About

A Sleep Stream, also known as a Control My Room Live, refers to a livestream trend on YouTube, TikTok and Twitch where a creator lets their viewers control the lights, sounds and other physical or visual disrupters in their bedroom while they're trying to sleep by using the chat to send gifts and donations that enable text-to-speech functions and ear rape audio. The trend started on Twitch in 2018 by the streamer Asian Andy. Going into 2022, the trend became more notable due to streamers like iShowSpeed participating in it, as well as a creator named @jakeyboehm on TikTok.

Origin

On February 10th, 2018, Twitch streamer Asian Andy decided to host a livestream in which he tried to sleep while his followers typed in the chat, sending donations and setting off a loud text-to-speech feature that tried to keep Andy up. The following day, on February 11th, 2018, he uploaded a 13-minute "highlights" video to YouTube claiming in its title that he'd made roughly $2,000 while sleeping. Over the course of four years, the video received roughly 9.5 million views and 211,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

On December 25th, 2019, YouTuber Yoffa did his own "control my room" type livestream on YouTube Live. His setup was a little more elaborate than Andy's, wherein, through increments of USD donations, different sounds would play in his room such as an alarm, a jumpscare scream or any song via an Alexa in the room. Over the course of three years, the video received roughly 27,900 views and 800 likes (shown below).

On August 27th, 2020, Asian Andy decided to conduct another sleeping livestream, still using text-to-speech donations that were aimed to disrupt his sleep. During the livestream, Andy earned roughly $16,000. On August 28th, he uploaded the video to YouTube where it received roughly 5.4 million views over the course of two years (shown below). Additionally, his livestream and the profits he made from it were covered by news outlets like Mashable.^[1]

On February 10th, 2021, YouTuber Gael LEVEL posted a video about how to sync the lights in one's room to correlate with the chat, earning roughly 18,600 views in one year (shown below, left). On June 24th, 2021, YouTuber Maxim Gaming posted a sleeping stream, earning roughly 15,000 views over the course of 11 months (shown below, right).

On January 16th, 2022, Twitch streamer IGotCuteAnkles posted a sleep stream to YouTube, earning roughly 50,600 views over the course of four months (shown below, left). In March 2022, Twitch streamer and YouTuber iShowSpeed started conducting sleep streams. A clip of one was posted to YouTube by the channel Live Speedy on March 14th, 2022, earning roughly 7.2 million views in two months (shown below, right).

"Control My Room" TikTok Live

On March 6th, 2022, TikToker^[2] jakeyboehm uploaded a video, being the first of his content to show him doing TikTok livestreams which let the users control his room while he slept. In the video, an ear rape version of the Crab Rave song is playing. Over the course of two months, the video received roughly 27,200 plays (shown below, left). TikToker^[3] jakeyboehm posted another video on March 6th, alerting people to his Live. This video received more engagement earning roughly 715,100 plays and 43,700 likes in two months (shown below, right). In it, an ear rape version of the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song plays, waking him up.

Going into May 2022, TikToker jakeyboehm's room had become more elaborate, having a list written on his back wall of every possible gift (roses, lions, ferris wheels, etc.) correlating with a parallel distractor. On May 2nd, 2022, he posted a TikTok^[4] that showed this new set-up, earning roughly 1.7 million plays and 65,900 likes in 11 days (shown below, left).

Due to the engagement jakeyboehm was receiving, other TikTokers started recreating his Live set-up and idea. For instance, on May 3rd, 2022, TikToker^[5] alice_qxss posted a video of her "control my room" set-up, earning roughly 66,700 plays and 2,600 likes in 10 days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References