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ASMR Mania, Trigger-Chasing, and the Anxiety of Digital Repletion

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Abstract

Performers in YouTube autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos speak directly into the camera, very close, in sibilant whispers, consonant repetitions, and with an attitude of oversolicitous caregiving that verges on the robotic. The goal is to trigger tingling sensations in the beholder’s head, neck, and spine. Whereas ASMR enthusiasts appear to seek a formula for tingly satisfaction, this chapter argues that ASMR is symptomatic of broader digital–millennial trends in its repudiation of the ‘lack of lack itself’ Lacan identifies as anxiety. ASMR’s empty verbal patter and sounds of extreme proximity mobilize the orifical locus of the drive. The beholder is not emotionally invested, but instead ‘triggered’ like a binary switch. Such millennial investments in trigger pleasure represent a drive-centered, anxiety-busting response to the oversaturation endemic to digital culture.

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... ASMR videos incorporate audio, touch, taste, observation, and roleplay effects to deliver enjoyable and relaxing feelings. Over the past decade, the creation culture on YouTube has attracted numerous ASMR creators (known colloquially by users as "ASMRtists") to design a wide array of tingle-inducing sounds and actions to intentionally induce ASMR feelings [3,41]. ASMRtists have also leveraged ASMR videos to connect to the viewers and build online ASMR communities [3,62]. ...
... In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), experience-centered design requires researchers to capture and analyze the experiences generated from interaction and adopt the understanding of these experiences in design practices [25]. ASMR is a unique experience insofar as only some users experience the "tingles" as a response to particular triggers, and the same trigger may have different effects on different people [18,28,41,54]. Over the years, ASMRtists developed highly stylized and conventionally patterned ASMR videos to engage their viewers, and as a way to enhance affect and intimacy [3,71]. ...
... The ASMR trend on social media began with a Yahoo group sharing personal experiences of head tingles when watching specific kinds of videos [3,13]. Those original videos were dubbed "unintentional" ASMR, and involved real-world scenarios such as doctor's office examinations and suit fittings, captured for some non-ASMR purpose and uploaded, but subsequently re-contextualized for their ASMR tingle-triggering properties [20,41]. Afterward, creators made numerous "intentional" ASMR videos on YouTube in which ASMRtists purposefully use visual and sound stimuli and scripted roleplays to induce ASMR experiences [1,40]. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has grown to immense popularity on YouTube and drawn HCI designers' attention to its effects and applications in design. YouTube ASMR creators incorporate visual elements, sounds, motifs of touching and tasting, and other scenarios in multisensory video interactions to deliver enjoyable and relaxing experiences to their viewers. ASMRtists engage viewers by social, physical, and task attractions. Research has identified the benefits of ASMR in mental wellbeing. However, ASMR remains an understudied phenomenon in the HCI community, constraining designers' ability to incorporate ASMR in video-based designs. This work annotates and analyzes the interaction modalities and parasocial attractions of 2663 videos to identify unique experiences. YouTube comment sections are also analyzed to compare viewers' responses to different ASMR interactions. We find that ASMR videos are experiences of multimodal social connection, relaxing physical intimacy, and sensory-rich activity observation. Design implications are discussed to foster future ASMR-augmented video interactions.
... ASMR videos incorporate audio, touch, taste, observation, and roleplay effects to deliver enjoyable and relaxing feelings. Over the past decade, the creation culture on YouTube has attracted numerous ASMR creators (known colloquially by users as "ASMRtists") to design a wide array of tingle-inducing sounds and actions to intentionally induce ASMR feelings [3,41]. ASMRtists have also leveraged ASMR videos to connect to the viewers and build online ASMR communities [3,62]. ...
... In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), experience-centered design requires researchers to capture and analyze the experiences generated from interaction and adopt the understanding of these experiences in design practices [25]. ASMR is a unique experience insofar as only some users experience the "tingles" as a response to particular triggers, and the same trigger may have different effects on different people [18,28,41,54]. Over the years, ASMRtists developed highly stylized and conventionally patterned ASMR videos to engage their viewers, and as a way to enhance affect and intimacy [3,71]. ...
... The ASMR trend on social media began with a Yahoo group sharing personal experiences of head tingles when watching specific kinds of videos [3,13]. Those original videos were dubbed "unintentional" ASMR, and involved real-world scenarios such as doctor's office examinations and suit fittings, captured for some non-ASMR purpose and uploaded, but subsequently re-contextualized for their ASMR tingle-triggering properties [20,41]. Afterward, creators made numerous "intentional" ASMR videos on YouTube in which ASMRtists purposefully use visual and sound stimuli and scripted roleplays to induce ASMR experiences [1,40]. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has grown to immense popularity on YouTube and drawn HCI designers' attention to its effects and applications in design. YouTube ASMR creators incorporate visual elements, sounds, motifs of touching and tasting, and other scenarios in multisensory video interactions to deliver enjoyable and relaxing experiences to their viewers. ASMRtists engage viewers by social, physical, and task attractions. Research has identified the benefits of ASMR in mental wellbeing. However, ASMR remains an understudied phenomenon in the HCI community, constraining designers' ability to incorporate ASMR in video-based designs. This work annotates and analyzes the interaction modalities and parasocial attractions of 2663 videos to identify unique experiences. YouTube comment sections are also analyzed to compare viewers' responses to different ASMR interactions. We find that ASMR videos are experiences of multimodal social connection, relaxing physical intimacy, and sensory-rich activity observation. Design implications are discussed to foster future ASMR-augmented video interactions.
