Free Human Kindness: How ASMR Is Helping Us Survive the Pandemic, Clinical Depression and America's Culture Wars(Part One)

Throughout 2020 my adult son Charlie and I were locked down together in our Los Angeles apartment, so we necessarily got absorbed much more deeply into each other’s lives than we had in a long time. Perhaps what interested me the most was his engagement with the ASMR community. I learned about the social and emotional support work that YouTube creators and Twitch streamers were leading in their communities during the pandemic. These self-care and community support practices were built into the ASMR ethos. The subculture itself is somewhat guarded against press, because the media has portrayed its videos as strange and inexplicable. I’ve tried to get some leading ASMR influencers to appear on my podcast without luck (The invitation still stands if you are reading this). So, I wanted to get my son to share some of his own reflections as a participant-observer. 

Because this community is little known to outsiders, I wanted to have you start with a basic explanation which we can deepen over time. What is ASMR? How might you characterize the ASMR subculture? What kinds of content does it produce and why?

ASMR is an art movement, an aesthetic, a culture and even a philosophy. Streamers and YouTubers produce videos which are often designed to convey a sense of relaxation, kindness, fellowship and a greater appreciation for life's small pleasures. The videos can also be quite whimsical, and often they revel in absolutely trivial subjects. Welcoming people from all walks of life is a foundational principle, but that's usually accompanied by an underlying sense of unity and togetherness. ASMR is, in short, the anti-Twitter. There's so much important, hard work that needs to be done in our society, so many difficult subjects we need to talk about, and service to others is an important part of a balanced life. But if you become so damaged by the toxicity of our world that you develop serious mental health problems, you're not going to be in an effective place to help anyone. You're going to need other people to invest a lot of their energy in helping you. In times like those you look for the helpers, and ASMRtists are there with an endless supply of wholesomeness and love. 

Nothing beats real world, face-to-face companionship, but as the pandemic has shown us that isn’t always an option. When I discovered ASMR I was living in a small Louisiana town where I didn’t know even one person who I could call up to go for a beer. I tried and tried to make “real” friends but felt rejected. I’ve spent long parts of my adulthood without much money to socialize, and without much social status or confidence, partly as a result of clinical depression. I’m not alone in those regards. 

You can consume platforms like YouTube as a series of disjointed clickbait. You can also flip through the TV dial, watching things at random. Alternatively, you can choose a favorite serial drama and watch it for ten seasons. YouTubers and streamers may never become your real life friends, but when you watch them and talk to them regularly they also stop being strangers. They offer steadfast daily companionship to those who are love-poor. You can listen to them ramble about their days and it will make a trip to the laundromat go by faster. Often ASMR videos are the last thing I watch before I fall asleep, because they clear my mind of worries. If porn imperfectly meets your sexual needs, they imperfectly meet your social needs. In an ideal world, all of us would have so much healthy human contact we wouldn’t need to look for it online, but humanity has never been that way. Isolated farmers and social outcasts of previous generations simply sat alone in the dark. I think this is better. I’ve even found that some of the positive social skills modeled in ASMR can be learned. Consuming enough free digital kindness can offer you the courage to look for someone who wants to hear you prattle on about your day.

Many people believe that ASMR videos just involve people blowing on wind chimes or licking microphones. Those popular media images of ASMR reduce the genre to a postage stamp sized simplification, which is not entirely inaccurate, but far from complete. If there's one formal convention shared by all ASMR content it is calming sounds. If there’s a second, it’s how slow videos often are, forcing you to stop rushing around, flitting from one thing to the next, and be calm. It's yoga without the exercise. Words are spoken in soft tones or whispers.  

Often Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting is cited as the inspiration point for ASMR because of the host’s calm, soft-spoken demeaner and eternal optimism. But, I think Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is an equally significant predecessor. Most of the ASMRtists are of an age where they developed as children listening to his messages of love and peace. The way he directly addresses the audience throughout each episode and shares his hobbies and interests with them feels very much like ASMR.

If I could get people to watch one video which captures ASMR’s aesthetic it would be one of Goodnight Moon’s travelogues. When I’ve recorded vacation footage the sound has been choppy and the camera work has been disorienting. She creates these contemplative little wanders full of slow, smooth shots, curated atmospheric sounds and whispered narration. 

