the uncomfortable truth about comfort content: are we self-soothing or self-sedating?

are we really chill? are we really vibing?

I'm writing this while wrapped in a $90 weighted blanket, drinking $17 adaptogenic tea, with a ‘calming’ Spotify playlist specifically engineered to reduce anxiety playing in the background, while my $300 smart light cycles through its programmatically soothing stream of colours and my premium diffuser with its ultrasonic essential oil aromatherapy humidifier is blowing a blend of lavender, bergamot and vetiver into the either.

We chill. We vibing.

The irony of critiquing comfort culture while being pickled in it isn't lost on me, it’s actually kind of the whole point.

We're all collectively living through what feels like the end times. It’s giving dystopia but make it aesthetic, right? We're watching democracy crumble through an Instagram filter, tracking climate change with cutesy apps, and responding to economic collapse by buying $45 ‘anxiety-reducing’ candles for medicinally dissociative purposes.

The Cozy Content Industrial Complex

Are you old enough to remember when we just had regular old stress? Now, we have aesthetically pleasing, algorithm-optimised, monetisable stress. And boy, are we served and sold the solutions.

There's:

• Hygge because even though we mispronounce the word on the daily, nothing says ‘peace’ like spending $400 to make your apartment look like a Danish minimalist's fever dream.

• Cottagecore for when you want to pretend you live in a fairy tale instead of a late-stage capitalist nightmare.

• ‘That Girl’ Routines with 5am meditation / journaling / yoga / smoothie speedruns, because peace should also feel like a competitive sport.

• Gentle/Slow Living carefully filmed and edited for 6 hours to look effortless.

• Clean Girl Aesthetic where ‘clean’ is just ‘rich’ with a filter.

• And Cozy Gaming because even our digital distractions need to be labelled as self-care now.

The real gag? We're seeking comfort from the very platforms that are making us anxious in the first place. It's like trying to cure a hangover by doing shots. That's not a solution. That's a spiral.

The Algorithm Will See You Now

Let’s do an experiment. Next time you're feeling anxious or stressed, notice how quickly your FYP shifts to serve you ‘soothing’ related content like:

• ASMR creators whispering about their skincare routines.

• Slime-poking videos that somehow rack up millions of views.

• ‘Oddly satisfying’ compilations that are actually just cake decorating in disguise.

• Lofi beats that all sound exactly the same but with different anime backgrounds or optical illusions.

• People organising their perfectly organised organising systems.

• ‘Silent vlogs’ that are neither silent nor vlogs, discuss.

• Self Care Sunday routines showing self-care as a ritual, as long as the ritual is aesthetically perfect.

• And Pet Therapy where dogs and cats on a screen are the emotional regulators we didn’t know we needed.

Real talk. These platforms aren't soothing you – they're sedating you. And they're doing it with all the precision of a digital anaesthesiologist who gets paid per view.

The more anxious we are, the more we scroll.

The more we scroll, the more anxious we get.

It's the circle of digital life.

The Anxiety Economy: Capitalism's Cosiest Grift

Peace is now a product, and you don’t have to look far to be sold on:

• Calm app subscriptions - $70/year to have Matthew McConaughey or Harry Styles read you bedtime stories. Dreamy.

• Anxiety and Worry rings - $30 to fidget but make it fashion.

• Emotional support water bottles - $50 because hydration is self-care.

• CBD EVERYTHING - in your coffee, in your face cream, in your dog's treats – peace by osmosis.

• Anxiety reducing home decor - because your throw pillows and throw blankets should be hypoallergenic and therapeutic.

• Digital gardens - zen, but make it pixelated

• Meditation platforms - sending you notifications to remind you to be present (oh, the irony).

We're not just consuming comfort, we're wearing it, downloading it, diffusing it, and financing it with buy-now-pay-later arrangements because peace shouldn't wait but also apparently requires a fortnightly payment plan.

Digital Prescriptions By The Dozen

Here's where it gets dark (but like, in a millennial-pink kind of way). We're not just addicted to comfort content, we're stuck in it. Every time we feel uncomfortable, we have a whole digital pharmacy of sedatives at our fingertips.

