Eliciting Euphoria Online: The Aesthetics of “ASMR” Video Culture

Abstract

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‘ASMR’ autobiographies and the (life-)writing of digital subjectivity

“…ASMR video culture provides a valuable case study in how this logic shapes online activity. While it is, to be sure, a product of human intentionality and creativity, it also speaks to the agency of nonhuman actors and of techno-organic circuits, and exemplifies a growing tendency to treat media less as expressive works than as mood modulators and task facilitators, means of eliciting optimal psychosomatic states (Gallagher, 2016). Not everyone experiences ASMR, and, as Barratt and Davis (2015) confirm, those who do will not necessarily react in the same way to the same stimuli.…”

“…The ASMR community often represents itself in 'biosocial' terms, inviting comparison with other online constituencies united by their common experience of 'physical or biochemical markers… illnesses and syndromes' whose definitions and diagnoses remain under 'negotiation' (Banner 2014: 199). ASMRtists like WhispersRed frame trigger videos as a means of 'healing' (Gallagher, 2015), while on sites like ASMR University users undertake, discuss and lobby for research into the tingles, drawing on the language of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Associating ASMR with medicine, mindfulness and wellbeing, such rhetoric is, in part, a means of deflecting sexual readings of the phenomenon.…”

“…WhispersRed, meanwhile, grounds her case against sexual interpretations of ASMR in a rather Victorian construction of childhood as a time of presexual innocence ('how can so many millions and millions of four year-olds get it and it be sexual? It just isn't' (Gallagher, 2015)). It's perhaps no surprise, then, that outsiders remain skeptical.…”

Autonomous Meridian Sensory Response – From Internet Subculture to Audiovisual Therapy

“…In fact, the influential content aggregator Reddit ranks ASMR videos on the basis of their success as tingling triggers as reported by users (Gallagher 2016). The content of many ASMR videos is, despite its utilitarian purpose, rather trivial, at least on first looking: we see close-ups of the artist whispering, handling some noise-making objects, acting out quaint role-play procedures.…”

“…Criticism of ASMR as a body of audiovisual broadcasts focuses on the novel intercommunication language established by ASMR practices (Gallagher 2016). Gallagher explores, in particular, the socio-political potential of the dialogue established between creators and users, which valence is particularly noteworthy in the frantic, congested medium of the Internet.…”