Exploring From Home

Brandwatch Bulletin: Exploring From Home

How we're seeing the world from our desks.

Another week, another bulletin. Today we’re looking at the ways people are exploring the world without stepping out of their front door.

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Getting out and about

Without leaving your desk, have you found yourself aimlessly wandering the streets of Tokyo recently? Or biking down a mountain trail? How about riding a Moscow metro train with the sounds of a local radio station in your ears?

The pandemic and its lockdowns have curtailed our activities in countless ways, but, humans being humans, we’ve all been looking for creative ways to mitigate this. After looking at vicarious living last Friday, today we’re looking at how people are exploring the world without leaving their homes.

Going for an international wander

The idea of an hour-long video simply showing the point of view of someone walking around a city may not fill you with excitement at first thought. But the popularity of this genre has exploded during the pandemic.

Take the VIRTUAL JAPAN YouTube channel, for example.

Their content is generally all high quality POV footage of places in Japan, often in cities. They attempt to recreate the atmosphere of actually being in these places, with long shots and atmospheric sound.

VIRTUAL JAPAN was created in January 2019. According to data from Social Blade, they had just over 1,000 subscribers in March 2020, and today they have 111k. Their most popular video, a nighttime walk around Tokyo’s red light district, was published last August and has already racked up 2.6m views.

Listening to the world

Someone who has been missing the feeling of exploration is software engineer John Ornelas. YouTube videos weren’t enough, so John decided to create Travel Remotely, which he published last month.

Travel Remotely is a web app that allows you to pick a city, a form of travel such as train or walking, and the time of day. It then pulls in a video matching your specifications. On top of that, you can set the volume of the street noise and listen to a local radio station.

That means in just a few seconds you could find yourself on the Moscow metro in the morning listening to Russian pop music, or wandering the streets of Bangkok at night as electro music plays.

The addition of the radio stations is a genius touch, and came as Radio Garden, a site that lets you listen to local radio stations from around the world, saw a massive jump in interest.

This suggests that people want more than to just see other places. What they want is to feel immersed in the sound and culture too, and apps like Radio Garden and Travel Remotely offer exactly that.

Windows into the world

From one creative piece of work to another, except this one is a bit more stationary. WindowSwap went live back in July, aimed at all of those who were stuck at home but had the urge to see another part of the world.

The site allows you to turn a computer window into one that looks out on places all over the planet.

All of the views are submitted by users, offering a breadth of views, locations, and sounds. It may sound mundane on paper, but in reality it’s relaxing, and gives you a sense of having got away for a quiet break from the humdrum of your own home.

What makes WindowSwap stand out from the other escapist options in this bulletin is the lack of control. You’ll be randomly assigned a window video, which means you’re just as likely to get a serene view of a tropical beach as you are to get a windswept and hail-battered scene on a tiny Scottish island.

And often it’s nice to get one that isn’t so picturesque – it makes the experience feel more real. Maybe a quiet suburban road on a gray day isn’t the most beautiful of scenes, but the normality is a reminder that we’re all in the same boat. Something as simple as a different view from our window is enough to feel some connection to the outside world.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today. We’ll be back on Friday so don’t miss out, subscribe to the Brandwatch Bulletin right away.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch React team

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