the evening in “Royal Library | Rain and Thunderstorm Sounds on Study Ambience with Crackling Fireplace”? Statuary and candelabra complete the Oxbridgean ambience.
As we stare down the barrel of a long, dark, solitary winter, I will find comfort in these simulations of coziness, if not the horrible, mood-breaking commercials that appear every hour or so.
I want to add that there is a whole microgenre of branded novelty fireplaces/yule logs: Nick Offerman sipping Lagavulin for an hour, a Pokémon curled up in front of a campfire, a House of Hades yule log.
These are a little too winking to cleanly fit into the kitsch category (but I still kind of like them).
I would love to talk to the people that "film" and composite the highly CGIed and stylized ones.
Relatedly, @andrew___myname points out that IKEA catalogs are now like 75% computer-generated now? https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/29/6083309/ikea-product-images-are-now-75-percent-cg
Important behind-the-scenes by @marshalederman from the twilight of the analog fireplace era! https://twitter.com/marshalederman/status/1344635542135320579
