ViralWorld
Back to Watch

Lofi Girl

You might remember it as ChilledCow, lofi hip hop radio, beats to relax/study to

Watch now50 of 60

2017·The platform era

A YouTube channel that plays quiet instrumental music without stopping, over an animation of a girl writing at a desk.

At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
ChilledCow
Spread in
2017
Format
Phenomenon
Era
The platform era
Made by
Dimitri Somoguy; the animation is by Juan Pablo Machado
Original title
ChilledCow, until March 2021
Origin
No single original
Available
Playable from the source

What this wasThe story

An endless livestream of instrumental hip hop under a looping animation of a student at her desk. It ran continuously for years, became the default background of remote study, and its brief takedown in 2022 was treated as news.

Why it matteredWhat changed

When YouTube took the stream down by mistake in 2020 it had been running for 13,000 hours. The two taken down in 2022 had run for 21,000 each.

TimelineIn order

  1. Made

    The channel is created.1

  2. Posted

    It begins streaming lo-fi music, using a clip of a girl studying from a Studio Ghibli film.1

  3. Corrected

    After YouTube removes the stream over the film clip, a commissioned animation replaces it.1

  4. Taken down

    YouTube removes the channel without explanation and restores it after protests.1

  5. Later

    The channel reaches ten million subscribers.1

  6. Taken down

    Two streams are taken down by a copyright claim that YouTube later calls abusive. They return two days later.1

The version you rememberNot the same thing

The version people rememberThe Lofi Girl

A character drawn for the channel by Juan Pablo Machado in 2017.1

The originalA scene from Whisper of the Heart

The stream first used Shizuku Tsukishima, from the 1995 Studio Ghibli film.1

More from hereIn this collection

More like thisRelated

  1. Trend2017

    Dancing Pallbearers

    Footage recorded years before it became one of the most recognisable memes on earth, so origin and virality are separated by three years.

  2. Trend2016

    Pokémon Go

    For about six weeks in 2016 the entire world went outside to look at its phone in the same way.

  3. Trend2017

    r/place

    A blank canvas, one pixel every five minutes, and a million strangers negotiating a picture.

  4. Trend2018

    Dame Tu Cosita

    A 1997 Panamanian song and a green alien that would not stop dancing.

  5. Trend2020Watch

    Khaby Lame

    The most-followed person on TikTok became so without saying a word.

  6. Trend2019

    The Backrooms

    A snapshot of an empty room that the internet agreed was somewhere you could get trapped.

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

The version shown here is an official copy on YouTube, published by a rights holder.

Where it came fromWhat we know

This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. The example shown is one surviving copy and is not claimed as the first.

View the official copy on YouTube

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — Lofi Girl

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

Keep browsingElsewhere on ViralWorld