Digital Comfort Food

25-08-2026

The world is a stressful and turbulent place. Every algorithm on the planet wants you to engage with it as much as possible. After figuring out what pushes your little brain buttons, it feeds you more and more digital junk. Short videos. Little dopamine hits. Rage bait. Just to have you scroll or watch a few minutes longer.

This is the part where I would love to tell you that I figured out a way to detox, and get your brain off the cheap thrills, immune to the almighty algorithm. Well. I can't. I fall into the doomscroll way to often to preach to you about any permanent solutions.

These days can be very intense for me. Without going into detail. Transitioning is hard. Especially the social part. When I am home, in my safe space, I really should not engage with anything that grinds my mental fortitude down even more. I want to be calm. Do the daily housework, and unwind. Maybe laugh a bit. Watch something on the screen, that engages me, but in a relaxing fashion. Something comfortable and familiar.

Let's call it digital comfort food. When you watch it, you know it. It gives you this feeling of relaxation. Maybe you are re-watching a show you've seen before. Maybe a new episode of some series just dropped. There is just something about knowing what you are getting, and I think what's also very important: choosing it yourself. You made the conscious decision to watch this. You took the decision to unwind with it.

My personal gourmet digital comfort food is almost 20 years old. One tv-show and two OG internet internet series.

Let's start with my favourite tv-show of all time!

A horror show? Comfortable? Yeah! I grew up with this show. I saw the first season when it aired back on german free tv in 2007. I was 15 and it was basically the first "adult" show I had seen. The earlier seasons are for sure a lot grittier, but having seen them so many times, they don't really affect me anymore.

I wouldn't call the later seasons horror. It get's too silly, too absurd, and no one really dies in that show. Or maybe they do die, Sam and Dean switch that role up every other season but they always come back. It's a bit of a meme that no one stays dead, but the fact that these two brothers keep making worse and worse deals to keep each other safe is the red string that ties it all together.

The plot is not convoluted, there is plenty to watch with 327 episodes over 15 seasons. I watched them all. More than once. And every year from I could, I would make sure to watch the new season. For over 15 years. It's cozy to me because I grew up with it. When I see Sam, Dean and Castiel on the screen, it seems like the world is a bit better. Simpler.

Coming up next: Internet series number one and number two!

In 2004 or 2005 a friend of mine showed me this really funny video on a website called cinemassacre.com (Which seems to be defunct at the moment. Huh.). It was a guy in a white shirt, with short brown hair and nerdy glasses spewing profanities at really bad NES games. The Angry Video Game Nerd. I loved it. Even though my english wasn't really good back then, it was enough to understand the videos, and I think AVGN and what I will talk about after really helped me get a good grasp on the english language even before I had it in school as a subject. James Rolfe, the nerd himself, still produces the show to this day. And every time there is a new video, it is on the top of my priority list. I re-watch older episodes from time to time. It's simple. It's funny (to me). And it's comfortable because it's another thing that was with me throughout my life. I will leave you with one of my favourite early episode. Watch out kids, this one is in 4:3. Spooky.

Lastly. Just like the nerd "reviews" shitty games. The Nostalgia Critic does so with movies. Basically every week for almost 20 years, Doug Walker has put out a 20-ish minute review about a movie. Yeah. I know. It's cringe. But, again. I grew up with it. And I find it relaxing. He has really relinquished on the more intense screaming during the commentary, and I do like the newer format with the "sketches" a lot. Here is an all time classic.

The whole early youtube reviewer and channel awesome thing definitely deserves it's own blog post. One day...

So. There you have it. I think I really just wanted to share something that brings me joy, and brings me peace. Silly, parts of my life, that were and still are weekly rituals. And while I can continue doing so, the world feels a bit more whole, more normal and a bit more comfortable to me.

- Cass