Next time you need to take a break from worrying about humanity's ultimate demise, click on this video, pick your favorite shiny glass orb, and press play.

For just a moment, lose yourself in one of YouTube's oddest preoccupations: marble racing. For millions of people, the videos have acted like a kind of audio therapy or alternative entertainment for years.

Some YouTube commenters write that marble races (at least those without commentary) function like accidental ASMR videos, even though they're much louder than typical ASMR fare.

"I don't know why, but watching this really chills me out!" one commenter wrote on a particularly calming marble video.

The king of the phenomenon is 32-year-old Jelle Bakker from Amersfoort, The Netherlands. His channel, Jelle's Marble Runs, reigns over the sport, with over 70,000 subscribers and almost 30 million views.

Jelle participates in both of the two major kinds of marble-centered hobbies: making tracks hundreds of feet long intended for racing multiple marbles, and creating marble "runs"—elaborate paths for one glass sphere to follow while spectators watch.

Sometimes he just goes apeshit, and releases a video like this one, where over ten thousand marbles flow through a mesmerizing, almost impossibly large marble paradise that Jelle built himself.

When I asked Jelle why he builds such elaborate marble tracks, he said, "I got one as a gift from my parents, I have a form of autism and I'm really interested in moving things, sounds, lights, etc."

"Is this marble heaven? Where marbles go when kids don't want them anymore?" one commenter asked.

More common are just plain marble races, which have evolved into elaborate tournaments that hundreds of thousands of people watch. While most marbles in the competitions are merely identified by their color, Jelle has taken to associating colors with specific nationalities, so you can easily root for your home country.

Gif from ScottAdamSmith001's video "Marble Run in the Swimming Pool (#26)"

Jelle is gifted in two ways: first, he has the technical skills and patience necessary to build insanely large courses, and he knows how to strategically please his fans.

When Greg Woods, another YouTube user, remixed one of Jelle's most popular marble races with his own commentary, Jelle re-posted it, snagging hundreds of thousands of new views. His audiences loved it, and the altered video was picked up by a handful of US media outlets.

Jelle is not free from competition. There are hundreds of amateur marble racers that have turned their houses and apartments into sanctuaries for their masterpieces. Hundreds film their creations in the hopes of gaining some attention online.

One of the biggest is ScottAdamSmith001, a 16-year-old Australian who has made dozens of marble races, including one that goes underwater, which garnered more than 5 million views. He told me that many of his runs, which he constructs with his 14-year-old brother, take up to 20 hours to build.

Gif from EvaristeWK's video "Marble Race 30 (Special edition with 30 marbles)"

There's also EvaristeWK, a prolific racer that has uploaded over 600 videos. He too tried out the marble-racing-in-a-swimming pool trick, but couldn't get nearly as many views as ScottAdamSmith001.

Some enthusiasts have constructed even more absurd projects, like the Swedish band Wintergatan, who made a gigantic marble-fueled instrument, to the tune of 18 million views.

Among the marble racers I spoke to, Jelle was by far the most imaginative about how far he could take the eccentric hobby.