(Goodnight Moon is one of my absolute favorites, so I’m going to reference her a lot)

ASMR is a broad category. Any video where the filmmaker speaks softly or makes soothing with the intention of relaxing you is an ASMR video. Generally speaking the highest rated ASMR in America and Western Europe are whisper rambles, where the artist chats with the camera about subjects which interest them. For example, BlueWhispers sometimes flips through the new seed catalogues, telling you about the plants she likes to plant in her garden; Russian-born Gentle Whispering often teaches us professional insights about what fashions and accessories will flatter you; former rapper MattyTingles loves shoes and makes a lot of videos where he and his friends share their favorite pairs.

 The western world also loves roleplay videos, where the artist portrays a fictional role and monologues for the camera. Sometimes that means portraying a particular profession. In one video the Chris Hemsworth-esque FredsVoice, who has a fantastic British accent, portrays a professional photographer and pretends to have you pose for a modeling shoot; in another video, WhispersRed replicates the familiar sounds and small talk of an English barber shop. Other times artists cosplay as their favorite media characters and act out original scenes. Glow is a Star Wars nerd, so she dressed up as Darth Maul and pretended to hold you as her prisoner. A group of European artists collaborated on a richly-ornamented interpretation of A Christmas Carol for the holidays one year. Still other times artists create original characters. Goodnight Moon has an entire Medieval fantasy world called Babblebrook where she plays all of the different people in town and plays out storylines between them. Gibi, currently the most-followed English language ASMRtist, is the queen of all kinds of roleplays. My favorite of her creations is Tatyana, your Eastern European personal assistant, who measures you for wax figures and helps you to buy private islands. If you look at Japanese and Korean ASMR, or ACMP (Russian ASMR), or ASMR porn, those are different worlds. There are different trends in each. 

 Note that in most whisper ramble and roleplay videos the artist directly addresses you, the audience, and pretends as though you’re actually in the room with them, even asking you questions and pausing for you to answer. (You can answer in your head, or not at all, if you feel silly playing along at home.) Their goal is to make you feel like someone is paying attention to you in a friendly way and treating you the way you deserve to be treated. But occasionally artists turn the dynamic on its head, clownishly portraying rude and disruptive characters in order to make you laugh. 

Here is a playlist with all of the aforementioned examples. Once someone figures out what types of videos they most enjoy it’s easy to find variations on a theme. 

ASMR is named after a cool scientific phenomenon which I first noticed in childhood, long before I had any idea what it was called. Every once in a while I'd hear a sound like the howling of wind through the trees or the crunching of autumn leaves that gave me a pleasant little shiver. Sometimes when people would touch the back of my neck I’d shiver even more. Both of those are ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), also referred to as "the tingles." I experience that occasionally while listening to ASMR videos, and it's pleasant, but personally I always find it overstated in media coverage. 

If you want to talk about neuroscience, here's a way of looking at it which speaks much more to my experience. When I hear forks scratching against ceramic dishes in the sink it gives me a shudder of revulsion. If I'm dining with someone who chews with their mouth open it disturbs me so much I need to leave the room. Those are examples of a really common psychological phenomenon called misophonia. I also deal with sensory integration disorder, a related problem. If I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and they're loudly crunching nuts or there's a fussy toddler having a tantrum nearby I can barely string two sentences together. Your brain is supposed to focus on relevant information and fade out irrelevant background noise without your needing to consciously think about it, but mine is bad at that. I suspect many - if not most - people have had experiences like those, it's just a question of how frequently it detracts from your quality of life. I'm not a neuroscience researcher, but those issues seem to be really common among ASMR fans. I would speculate that the more unsettled someone is by painful sound frequencies or disruptive noises, the more soothing they find pleasant other frequencies or harmonious sounds (and thus ASMR videos.) They might also get the tingles, but they might simply feel like their fur or feathers are being smoothed down in the right direction rather than being rubbed against the grain. I'd also say it's an especially good place for people with depression, anxiety and related disorders to heal and maintain good mental health.