... The article introduces four types of intimacies as well as theoretical concepts of mediated intimacy, immediacy, and parasocial interaction, and I discuss these intimacies and concepts in relation to illustrative comments by some of the pacesetting power users of ASMR. A secondary goal of this study is to add to the existing limited body of knowledge regarding ASMR, mediation, and intimacy, and especially research dealing with the struggling aspects of technologically mediated ASMR (Andersen, 2015;Bennett, 2016;Harper, 2020;Manon, 2018;Poerio, 2016;Smith & Snider, 2019;Waldron, 2017). ...
Article
Full-text available
Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a tingling, static-like sensation in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli. Within recent years, ASMR has mostly been associated with videos on YouTube (technologically mediated ASMR) dedicated to make the users “tingle”, relax, and feel at ease. In this article, I explore the ambiguity of technology in relation to the ASMR experience and theoretically investigate how viewer-listeners might struggle to obtain an intimate and parasocial interaction in a technologically mediated ASMR context. The article introduces four types of intimacies as well as theoretical concepts of mediated intimacy, immediacy, and parasocial interaction, and I discuss these intimacies and concepts in relation to illustrative comments by some of the pacesetting power users of ASMR.
... This backdrop allows low-amplitude, or watch we call 'mundane' sounds, to "rise to the surface" (Manon 2018, 230) through a combination of binaural microphones and the viewer's use of headphones. Although, in suggesting that the sounds of ASMR simply emerge, Manon (2018) erases the labour that goes into creating ASMR. This absence points our attention to future questions and approaches, why do ASMR artists labour? ...
... Fredborg et al. (2018), McErlean & Banissy (2018), Poerio et al. (2018), del Campo & Kehle (2016) samt Barratt & Davis (2015). Kun enkelte artikler har undersøgt ASMR i en mediekulturel sammenhaeng (Andersen, 2014;Iossifi dis, 2017;Poerio, 2016;Bennett, 2016;Bjelić, 2016;Gallagher, 2016;Manon, 2018). Endvidere undersøges ASMR i fl ere af de naevnte artikler uden skelnen mellem den medierede og den ikke-medierede afart. ...
Article
Full-text available
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is a physiological sensory reaction usually described as “a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli” (Barratt & Davis, 2015). In the last decade ASMR has also become a growing media cultural phenomenon, especially on YouTube, where ASMRtists create videos that help you overcome stress, loneliness and insomnia while making you feel good. This article follows a question raised by one of these ASMRtists concerning the ability of the videos to generate a feeling of human touch. In a combination of Media and Sound Studies, and supported by an empirical study of user comments on YouTube and Reddit, we argue that ASMR videos off er a social service by affording experiences of telepresence and pseudohaptic social audio-grooming and thereby meeting the ‘skin hunger’ of modern human beings.
Article
For years now, a growing online subculture has been exchanging videos designed to induce ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’ (ASMR), a mysterious, blissfully relaxing tingling sensation held to alleviate anxiety, pain, insomnia and depression. Emerging from online health forums, ASMR culture today centres on YouTube, where ‘ASMRtists’ have used the feedback mechanisms built into social media platforms to refine a repertoire of ‘trigger’ techniques. Exemplifying a wider trend for using ‘ambient media’ as mood modulators and task facilitators (Roquet, 2016 Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. London: University of Minnesota Press.), ASMR culture’s use of the word ‘trigger’ is telling, gesturing towards what Halberstam ((2014) You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Bully Bloggers. Available at: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/ (accessed 8 August 2018)) sees as a shift away from the Freudian notion of ‘memory as a palimpsest’ towards one of memory as ‘a live wire sitting in the psyche waiting for a spark’, whereby digital subjects become black-boxed nodes in a cybernetic circuit. This shift has serious implications for the humanities and is particularly resonant for scholars of life-writing. As McNeill ((2012) There is no “I” in network: Social networks sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography 35(1): 65–82.) argues, digital technologies ‘complicate[] definitions of the self and its boundaries, both dismantling and sustaining the humanist subject in practices of personal narrative’ (p. 65). The resulting friction is highlighted in ‘ASMR autobiographies’: texts narrating the author’s experiences of ASMR and their discovery of online ASMR communities. Echoing familiar auto/biographical forms, from medical case histories and coming out narratives to tales of religious conversion, these texts show that the models of subjectivity we have inherited from Enlightenment philosophy, religion, psychology and Romantic literature retain some cultural purchase. But they also suggest digital media are fostering new understandings of personhood informed by cybernetics, evolutionary psychology, behaviourism and neuroscience. Focusing on works by Andrew MacMuiris, Andrea Seigel and Jon Kersey while also addressing a range of other texts, this article asks what ASMR autobiographies can tell us about digital subjectivity.
Article
Full-text available
"Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" (ASMR) is a term that has emerged online to describe a mysterious tingling sensation that some people experience in response to particular audiovisual and interpersonal "triggers." Initially coalescing via discussion threads on health forums, ASMR culture quickly began using platforms like YouTube and Reddit to exchange trigger videos. This paper frames the emergence of ASMR video culture as an example of how bodies and algorithms are conspiring to bring into being new cultural forms that can seem literally inexplicable on first encounter. Treating videos as "inputs," judged not as messages to be understood or interpreted but by their ability to elicit particular affective and somatic "outputs," ASMR communities cultivate a quasi-cybernetic relationship with the moving image, using video as a vehicle for "feeling out" phenomena that seem to thwart linguistic articulation and rational comprehension.
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