Restore Your Faith in Humanity at the Nicest Place on the Internet

You catch glimpses of sunny parks, busy street corners and various home dwellings as smiling faces step up to offer friendly hugs and a lullaby voice sings lightly. Sound nice? It is. And you might be surprised to learn that it exists, of all places, on the Internet.

“It doesn’t ask any questions,” explains Jeff Lam, one of the creators behind the nicest place on the Internet. “It doesn’t want to know why you’re sad or why you need a hug. I think that’s the nice thing about it.”

Lam and his co-creator Lauren Perlow had the idea for the site after a rough day at their ad agency jobs. They spent that weekend collecting about 30 video hugs from the streets of San Francisco — a process that strangers were surprisingly willing to participate in — and posted the site in November. About 300,000 people have visited it since.

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