Vibes, gender and musical affordance on the internet

For Gen-Z students, self-care craving millennials and internet music fans alike, the figure of “Lofi Girl” on YouTube will be deeply familiar. In green sweater and over-ear headphones, the anime illustration known by some fans as “Jade” writes ambiguously in a never-ending notebook, her cat snoozing on the windowsill.1 As one beat melts into the next, she occasionally glances outside but otherwise remains in deep focus, the music flowing over her in a perpetual state of calm. Jade is the commanding visual of the 24/7 YouTube stream “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” which began in 2017, complementing Lofi Girl’s existing suite of music tracks and compilations.2 Soaring in popularity during COVID-19, the channel rebranded from ChilledCow to Lofi Girl in 2021, reflecting, as Steven Gamble writes, Jade’s growing status as “a visual emblem for an entire genre of popular music and its associated community...