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I suspect some of the popularity of unboxing videos can be attributed to the ASMR[0] community. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_r

I suspect some of the popularity of unboxing videos can be attributed to the ASMR[0] community. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...

bbbrad 12y ago
Yep, this is a huge driver of many of these youtuber's traffic.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  I doubt it. That video had 90 million views. That's an absurdly huge number of views. Searching for ASMR, the subreddit is the first thing that came up, and the front page items have an average of 5 upvotes, and 80,000 subscribers.
Mithaldu 12y ago
A lot of that traffic is definitely ASMR. The camera is very close to the unboxing and manages to pick up the tiny sounds made in great detail and clarity. Another use for this type of video is also falling asleep, which would explain the sheer amount of views as many people queue up these videos night after night. Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Some people feel nice -but in special ways- if they listen to certain sounds. Imagine a bit like listening to a special piece of music that makes the hairs on your neck stand up. Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice. A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos. Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Thank you, now I understand. Also, a nice ELI5 :).
- mturmon 12y ago
  NY Times is on it: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/rustle-tingle-relax-the-compelling-world-of-a-s-m-r/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/rustle-tingle-relax...
- bane 12y ago
  There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and Frisson being the most common. Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response. The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research. ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill. Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused. Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers. http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual. Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well. While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song). And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50. But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time. The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers. Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit. I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time. But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs. Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Sounds like the best way to understand it is to consider what might lie at the opposite end of whatever psychological spectrum is occupied by fingernails on a chalkboard.
bane 12y ago
Side note: I wish some deletionist hadn't removed the WP page for "frisson". It now points to "cold chills" which it isn't (it's also not ASMR which is also different). There used to be a very good page on the phenomenon, but it's long gone and there's not even any history of it existing that I'm aware of. Now, because it's gone, most pages that document frisson are now calling it "cold chills" and referring back to WP.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  I replaced the redirect with a new stub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson Edits appreciated.
  - bane 12y ago
    I'll sit down tonight and see what I can source and add.
  - kbutler 12y ago
    Archive.org has a few links, but they are all short (and sometimes just "cold chills". https://web.archive.org/web/20060515000000*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson https://web.archive.org/web/20060515000000*/https://en.wikip... 20060913 includes this content: An experience, commonly associated with especially moving or Ecstatic_listening moments, where a sensation of "shivers" occurs. The frisson experience begins as a flexing of the skin in the lower back, rising upward, inward from the shoulders, up the neck, and sometimes across to the cheeks and onto the scalp. The face may become flush, hair follicles flex the hairs into standing position, and goose bumps may appear (Piloerection). Frequently, a series of `waves' will rise up the back in rapid succession. The experience lasts no more than four or five seconds. The listener feels the music to have elicited an ecstatic moment and tends to regard the experience as involuntary. Http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music838/glossary.html
- eru 12y ago
  You can try finding the old page via the WayBack machine.
anishkothari 12y ago
This American Life has an interesting story on ASMR: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/tribes?act=2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/t...
ronilan 12y ago
I suspect some of the popularity[1] of unboxing, opening, revealing, unwrapping, pic-a-boo, lookie here videos can be attributed to the SEO community. [1] some of the rest can be attributed to how views are counted.
colanderman 12y ago
Thanks, I've been looking for decades for the name to describe what ASMR is. I'm surprised there's any doubt it exists; it's a very distinct sensation with very specific triggers (which I guess are different for different people). I just figured it was common.
Donzo 12y ago
Another reason that these videos are so popular is because of copyright protections. While searching for "McQueen" and Disney Cars related content on YouTube, you will find little else other than toys being unwrapped and played with by adults. The copyright holders are not putting any official content on YouTube, any bootlegged stuff gets pulled, so the only remaining content is these toy videos. I for one am sick of this content but I understand the appeal to the child.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Toys are expensive and it's really useful to see what's inside the box. There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't bought because I saw it in use on YouTube.

bbbrad 12y ago

Yep, this is a huge driver of many of these youtuber's traffic.

Houshalter 12y ago
I doubt it. That video had 90 million views. That's an absurdly huge number of views. Searching for ASMR, the subreddit is the first thing that came up, and the front page items have an average of 5 upvotes, and 80,000 subscribers.

Mithaldu 12y ago

A lot of that traffic is definitely ASMR. The camera is very close to the unboxing and manages to pick up the tiny sounds made in great detail and clarity. Another use for this type of video is also falling asleep, which would explain the sheer amount of views as many people queue up these videos night after night. Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.

DanBC 12y ago
Some people feel nice -but in special ways- if they listen to certain sounds. Imagine a bit like listening to a special piece of music that makes the hairs on your neck stand up. Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice. A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos. Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Thank you, now I understand. Also, a nice ELI5 :).
mturmon 12y ago
NY Times is on it: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/rustle-tingle-relax-the-compelling-world-of-a-s-m-r/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/rustle-tingle-relax...
bane 12y ago
There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and Frisson being the most common. Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response. The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research. ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill. Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused. Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers. http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual. Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well. While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song). And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50. But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time. The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers. Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit. I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time. But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs. Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
CamperBob2 12y ago
Sounds like the best way to understand it is to consider what might lie at the opposite end of whatever psychological spectrum is occupied by fingernails on a chalkboard.

bane 12y ago

Side note: I wish some deletionist hadn't removed the WP page for "frisson". It now points to "cold chills" which it isn't (it's also not ASMR which is also different). There used to be a very good page on the phenomenon, but it's long gone and there's not even any history of it existing that I'm aware of. Now, because it's gone, most pages that document frisson are now calling it "cold chills" and referring back to WP.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
I replaced the redirect with a new stub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson Edits appreciated.
- bane 12y ago
  I'll sit down tonight and see what I can source and add.
- kbutler 12y ago
  Archive.org has a few links, but they are all short (and sometimes just "cold chills". https://web.archive.org/web/20060515000000*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson https://web.archive.org/web/20060515000000*/https://en.wikip... 20060913 includes this content: An experience, commonly associated with especially moving or Ecstatic_listening moments, where a sensation of "shivers" occurs. The frisson experience begins as a flexing of the skin in the lower back, rising upward, inward from the shoulders, up the neck, and sometimes across to the cheeks and onto the scalp. The face may become flush, hair follicles flex the hairs into standing position, and goose bumps may appear (Piloerection). Frequently, a series of `waves' will rise up the back in rapid succession. The experience lasts no more than four or five seconds. The listener feels the music to have elicited an ecstatic moment and tends to regard the experience as involuntary. Http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music838/glossary.html
eru 12y ago
You can try finding the old page via the WayBack machine.

anishkothari 12y ago

This American Life has an interesting story on ASMR: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/tribes?act=2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/t...

ronilan 12y ago

I suspect some of the popularity[1] of unboxing, opening, revealing, unwrapping, pic-a-boo, lookie here videos can be attributed to the SEO community. [1] some of the rest can be attributed to how views are counted.

colanderman 12y ago

Thanks, I've been looking for decades for the name to describe what ASMR is. I'm surprised there's any doubt it exists; it's a very distinct sensation with very specific triggers (which I guess are different for different people). I just figured it was common.

Donzo 12y ago

Another reason that these videos are so popular is because of copyright protections. While searching for "McQueen" and Disney Cars related content on YouTube, you will find little else other than toys being unwrapped and played with by adults. The copyright holders are not putting any official content on YouTube, any bootlegged stuff gets pulled, so the only remaining content is these toy videos. I for one am sick of this content but I understand the appeal to the child.

DanBC 12y ago
Toys are expensive and it's really useful to see what's inside the box. There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't bought because I saw it in use on YouTube.