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Long before ASMR became a thing anyone was talking about, I realised I had a deep love for the sounds made on cooking shows. A wooden spoon hitting the side of a ceramic bowl was my favourite. It is not a sound I’ve ever heard in a real kitchen. It has something to do with mics or sound stages. I was on ASMR before the cool kids were doing it. Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos have been popular for a while, and there are worlds beyond worlds of choice. These videos are not exactly entertaining so much as satisfying. They’re not educational unless you want to practise your bell-pepper-cutting technique, or making giant meals using only fire and a variety of baskets. There’s a big market for cake decorating. And how to remove blackheads. For reasons that can mostly be explained, these videos simply give us a good feeling. It’s often described as a tingly sensation from the scalp down, like if someone runs their hands up the back of your neck. They make us feel relaxed, sleepy, calm or just plain good. ASMR is, for a lot of people, a feel-good drug with no side effects. The explanation for why this happens (if it does happen for you) is that the content – the sounds and images – gives you that winning three-jab combo: oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins. Imagine, if you will, a tiny house. It can fit on a saucer. Someone with fabulous patience (and eyesight) takes truly tiny bricks and about a spoonful of cement and starts making up the walls. The laying of the bricks goes tap-tap, tap-tap. Plastering the walls sounds like tshhh-click-tshh. Removing the bits of wood used to cast concrete columns makes a snapping sound. I thought I was obsessed with miniature construction. I was wrong. I am an ASMR junkie. During the pandemic, I watched hours of something called woodturning. I hadn’t even known it was a thing before. When I looked at those videos of a spinning tree trunk magically turning into a vase, I calmed down. I’m deeply fascinated by two things: the term “ASMR” and the sound of fingernails tapping against plastic. It is reported that a person (a human woman; I checked) called Jennifer Allen came up with this hardly-catchy term to describe all the buzz on Reddit about comforting, pleasant feelings conjured by these clips that had certain sounds, whispers or a soothing sort of repetition. “Autonomous”: sure, it’s sort of happening without so much as a by-your-leave. It’s on its own mission. “Sensory”: cool. Because, after all, it is a sensory experience. When you see an ASMR video that shows someone cutting a real mango, but the slice that falls away is made of Lego pieces, that’s not happening for real. But whatever you feel is real, right? “Response”: no argument there. I definitely do a lot of responding. Not everyone has a pleasant experience of ASMR – some are repelled by it. There are some iterations that leave me nauseous or scared. These are not uncommon responses, and surely we can’t like everything. But why, for the love of all that’s holy or sensible, is “meridian” in there? Remember, we have Jennifer Allen to thank. As they say in AI-narrated videos all the time, “This last one will surprise you.” It’s caprice. It’s a quirk. Jen probably didn’t do it all on her own, but she and whoever she was bouncing ideas off decided the term needed gravitas. “Meridian,” as that group understood it, was a high point. That is not what I thought that word meant at all. I only knew it in the geographical sense. It seems that in acupuncture, the meridian is an energy pathway. This all seems like an unnecessary fuss. Could they not simply have settled for ASR? It makes sense in a funny way. Something that only just about makes sense in terms of your reaction to what you’re seeing or hearing has a name that also is on the cusp of not making sense. Some people report great things like better sleep, lower anxiety and pain relief as a result of engaging with ASMR. According to a BBC piece –“ASMR: what is it and why do some people seek it out” – the sensation we feel can almost amount to that of a hug. Especially when we are deprived of touch (like during covid lockdown), this is powerful stuff. I have not had that experience, but I’ll still watch way too many things with crayons. Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.
