Watching these custom tile installation videos is oddly satisfying

Watching a custom tile installation might sound as interesting as watching paint dry, but after perusing a few videos by MMC Tiles you may find the work oddly satisfying.

The Toronto-based custom tiling company mainly uses its Instagram page to provide customers with insight into its process. However, some clips focus on a single satisfying moment in the construction: the final tile being methodically placed in, like the last puzzle piece.

MMC Tiles even acknowledged the allure of watching those “completion” videos.

“Those videos of the last sheet being installed over the drain is really just for the camera,” the company said on Instagram.

In one video, a group of hexagon tiles is inserted perfectly around a floor drain.

In another, a slab of tile is inserted to finish an elaborate leaf-like pattern.

A longer video shows a worker meticulous lay out a full set of zigzag tiles to cover a bathroom floor.

The three videos alone range from over 61,000 to 184,000 views. The fact that people like this relatively new genre of “oddly satisfying” videos has even caught the attention scientists.

A huge part of the enjoyment stems from symmetry and completion, according to Live Science.

A 2017 study in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry asked people to jot down all the words they could memorize from a list. When researchers stopped the participants from finishing their lists a sense of incompleteness was triggered causing distress.

Watching the completion of these projects that has the opposite effect.

Jessica Gall Myrick, a media psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, told LiveScience that the phenomenon may be related to stress.

“Even if you don’t consciously realize you’re stressed, your body is aware that you’re stressed or physiologically aroused,” Myrick said. “That could drive you toward this type of soothing, interesting content.”

If you liked this article, you may want to read about these peel and stick floor tiles.

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