There doesn’t have to be for a fetish.
Some people get off watching people smoke a cigarette. Or by looking at feet.
So does this fit in with ASMR? LOL
Is whispering always part of it? I can’t stand whispering, it’s so grating.
fet·ish
/ˈfediSH/
noun
noun: fetish ; plural noun: fetishes
- a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.
No, there is plenty of ASMR that does not feature talking at all. I tend to prefer no-speaking ASMR. And most speaking ASMR is low voice, not whisper. No one can whisper for an hour. Here’s a great relatively new no-talking channel:
And here’s one of my all-time favorite channels, also all no-talking:
It’s a not more relaxing when they aren’t talking. Low voice or whispering, whatever you want to call it, it’s too annoying (to me) to be relaxing. It puts me on edge, in fact. But the ASMR that is just noise is pleasant, but doesn’t really do a lot for me other other than sounding cool. I do listen to a lot of white noise when I’m at the gym as people talking around me (and everyone, EVERYONE likes to do all their catching up at the damned gym when I’m there) and I’m trying to read, so maybe all the white noise reduces the effect on me or something.
I think the definition of ASMR in common parlance has expanded beyond the actual ASMR reactions that were described prior to like 2016. My suspicion is that the popularity now includes thing that previously might have been just considered ambient.
Like, 1 hour of Matthew McConoghey drinking coffee in the rain:
A while back somebody posted a YouTube series that was just a gruff Asian man cooking without talking. That used to just be a cooking thing, it’s probably considered an ASMR thing now.
I don’t know. This might be the case, but I don’t see it much. I watch/listen to a ton of ASMR, and it’s pretty consistent. Prolific ASMRtist Ephemeral Rift, for instance, has a bunch of videos where he films ambient nature sounds for an hour or so, but he’s careful not to label those ones ASMR. They’re in the same wheelhouse: calming and meditative, but they’re probably not gonna trigger any tingles. That said, ASMR is a made-up term anyway, and the “community” around it seems pretty chill, so no one’s gonna do any policing around the term.
That Matthew McConaughey video is actually really nice though. W magazine runs a series where celebrities do legit ASMR videos. Most of them are pretty bad, but I remember that Aubrey Plaza was actually kind of ok at it. And, of course, there’s the Zoe Kravitz Michelob Superbowl ad, which also isn’t that great.
IKEA, though is quite good at it:
Me too, and wow, that sounds like me. Isn’t getting seriously annoyed by the sounds people make something everyone feels?
Oh, nice thread. I listen to ASMR videos most nights to wind down to be able to sleep. I can’t actually go to sleep to it, but it helps me get into a place to sleep.
My favorites are the ones who talk softly and make plenty of mouth sounds. Sounds gross, since it’s really just spit moving around, but it definitely triggers immediate relaxation mode.
Whispersred is an English lady who’s very, very good at setting off the tingles. I also have a thing for Indian accents, so I search out those.
Yeah, it’s sort of a fetish :-)
EDIT: oh, also, Let’s Find Out is terrific if you prefer your ASMR vids to have an actual subject. He tend to go on about science and history and the like.
Which doesn’t have to be sexual in and of itself. A lot of fetishes don’t involve sex in any direct way.
Despite being extremely sceptic beforehand (never ever tried ASMR before), and despite finding the ‘ticks’ in the whispering quite annoying at first, I have to admit that it also does work for me. I suspect that is in large part because the sounds and the whispering drown out the ever-present tinnitus in my head, which automatically relaxes me greatly. But whatever the reason, I’m glad I tried this and will definitely listen to it again. Not watch it, mind you, I found that watching it didn’t work. Just listening.
I’m honestly amazed. I never would have guessed this could actually do anything, but it does. For me anyway, I can also see how it would drive others up the walls…
How can it be a fetish if I don’t get a boner?
What if my fetish is not getting boners?
The thing is, because ASMR uses words like “triggered” and “the tingles” and involves actions in one’s personal space and things (low voices, affirmations, role plays) that people associate with intimacy and sex, it often gets immediately labelled by people who aren’t into it as a fetish or masturbatory or sexual. It’s just not. I’m an enthusiast. I’d say I listen to at least a few hours a week. I get the tingles, and search out content that triggers them. And I get nothing sexual out of it. The tingles are nothing like an orgasm. It doesn’t turn me on or stroke my libido. It’s kind of akin to the feeling of being pleasantly buzzed while sitting around chatting with friends, or staring dreamily into a campfire at the end of a long hike, or the taste of a nice desert wine after a really good meal. These things are pleasant without being sexual in any way. If ASMR is a fetish, everything is.
I mean, sure. People like stuff. I’m just saying I think ASMR has a lot of fetishists per capita, not that it makes you one. Plus it likely depends on the ASMR, which there seems to be a wide variety of.
Nearly everything is. Probably literally everything given how many people are on the planet.
Some dude in Montreal probably really gets off watching bread bake.
At work I have to write code fairly often or build complicated process maps and I sit next to our logistics operation team who are constantly “energetically” negotiating with carriers to bring in our raw materials, so it gets loud.
I tried damping them out with music, but found a good song would actually bring me out of focus more than even the shouting buyers behind me, so I switched to white noise, which didn’t work at all.
I then started playing with those ambient noise generators where you can blend in birdsong, ocean noise and crackling fires and that went better, but it still wasn’t all the way there. Then on Napflix I found a 20 minute video of a tiny camera strapped to a model train. It chuffed about its model track, stopping at stations and running through tunnels at some sort of exhibition while in the background a small crowd murmured quietly in Italian.
That worked amazing well and led me to these ten hour videos of real trains going through the Norwegian countryside, which then led me to ten hours of rain on a Porsche.
From there it wasn’t long before Youtube’s suggestions started pointing me at actual ASMR videos and I have a pretty long list of them in my favourites. The sexual ones are out there, no doubt, with a range of honesty from “really, it’s just sexual” to “oh, was that sexy? I didn’t realise…” Those are usually betrayed by the video thumbnail and as I’m mostly using these at work that’s not what I’m here for.
What I want is something that kicks my brain out of the position where it notices the office around me without having the sort of hooks that snap my focus to the sound instead. As a result I rarely keep any videos with talking and if I do I’ll usually deliberately pick something in a foreign language.
For pure tapping/scratching and work with the 3dio mic I like DonnaASMR. She’s German and most of her videos feature no talking at all. Sadly she hasn’t recorded anything new in about 11 months. If I’m going to listen to something with talking then I like DanaASMR because she talks about subjects I don’t understand, in a language I don’t speak.
I’m sure these are supposed to be about helping you sleep or something, but they’re great for my productivity. Which QT3 itself then kills.
Ah, ok, but you said this:
So, yeah, I’m sure it’s a turn-on for some folks, just like anything potentially is. But it’s not for most folks, so isn’t “mostly” a fetish. It’s mostly a way to relax and calm down and enjoy some pleasant sounds and visuals and maybe get a pleasant tingling sensation out of it.
Do you guys get the tingles just from listening, or do you need to be watching the video too? I’ve found that I get fewer tingles when I’m just listening.
No, sound almost exclusively…though I find that videos of people absorbed in some small task that requires close attention can have a similar effect.
A lady I used to watch a lot, Yang Hai Ying, has hundreds and thousands of videos of her just pottering around the house, making tea, cooking, painting pictures, doing other crafty stuff. It has a similar effect on me as an explicitly “ASMR” video does.
This probably isn’t ASMR but I do find this guy and the stray cat relaxing: