Ask Lemmy

I use Futurama. It's my comfort show and I've watched it so much it makes me sleepy now haha

Technology Connections doing a deep dive into something like how a VHS cassette tape works. I’m interested, but if it’s late, the topic also knocks me out in about 15 min.

A fan and total darkness.

Audiobooks.

Mostly the one I'm currently reading, but I have to listen to that part again the next day.

If that's too engaging I listen to Nothing much happens, Bedtime stories where as it says, not much is happening, read in a soothing voice.

Good sleep hygene ie dark quiet cold is incredibly good for you. It makes you 5-10% better at literally everything. Falling asleep to content is incredibly bad for this its literally making ur dumber and more distracted.

Alarm clock sound.

Darkness and a home server fan

I've been listening to Fall of Civilizations, with some Kosmo before that.

I used to try to put on ocean things, but the animals were all too pretty, so I'd end up watching it instead of sleeping.

Math class

ASMR videos. I know some people associate them with fetish stuff but they're really varied and most are just about relaxing.

Classic movies, usually from TCM. I love classics but they’re often fantastic to fall asleep to with their slower stories and quieter dialog.

A book.

More Kitboga for the last few months.

Extremely longform videos where an incredibly talented voice actor/software engineer/performance artist/ADHD dad calls scammers and wastes their time, collecting things like bank accounts to report as compromised, BTC wallet addresses to investigate, and the like. Streams all of his calls live, uses a physical voice transformer, and plays like 12 different characters on the fly. Sometimes plays four characters AT A TIME.

The relaxing sound of scammers just screaming obscenities in other languages.

The I cant sleep podcast. Just a guy reading random wikipedia articles.

Fucking quiet. Which is damn near impossible to get, which is what gives me insomnia

Almost all the suggestions here are videos. Who wants light from a screen keeping them awake when they are trying to sleep? Put on some very quiet music instead. Best for me is when it's something I know pretty well.

Whatever book I'm currently reading.

An irreverant/fantasy show with sypathetic well-intentioned protagonists, at minimum understandable volume, with characters and plotlines that invite analysis. Something about the pointlessness of studying a fantasy universe is a quite effective sleep aid. Various Star Trek series, Futurama, X-Files, Grimm, Family Guy...

For shows that are a great fit except for a few segments (boisterous theme songs, jarring fight scenes, etc) the PotPlayer Skip Playback function (hotkey ') is super useful. Also I have a basic script that gradually mutes the volume after 40 minutes.

Anything presented by Simon Whistler.

A couple YouTube channels I regularly turn to:

The Exploring Series - He does read throughs of SCP files and Lovecraft stuff, as well as other things. His voice and inflection are excellent for being calming, but not hammy like a lot of sleep story channels.

Astrum - Astronomy and physics related material. Also an excellent voice for this purpose.

Otherwise I sometimes just pull up a dungeon synth album that has the right mood that I'm feeling for the night.

Reading paper books.

Futurama. used to be Dan Carlin podcasts

Used to watch Forrest Gump and Harry Potter to fall asleep quite a few years ago.

Cosmos with Carl Sagan

I listen to a small fan generating white noise and sometimes my cat purring

As I transition to being an old man I'm increasingly falling asleep on the couch while my wife and I watch through the Alone show again. It's quite relaxing.

Last night I fell asleep listening to PBS WashingtonWeek but that's the first time I've fallen asleep with an earbud in in a long time. Usually I just have a fan on.

Casefile. It's not that content is boring or uninteresting. It just knocks me out.

Anything I’m watching by the time it hits 11:30 at night. Unless it’s a really great movie/show, I’m falling asleep on the couch.

Feldup, the French version of scare theater or other channels like that.

If it is really noisy or I need to sleep during the day (working shifts), waves sound from my Ozlo sleepbuds.

There's a few short fiction podcasts I like for bedtime stories:

• Myths & Legends
• Fictional
• LeVar Burton Reads
• The Magnus Archives

There's this Dutch fella who has a huge library of videos on YouTube where he plays these incredibly difficult custom levels for Doom. Despite the difficulty of playing them pistol start on the hardest difficulty, he's (almost) always very calm, narrating his experiences live with a low, calming voice. Game volume is also set low, so even with tons of explosions and screaming revenants his voice takes center stage.

While he isn't uploading gameplay videos anymore, save for user submitted levels, he was uploading daily videos for the better part of five years. There's plenty of material. I like to put a video or two on while unwinding for bed, and once I start feeling sleepy enough I just lock my phone screen, drop the volume til I can juuuust clearly hear his voice, and fall asleep.

decino

The crickets and frogs outside through an open window.

Woodworking or restoring old appliances and tools.

I like to listen to podcasts/youtube videos about religion. The two I use the most are Religion for Breakfast and Let's Talk Religion. I also sometimes listen to "Fall of Civilizations Podcast". I always get bored if I do nothing but listen to podcast, which helps me sleep.

I do wish I could listen to that last one though, since I like history and the production quality is good. A video can hold my attention for longer than a podcast for some reason.

BBW porn (and beating my meat) or porn with cute gay men (and beating my meat)

Long edits of Jerma streams :D