• Feeling lonely? Here's a ‘get ready with me’ video where someone talks to you like an old friend.

• Anxious about climate change? Don’t fret, watch this cottage-core influencer make sourdough.

• Worried about the economy? Oh hey, here's someone organising their perfectly stocked pantry.

• Existential dread? May I interest you in some ‘everything is cake’ videos?

We've created an addictive and mesmerising system of avoidance, wrapped it in solar powered fairy lights, sprinkled some sustainable glitter on it and called it self-care.

And the worst part? I think most of us know we're doing it. We're self-aware enough to joke about our declining mental health, but not brave enough to stop the comfort scroll.

We are living through legitimately terrifying times, but our response is to make everything soft and gentle. It's like we're trying to bubble-wrap the impending apocalypse.

It’s like an alternate reality where we doomscroll until we're anxious, then we comfort-scroll to calm down, then we get anxious about how much we're scrolling so we watch videos about digital wellness on the same apps that are causing our anxiety, while taking notes on our ‘social media boundary setting’ journey, which of course we'll post about later, all in the name of comfort content (duh).

So what's the solution? Delete all our apps and go live in the woods? (There’s actually a TikTok aesthetic for that). The truth is, there might not be a comfortable answer to this comfortable problem.

Maybe like in AA, the first step we have to take is to admit we have a problem.

Hi, my name is Toyah, and I’m an Algorithmically Anxious Addict.

We're using digital comfort as emotional novocaine and our self-soothing has morphed sub-consciously into self-sedation. Sadly, the platforms profiting from our anxiety are not going to heal it, and you know what? Sometimes discomfort is the appropriate response to uncomfortable things.

The Call is Coming from Inside the Hygge House

What if, instead of turning every crisis into content, every feeling into an aesthetic, and every moment of discomfort into an opportunity for consumption, we just... felt the thing?

I know, I know. In this economy? Yikes.

But hear me out… What if anxiety about the state of the world is actually appropriate? What if our addiction to comfort is making us less resilient? What if by avoiding discomfort, we're making ourselves more fragile? What if we need our anxiety to motivate actual change?

I'm not suggesting we all throw out our weighted blankets and delete our Calm apps (I still want Harry Styles to send me to sleep every night). Maybe we could start by being honest about what we're doing. Maybe comfort content isn't self-care – maybe it's more self-preservation in a world that feels increasingly unpreservable.

And maybe we should be asking ourselves some deeper questions:

Am I soothing or sedating?

Is this helping or hiding?

Do I need this comfort, or do I need to feel the discomfort?

What am I really trying to mask or wash away?

In a world that's literally and figuratively on fire, maybe our job isn't to make ourselves more comfortable. Maybe it's to get uncomfortable enough to actually do something about it.

But what do I know? I'm just another anxiety-riddled millennial taking her SSRIs and writing about anxiety and culture on the internet. Now if you'll excuse me, I must return to watching my ‘make-up magic’ videos to distract me from the social and existential dread I conjured while writing this piece.

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Who wrote this?

Meet Toyah - the arts and culture champion who's out here proving that robots haven't taken over (yet). While she's casually collecting leadership titles like they're vintage band tees, her real superpower is making the arts and culture accessible to everyone. Armed with a Masters degree and scholarships from fancy business schools in Melbourne and London, she's become the go-to voice for shaking up the cultural scene. Her motto? ‘Humans not robots’ - because let's be real, when was the last time AI wrote a symphony that made you cry?

Growing up, Latoyah discovered that art wasn't just for gallery walls and concert halls - it's the stuff that makes life actually worth living. Now she's taking that childhood obsession and turning it into a full-blown mission to make sure everyone gets their slice of the creative pie, regardless of their story. When she's not busy being an actual boss, you'll find her dropping knowledge bombs at local and international conferences, teaching the next gen of culture warriors at Melbourne's top unis and dropping feminist explorations over on her Substack. Think of her as your arts accessibility and community queen but make it human.