ASMR 101

What Are Tingles?

Tingles are often described as an overall sense of relaxation, calm, or focus that is often accompanied by physical sensations such as tingling, shivering, goosebumps, muscle contractions, or waves of warmth or coolness in the head, neck, shoulders, and spine.

What If I Don't Feel Any Tingles?

Some people never experience the tingles of ASMR, and we're still not sure why. Theories as to why somebody may not experience ASMR range from lacking a specific gene sequence, not finding the 'correct' trigger, or the ability being determined at birth.

Can You Only Experience ASMR Through Videos?

Some people are only able to experience ASMR through video and audio, while others can only experience it through real-life interactions. For example, you might experience ASMR when receiving a haircut, but watching ASMR videos of haircuts or roleplay of a hairdresser may not give you any tingles because you do not have the physical touch involved. Other people may hate getting a haircut, but experience ASMR when watching videos about haircuts.

What Are Some Common Triggers?

Triggers for ASMR can come in all shapes and sizes! Many people prefer 'softer' triggers, such as videos of people playing with slime, mixing paint, whispering, brushing the microphone, lightly tapping objects, crinkling tissue paper, etc. Other people prefer 'aggressive' triggers, such as loud nail tapping on objects, eating or drinking, and hard letter sounds that end in T, K, or P. Often time 'aggressive' triggers are a louder, faster, or harder version of 'soft' triggers, like knocking together wooden blocks, tapping directly onto the mic, crinkling cardstock or plastic instead of tissue paper, etc.

Why Do Some ASMRtists Roleplay?

One of the many reasons people consider ASMR to be silly or strange is the abundance of 'roleplay' videos in the community. Some of these are very straightforward and involve the ASMRtist pretending to be a hairdresser or a health care provider doing a routine check-up such as an eye exam or checking reflexes. However, more niche or 'odd' roleplay videos exist, such as medieval taverns, witches and wizards, fairies, alchemists, or even Nikola Tesla, and many channels are dedicated entirely to these sorts of videos.

Why Are The Videos So Long?

If you decide to look up ASMR videos on Youtube, you're more than likely going to have results that are often a minimum of 15-20 minutes long, and many videos can be a few hours long! Many ASMR videos are intended for relaxation or aiding sleep, thus the longer length than many other content creators aim for.

They're meant to be easy to put on in the background while you study or try to fall asleep, or for focusing on when you're trying to calm down after feeling anxious or stressed out. Shorter videos do exist, and some channels only make shorter videos. Channels that often have much longer videos occasionally post highlight videos that are shorter, and many ASMRtists now post shorter sound clips to Spotify, breaking up that hour video into 2-4 minute chunks you can download and listen to offline.