ASMR: a digitally mediated sensation
By Lauren Gomes
Lauren Gomes is a second-year student in the Social and Cultural Analysis doctoral program at Concordia University, Montreal. Her research focuses on how the public perceives science and scientific information, and how use of technology effects engagement with and production of discourses about science.
In the age of digital media, our senses are being extrapolated via digital technology and sense experience is becoming increasingly virtual. Whether this extrapolation is an extra sensory power is up for speculation. Regardless, recent technology is continually expanding and elevating sensory experiences via media, such as Virtual Reality in video games, or surround sound home theatres, and the industries vying for a slice of the (virtual) “experience economy” are proliferating. While such industries are not new, the types of experiences they supply are changing form and the media they deploy are facilitating new relationships between humans and technology.
ASMR – what is it?
One recent trend is the rise of digitally mediated sensory experiences supplied through purposely designed audio-visual content on online platforms, such as YouTube. This content is made specifically to stimulate a sensation called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) and is characterized as “the experience of tingling sensations in the crown of the head, in response to a range of audio-visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, and hand movements” (Poerio, Blakey, Hostler and Veltri, 2018). ASMR is said to induce a feeling of deep relaxation for those who experience it. Although ASMR can be triggered by visual and auditory stimuli in real life, it is increasingly being used in various media and intentionally created ASMR videos on YouTube and activates specific triggers to elicit the sensation. The audio and visual stimuli that can ‘trigger’ an ASMR experience vary widely and can differ from person to person. The most common auditory triggers reported by those who experience ASMR include sounds like crinkling of paper, whispering, hair brushing, soft speaking, tapping, scratching, and typing. Auditory triggers are often accompanied by visual stimuli with the most common being hand motions and slow, rhythmic movements.
Research on the phenomenon
ASMR has baffled scientists as it resembles previously understood sensations, but the psychological basis is unknown (Poerio et al., 2018). One study notes its likeness to musically induced frisson, or “pleasurable experiences associated with pilomotor responses (goosebumps)” (Kovacevich and Huron, 2019). Another study found that there was a “high prevalence of synaesthesia (5.9%) within the sample suggest[ing] a possible link between ASMR and synaesthesia, similar to that of misophonia” (Barratt and Davis, 2015). Despite this connection, although the ASMR sensation seems to mimic that of synaesthesia (a phenomenon in which specific external stimuli cause an internal experience in a second, unstimulated modality), the experiences are found to be more tangible than those of synaesthesia, particularly the sensation of the tingling on the skin (Barratt and Davis, 2015). Even with this difference, ASMR could be likened to “a form of sound-emotion synaesthesia” (Barratt and Davis, 2015).
In 2018, a study uncovered differences in physiological responses of those experiencing ASMR and those who did not. The group that experienced ASMR had “reduced heart rates and increased skin conductance, or a slight increase in sweating”, demonstrating that ASMR experiences were both calming and arousing at the same time (Poerio et al., 2018), which is different from musically induced frisson or simple relaxation (Wu, 2019).
Although ASMR existed as a sensation without a name for a long time, once the term ASMR was coined in 2010, it became the target of academic research. One of the first articles on the subject published in a peer-reviewed journal was Barratt and Davis’ “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state” ([2015] ASMR University, n.d.). With continued research of the phenomenon, it was found that not everyone experiences the sensation when consuming ASMR content. Previous research has linked ASMR to particular personality profiles such as mindfulness (Janik McErlean and Osborne-Ford, 2020)] and also suggested that a person’s “ability to get deeply immersed with the experience accompanied by loss of reflective awareness may be an important factor contributing to the experience of ASMR” (Janik McErlean and Osborne-Ford, 2020). In other words, the experience associated with ASMR shares similarities to a “state of ‘flow’”, “the state of intense focus and diminished awareness of the passage of time”, or of a “greater ‘presence’ and of relaxation which are consistent with the non-active aspects of flow” (Barratt and Davis, 2015).
YouTube and ASMR
ASMR is not necessarily new. Indeed, some argue that videos like “The Joy of Painting” by Bob Ross in the 1980s and early 1990s with his soft voice and gentle brush strokes could be the starting place for ASMR content (Bogueva and Marinova, 2020). As noted above, the term ASMR was only coined in 2010 by Jennifer Allen, who founded an ASMR group on Facebook (ASMR University, n.d.). However, online forums about this mysterious sensation popped up on Yahoo and health related blogs from as early as 2007. The current trend of ASMR content on YouTube is, on the other hand, a more recent phenomenon. Although videos trace it back to early ASMR creators in 2009 to 2012, the popularity in ASMR has grown exponentially in the past few years (ASMR University, n.d.). Now, ASMR has built a stable community of followers on multiple online sources, including YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit, with around 13 million ASMR videos on YouTube alone in 2018. According to a search of YouTube content in 2019, ASMR videos were “the top #1 query in the USA” (Bogueva and Marinova, 2020).
Tingle Capitalism
ASMRtists, as they are called, create media designed specifically to produce ASMR and profit from the quality of sensory experiences associated with their videos. The ASMRtist, or content creator, has a unique relationship with their audience, as viewers have an influence on what content the ASMRtists produce through correspondence in the form of likes, comments, subscriptions, and shares. ASMRtists monetize their videos, include ads and paid sponsorships, and often have a Patreon account, where subscribers can pay for exclusive content while financially supporting the content creator. In this way, ASMR can be seen as a commodity – something prized by eager subscribers seeking the pleasant sensation of ‘tingles’.
