Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response - known more commonly as ASMR - is a phenomenon growing in popularity that is almost too bizarre to believe.
It’s all about ambient sounds, and people claim it gives them “braingasms” and tingling sensations in their heads and necks.
There are now thousands of ASMR videos on YouTube, and during Super Bowl Sunday, there was even an entire ad dedicated to it starring Zoe Kravitz.
The beer company Michelob Ultra was behind the ad, which showed the actor popping the top off the glass beer bottle and listening to the pleasing sound of fizzing bubbles.
In November 2017, Ikea released a 25 minute ASMR commercial.
It’s part of a campaign called Oddly Ikea.
The video features a woman whispering (in a slightly creepy fashion) and the sounds of a bed sheet being pulled over a mattress, a pillow being plumped and hangers sliding along a clothes rail.
It’s undeniably bizarre, but people love it. There are over 9.6 million ASMR videos on YouTube.
There hasn’t been much research into ASMR yet, but most people say they watch it to relax, de-stress or sleep better.
In 2015, researchers from Swansea University conducted a study on 500 ASMR fans.
They found that the majority of people respond well to whispering, crisp sounds and slow movement.
The study also found that five per cent of people watch ASMR videos for sexual stimulation.
“There are a lot of people who latch onto some ASMR videos involving attractive women and dismiss what we found to be a very nuanced activity as exclusively sexual. Our findings will hopefully dispel that idea,” the researchers explained.
“The fact that a huge number of people are triggered by whispering voices suggests that the sensation is related to being intimate with someone in a non-sexual way. Very few people reported a sexual motivation for ASMR, it really is about feeling relaxed or vulnerable with another person,” they added.
Most of the videos feature people doing incredibly mundane things like folding towels or tapping a light, but they rack up hundreds of thousands of views.
It’s a stark contrast to the fast-paced world of constant notifications, alerts and pop-up ads in which we live.