I like the way you discuss the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of ASMR practice as well as its neurological roots. And with your suggestion that it is the “anti-twitter” you start to get at the social and political dimensions too.  In what ways does ASMR illustrate a different model of how online communities might operate than the social dynamics many find frustrating and even frightening on Twitter in the Age of Trump? How do the content producers and consumers, if those are even the right words, relate to each other? The word ‘community’ has been so overused in the Web 2.0 era that many of us have become skeptical about it; the promises of “virtual community” seem a quaint reminder of another time and place, like haircuts in high school yearbooks. Yet, when I watch your interactions with ASMR folks, it does seem to have some elements of a gift economy, even if some of the artists find ways to make money off of what they produce. I don’t mean to romanticize this. But I would like to get your sense of what you see yourself as participating in here.

Generally speaking, I believe social media is one of the most corrosive things to ever happen to American politics and society, making it harder to solve every other problem we face. I guess it's a little ironic I feel that way, since you’re the author of Spreadable Media. But overall, for me, ASMR has the healthiest online fan community I've encountered since before the advent of Facebook. 

YouTube comments, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok offer additional places for artists to express themselves and share brief interactions with supporters. But, generally I think of ASMR communities in terms of two platforms, Twitch and Discord. Twitch is essentially a one-way Zoom conversation. The creator sits in front of their webcam and performs live. You can then comment in a chatroom and they can read what you say and reply verbally. Discord provides private message boards. The artist gives you permission to join and they can kick you out. But as long as you act appropriately you can hang out with them and their other core supporters. The one I'm active in has threads about far flung topics like video games, sports, animal pictures, trivia, poetry and self-care. Every week we vote as a group on a movie to watch together, and often stay up until all hours watching sitcoms and cartoons afterward. Sometimes we play networked video games and all converse over voice chat while we compete. The artist is certainly doted on, but all of us are homies. Several of the people in the community have Twitch streams and we drop by to support all of them if we can.

 There are several reasons why, I suspect, ASMR fares somewhat better than most online communities. One is the subject matter. Generally relaxation videos appeal to empaths and sensitive types. The lower the volume of comments a community receives, the easier it is to police. Generally, in ASMR communities trolls are escorted off the premises very quickly. Personal animosities are mediated or split up ASAP. Artists typically designate some of the supporters they know best to moderate their communities and because the moderators are invested in the brand they loyally defend it from malicious assailants.

 With all of that said, there is unfortunately a darker side to everything. Sadly, a lot of the most toxic elements of the community are reserved for the artist as an individual rather than the group as a whole. Many ASMRtists have sensitive personalities. They might be a nurse who wants to ease people’s pain; or a mom who wants to nurture; or a drug store cashier who wants to feel a greater sense of purpose. They encounter people who want to bluntly critique their work. From the outside those comments may seem fair and harmless enough, but if they catch someone at the wrong moment they can really sting. Because it's a visual medium performers constantly have people evaluating their appearance. One moment they might hear, “Your chest looks nice in that dress” and the next they might hear “You look pale and sickly. Are you taking care of yourself?” Performers have shared Twitter DMs they received where people called them slurs or made threats against their family. I suspect virtually all ASMRtists have dealt with amateur sleuths curious about their personal information, and I know of at least one who had a stalker show up at their home. In short, they deal with all of the negative aspects of celebrity culture, but without making millions of dollars. But they deal with some of the negatives that therapists do when they try to help people who are mentally ill or miserable. Someone says, “I’m thinking about killing myself and you’re the only person who’s keeping me from doing it. I need you to pay constant attention to me.” I don't want to overstate all of that. We’re talking about a tiny fraction of the audience. But I'm painting such an otherwise - and deservedly - rosy picture that I do want to acknowledge some of the negatives.

To read the rest, see Part Two and Part Three.

Charlie Jenkins is a novelist and transmedia consultant. His upcoming debut novel, American Wrestling 1989, is a melodrama which explore cultural conflicts in the world of 1980s professional wrestling and the ways that broken and discarded people can either heal or hurt one another as they endure their own personal tragedies. He was previously the Creative Director of Chaotic Good Studios and Research Director for The Alchemists Transmedia Storytelling Company, serving clients like NBC, The CW, Blizzard Entertainment and BaseFX.