The ASMR phenomenon on the Internet

Yesterday an article on the Menéame website titled "They call it 'brain orgasm', but it's actually something much better". Immediately it caught my attention because you will not deny me that I read the words "Cerebral orgasm" does not arouse your curiosity 😉

The article is quite long but I read it in full and very carefully, strange for me because lately on the internet I do not read, I scan the information visually and I keep the most important thing.

It turns out that it is a phenomenon that has been cataloged with the acronym ASMR, What do they mean Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response or autonomous meridian sensory response. People who experience it say they feel a very pleasant kind of tingling on the top of the head followed by deep relaxation when they are exposed to certain stimuli or situations. Cool right?

What stimuli or situations are those? What do they feel? I better put you some of the testimonies that were spilled in Menéame:

It has nothing to do with highs of excitement or anything like that. I watch ASMR videos because it is true that they tingle and it is very pleasant (the sensation is the same as when someone blows on the back of your neck, but softer), but I think that absolutely everyone can experience it, you just have to find the sounds you like. Whispers for me, except on some occasions, do not produce anything; nor do I feel anything with the sounds of nails touching on a surface or anything that has to do with cardboard. Instead, the sound of turning the pages of a magazine or what the cameras do because of the pressure when they are recording, they do provoke a pretty strong reaction in me. "

I have tried on occasion to explain what I felt a pleasant chill when you see someone (a third person) doing something minute in a very concentrated way, but nobody understood me at all and they saw it as something very strange "when do you see someone concentrated doing something?" (It really seems weird even to me). It happens to me very seldom and I never thought of "provoking" it, it just happens.

I was just surprised, not with the news itself, but with the comments that I have read from some of you who describe that you feel it when someone explains or helps you with something, something that is more or less similar to what happens to me.

For my part, I will not say that I feel exactly that (because I am not sure). But I do remember from a very young age the "chill" feeling I felt at the top of my head when I watched my aunt do some housework very slowly. I once mentioned it to my mother and she never knew how to explain what I was feeling. Then I grew up and felt it on a few occasions, until last year I started working in a company where there was a colleague who gave me the same feeling every time I watched him eat. Once again, the characteristic is the parsimony with which he took the cutlery and put the bites of food in his mouth.

When I was little, I was in loose and disconnected situations, even with a very old Coke machine that was in the university. Then with a very curious telemarketing ad that I managed to record and in a hairdresser in Oviedo there is a lady who has a super-soft way of working, in complete silence with some pebbles that you use to relax the muscles of your face and head. The massage didn't matter to me, but the sound of the pebbles and the comb… it's great.

The key is there it's something you SEE, and that doesn't happen when they do it to you. I see how they wash someone's hair and I feel it, I also feel it, and this is much rarer, when I see someone cleaning any surface with a soft cloth. There it is amazing. But it lasts very little and the sensation is of brutal relaxation and exactly begins in the head and goes down, sometimes to the waist, sometimes even the legs, but it only happens if the action I am seeing lasts too. The truth is that I thought it happened to everyone, but I see that it does not. I've never talked to anyone about it either.

I was amazed when reading the article.

Menéame users linked to many videos prepared to provoke ASMR but this one caught my attention powerfully. If you have headphones better:

I have to say that It has not caused me ASMR (I hope!) But I have found it very pleasant and extremely curious that there are people who make these types of videos ... Internet, you have surprised me again.

A little "history" about ASMR

The ASMR phenomenon is very recent. In 2008 discussion groups were already formed in Yahoo under the name of Society of Sensationalists (Society of Sensationalists) and the blog The Unnamed feeling ('The feeling that has no name' ?, forgive my limited English) was created in 2010 and continues to be updated to this day.

But what strikes me as amazing is that The term ASMR was coined by a girl in her early 30s named Jenn Allen. According to his file on the site he founded ASMR-research.org, he is dedicated to the health care sector.

Tom Stafford Professor at the University of Sheffield, said the following about this phenomenon:

"It may well be a real thing, but it is inherently difficult to investigate."

Say that and nothing is the same. I don't think it is difficult to investigate with the technology that currently exists. What happens is that nobody has put to it yet.

Role-playing games between whispers

Most of the videos that are uploaded to YouTube to provoke ASMR are from pretty girls talking in whispers. But not only that, a kind of game is created in which the viewer is, for example, a client who enters a beauty salon to get a skin cleansing. I give you an example of what, apparently, is the guru of this kind of videos on YouTube:

Well, to finish the article I would like a little more interaction with you. If anyone clearly feels what has been described here I would like to be contacted. I would also like you to leave your comments about it: What do you think of this phenomenon? Have you ever felt it?

Thanks!! 🙂