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If you had told me that ASMR was a real thing five years ago, I probably would not have understood, and thought it was a bunch of baloney. About a year ago, gr
by beaner 12y ago
If you had told me that ASMR was a real thing five years ago, I probably would not have understood, and thought it was a bunch of baloney.
About a year ago, gross as it is, I noticed I actually kind of enjoyed the sound of one of my coworkers chewing with their mouth open. Then somebody came in with a big mechanical keyboard several months later and started clonking away, and I enjoyed that, too. The unevenness of the clicks and clacks make little patters and pops in my head that are like tiny little itch bubbles that are scratchpopped the same moment they blip into existence.
These are sounds I used to find extremely annoying and I don't know why it changed. But when I started looking up mechanical keyboard sounds on youtube so that I could listen to them at home, I came across these ASMR videos and discovered that apparently, it's a thing.
For me, in-person sounds are always more satisfying. They are less predictable and less uniform. The videos some people try to make to capture the ASMR feeling have the idea right, but are not uneven enough. It's like when you ask someone to write 50 iterations of a coin flip and they end up having max substrings of the same character in a row that are only 2 characters long. Real randomness isn't like that - you'll have some 4's and 5's, and 1's with wide padding.
I think if you don't already feel this phenomenon yourself, watching some ASMR videos to discover what it's like will probably not give you the feeling. It's like eating a food you always hated, or jazz music - you don't like it until suddenly, one day sitting there, you realize that you probably would if you tried it again. And then you go, and you do. Before that, you don't really get the appeal. It's just the fermentation of the brain. After a certain amount of time, it just has a different taste.
For me, in these whisper videos, it's not the soft voice that triggers the feeling, but the clicks in the speech - the "sk" and "st" sounds, and simple pops of the tongue while it's being rearranged in the mouth between words. Those noises made by the water in the mouth and not the air.
Just thought I'd share.
- jjaredsimpson 12y agothe only sounds that give me a solid reaction are wet mouth sounds. everything else just feels like it doesn't quite work. the feeling is almost there, but the sense of satisfaction and relief doesn't complete. its a very strange phenomenon to try to describe. but its unmistakeable and unprovoked by anything else.
- Ronsenshi 12y agoQuite peculiar, isn't it? So many people who experience similar feeling, but from such a wide range of triggers. I really hope that it will be studied in the future instead of being dismissed as a hoax as some people do.
- Smaug123 12y agoFor me, I've only really had the sensation once, triggered by the writing of a fountain pen and the soft and slightly rasping voice of a university supervisor. I'm very familiar with the "doesn't quite work" feeling, though. Anyway, it seems to be scratching kinds of noises for me.
- jann 12y agoThis is really fascinating, I didn't know about ASMR until now, but I'm experiencing the feeling since childhood. I found it so cool as a child that I trained myself to reproduce it without any external stimulus or thought pattern.
- derefr 12y agoIf mechanical-keyboard sounds give you an ASMR feeling, and you're in the market for a piece of distraction-free writing software (not that that isn't a commodity feature these days), try Ommwriter (http://www.ommwriter.com http://www.ommwriter.com) — it has a variety of configurable "pseudorandom typing sounds", meant to be played atop an ambient soundscape using headphones. They're all very pleasing in a way I would now think of as ASMR.
- Mithaldu 12y agoI don't think i've ever heard anyone say that, but i had my first experience with ASMR through something completely mundane: Listening to music with good bass headphones on. The high frequency percussion of albums like these, would result in a feeling like a direct brain massage: Psydrop - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPy-fYprejc&index=5&list=PL364BC39EC4705C40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPy-fYprejc&index=5&list=PL3... (In fact, the very narrative of the linked track explains the feeling.) Infected Mushroom - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2i_xOu4gk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2i_xOu4gk Infected Mushroom - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBjuOtgTe6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBjuOtgTe6U It was 8 more years until i found that ASMR videos that did the same.
- psykovsky 12y agoI enjoy it a lot more at open air parties. Tingling sensations all around ;) EDIT: as a follow-up, something like this: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=731162680276109&type=2&theater https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=731162680276109&type=2&...
- _pius 12y agoI wonder if you were experiencing the related, but different phenomenon of frisson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson
- Mithaldu 12y agoI get that too with certain music, but the brain massage effect is distinct from that. :)
- axemanoli 12y agoYes the random aspect of the sounds is absolutely crucial for me. There's an element of surprise that triggers the sensation most strongly. The majority of the 'community' and it's videos are way to deliberate. The best feeling I generally get is a nice mellow relaxation. Very rarely do the tingles occur. I'd even say watching ASMR videos on a fairly regular basis has made it less common for me to experience the sensation in every day life. I used to stumble into the feeling once a week maybe... Now almost never. This is a shame because it's definitely one of the most pleasurable sensations I've experienced outside of drug use. When it comes on strong it's ecstacy.