Videos to watch to distract yourself from the election.

A Fun and Distracting Page Where Nothing Bad Can Happen and You Can Quell Your Election Anxiety

A Fun and Distracting Page Where Nothing Bad Can Happen and You Can Quell Your Election Anxiety

The XX Factor
What Women Really Think
Nov. 8 2016 9:32 AM

A Fun and Distracting Page Where Nothing Bad Can Happen and You Can Quell Your Election Anxiety

thinkstockphotos176695635
Be calm, embrace distraction.

vitanovski/Thinkstock

Ho-hum, nothing much doing today here at Slate. Election, schmalection. See, you’ve stumbled upon a one-page internet oasis where we’re pretending that the fate of the free world isn’t hanging by a thread for the next 12 or so hours. In order to help everyone get through the day, we’ve stockpiled a bunch of things to watch to distract you from, well, *gestures broadly* all of that out there. Come on in, the water’s fine! We hereby promise that nothing on this page will pertain to exit polls, the electoral map, deleted emails, or really anything at all.

Did you know that there used to be world championships for disco dancing? And furthermore, that many of them are available to watch online? Don’t even think about what was happening outside these neon walls in 1980 and whether certain people were championing women’s and children’s causes while other people were being sued by the Justice Department; just watch a bunch of people in athletic jumpsuits do the hustle!

Advertisement

Slate’s own Dear Prudence, Mallory Ortberg, once recommended this video of Norwegian bodybuilders visiting a tiny village that makes them feel even bigger than they already are. It boosts their self-esteem, they explained. It is a triumph of the human spirit.

Remember when Solange got married, had a wedding that made all other weddings look pathetic, and did a little performance with her son at the reception to “No Flex Zone”? It was cute then, and it’s cute now. Plus you can sing along and replace the word flex with stress to remind yourself that this page is your no-stress zone.

I’m told that cat lovers will appreciate this commercial where a bunch of cats wreck a nice Christmas scene full of presents and trees and breakable items.

For the dog people, here, watch a golden retriever completely fail to understand the concept of racing.

Advertisement

Color Me Badd was an early-’90s boy band, not to be confused with Color Me Mine, the chain of paint-your-own pottery studios. Their 1991 hit “All 4 Love” was the inspiration for the Andy Samberg/Justin Timberlake Saturday Night Live digital shorts like “D--- in a Box.” Those videos are all well and good, but times like these call for returning to the source: a catchy song paired a video so cheesy you won’t be able to believe anyone thought it was ever appropriate to air on TV.

Once, before the Bad Times, there was a movie called Guardians of the Galaxy, and that movie had a character/tree monster named Groot who only said, “I am Groot.” And what’s the only thing that could be better than Groot? Baby Groot! Specifically, Baby Groot dancing.

I think of this 15-year-old who appeared on a Maury episode called “I’m in 9th grade … You can’t stop me from having a baby!” from time to time. Did she ever have the baby she was threatening to have? Did she indeed dress it in all brand names? I like to think that somewhere, right now, that baby is wearing child-size Yeezys and driving around one of those stupid baby-cars that no parent should ever buy for a child.

Lately other media outlets have tried to convince us that cake-decorating videos and paint-mixing videos are worth watching. You’ll come across the occasional gem like this cookie masterpiece, but for the most part, they’re pretty disappointing. The only antidote to all this daintiness? Crushing. Head over to the endlessly cathartic Hydrolic Press YouTube channel and watch bowling balls, fruit, and even smaller crushing machines get crushed.

This video, in which a bunch of snakes attempt to catch a lizard, isn’t soothing exactly, but why not let your heart to race about something else for a change? Make sure you watch until the end: a parable about making it through a long, carnivore-filled field? The lizard is your candidate, the lizard is you, the lizard is all of us.