Drywall TikTok Exists, And It’s So Relaxing

While TikTok may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you search for calm and relief from the stresses of daily life, the social media platform is proving to be more than just a place for Gen Z to post dance videos. I’m prepared to lose countless hours of my life to the many time-lapsed DIY home project and furniture flip videos. They’re basically everything I love about HGTV renovation shows, condensed into short videos.

A recent Twitter post by @badnewsbarrett breathed second life into one particularly popular video by TikTok user @putch8, proving that even weeks after the original video was posted, the internet just can’t enough of drywall TikTok. 

@badnewsbarrett shared @putch8’s video on Twitter and wrote, “I will never let go of drywall tiktok.” That’s all it took for the retweets and comments to start pouring in.

“It’s like ASMR for the eyeballs,” @mixrigg replied.

“This soothes my soul,” @cherylprice tweeted.

“Could watch this all day,” @sea4sky commented.

The original video, which @putch8 posted on May 2, has been viewed 47.7 million times and received 4.5 million likes. He reposted it more recently on June 26, and so far it has 3.3 million likes and been liked more than 438,000 times. The 20-year-old from Montana currently has 6.3 million total likes for his videos.

Like many TikTok videos, watching @putch8 apply and smooth out drywall mud or repair a hole using a butterfly patch, is both strangely soothing and satisfying. If you find yourself watching them over and over, you’re not alone. There is actually a reason our brains find these videos hypnotic to a certain degree. It’s because they tap into a psychological theory called “Symbolic Self Completion,” Evan Malone, professor of Art and Film Philosophy at the University of Houston, told Insider. “You can get the same sense of satisfaction and sense of self-completion watching each step as you would doing the whole project yourself.”