The online ASMR community “has flourished in the digital space afforded by YouTube ” (Burgess, Green, Jenkins, and Hartley, 2009). The success of ASMR can be attributed to the platform it has used as its main hub. What started out as an accidental discovery of the ‘tingle’ has grown into an industry of digitally mediated sensory experiences. The Internet “has found new ways of bringing bodies and machines, human and nonhuman agents into new kinds of correspondence…new cultural forms where videos become ‘inputs’ judged not as messages to be understood or interpreted but by their ability to elicit particular affective and somatic ‘outputs'” (Gallagher, 2016); in other words, an exchange or communication between the human and non-human. According to Gallagher, “this ability is measured via feedback mechanisms (comments, views, “likes,” upvotes) linking audiences to uploaders and ASMRtists. Such feedback helps ASMRtists to feel out the kinds of input likeliest to elicit the desired output and tune their aesthetic strategies accordingly” (2016). As the use of “ASMR” became more visible, algorithms adapted search criteria to capture the acronym, and made it possible for suggestions to show up in searches. This development attests to how “the systems that deliver online content to viewers (or, perhaps, viewers to content) enable jargon to spread and solidify, styles to crystallize and cultures to snowball” (Gallagher, 2016).
New forms of human/non-human relations
ASMR culture has grown from a particular niche in the “experience economy” into a sensory experience industry. In this, we see the blending of the human with technology, the blurring of the self and technology with new cultural forms being digitally mediated, as well as sensations. Gallagher argues that “the emergence of ASMR video culture [is] an example of how bodies and algorithms are conspiring to bring into being new cultural forms. ASMR communities cultivate a quasi-cybernetic relationship with the moving image” (2016). ASMR and its culture can be seen as based in the blending of “the represented organic body with the imaginary digital image of the body” (Volkart, 2007). When a viewer watches a video of ASMR personal attention, or “real time screen interaction” (Volkart, 2007), the digital body acts as a stand-in for the physical body, a sort of imaginary role play with the physical and the digital.
The question arises: Is this another iteration of Haraway’s cybernetic reality … that is Cyborgs? Some would say yes, Holmowaia and Danzis argue that “YouTube has created a new type of movement, through which a person becomes a collective with machines-things-identities, but this new economy of movement is carried out not in the world of human bodies, but in the body of the machine” (2020). Therefore, there is “an emerging economy of movement… of sensations… mediated and communicated through technology where the body turns into a medium, one of the channels of transmitting information from media to media” (Holmowaia and Danzis, 2020).
A hyperaesthetic economy
The economy of the senses has moved from staging in-person sensory experiences (e.g. the themed sensations on offer at Disneyworld, as theorized by Pine and Gilmore (…) to a new form of enterprise geared to the production of digitally-mediated sensory experiences where the physical body is seen/treated as synonymous with the digital body. As Gallagher states, “ASMR culture highlights the affective dynamics and algorithmic underpinnings of consumer capitalism in an era when, as David Howes asserts, markets are increasingly governed by “sensual logic” rather than rationality” (2016); that is, we live in a consumer capitalistic regime of hyperaesthesia where commodities are hyperaestheticized and we engage with them in hyperaesthetic ways (Howes in Gallagher, 2016). In the case of ASMR and its culture, media is repurposed and used as an innovative economic platform based on this hyperaesthesia and is “integrated into an attention economy” (Gallagher, 2016).
ASMR-related tingles are a sensation that leaves consumers coming back for more. Now, you can find ASMR-related content being advertised and marketed as an alternative means of relieving stress and anxiety and as a potential sleep-aid. “ASMR is seen as more of a modality or medium rather than a genre” (Harper, 2019). Because of this and thanks to it digital hybridity, ASMR allows innovation on a variety of levels, remaking the familiar as novel (Harper, 2019). We can see this in how ASMR techniques are being used as a marketing strategy aimed at targeting the senses in such a way as to avoid oversaturating the consumers’ senses. ASMR techniques are valued for their “anti-stress orientation and indirect influence on the subconscious of recipients, which helps to create a favourable perception of an advertised product by the audience” (Antonova, 2019). Examples could include using visual and auditory stimuli, such as soft speech or whisper-like sounds accompanied with soft glow lighting and particular movements.
The mediation of sensation: what it all means
The ASMR community and the affordances of the digital space of the platforms it uses has opened the way for a new cultural form that does not necessarily replace physical touch but acts as a totally new form of sensory experience mediated through technology. ASMR, a mysterious sensation that can only be experienced by some, has become a commodity that is sought after by consumers, and because of its effects and affects, corporations have sought out ways to incorporate its culture into marketing and advertising. Content is specifically created to induce ASMR, manufacturing an online sensory experience industry where videos are ‘inputs’ curated to elicit a particular affective and somatic “output” – the digital producing physical reality.
We live in an economy of the senses, or as Howes (2005) calls it, a regime of hyperaesthesia. The advent of sensory venture capitalism, as this latest phase may be called, has led us off down a road with human and non-human actors, or in this case mediums, becoming more and more entwined.. Our body and the machine are both mediums to which information is transmitted and relayed back. Through ASMR videos and its intimate relationship to its consumers, a new cultural form emerges that is a product of bodily and machine feedback, ultimately harnessing a new production-consumption force encapsulating the connection of our body with electronics. The nature of ASMR enables digital hybridity – we have our organic body and a digital body, too.
Tingle Capitalism is a result of this hybridity. Moving past simply seeking ‘tingles’ to a full-on enterprise of ASMR sensory experiences, all of which are mediated by technology. The system therefore profits from the ‘cyborgs’ or virtualization of life that ASMR created.
References
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