- Getting to know ASMR
- Ear Cleaning or Massage
- Tapping, rubbing, squishing
- Whispering and small talks
- Mouth Sounds
- No Talking
- Natural Sounds
- Erotic or Explicit
- Conclusion
Getting to know ASMR
This is a translation of my original article ASMR视频推荐.
One day I bumped into an ear cleaning video, the one receiving the service looked relaxed and comfortable, and the one performing the cleaning seemed professional and skillful, I felt like I received the same cleaning service simply by watching this video, and felt refreshed after this.
Later I learned that this kind of video is called ASMR
, but I'm afraid you will get confused even after searching for its meaning.
ASMR refers to the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and it is a physical tingling sensation that begins in your scalp and moves down through the spine to the limbs. It is often triggered by an audible stimuli, such as whispering or scratching, though it can also be triggered through physical touch
To my understanding, ASMR
can make you relax (or concentrate) by certain visual and auditory stimuli. You can feel relaxed with some ASMR
videos and fall asleep very soon; and you can be concentrated on the work you are doing with some ASMR
videos, here it functions like White Noise
.
There is one episode in TV series Criminal Minds where a suspect used ASMR videos to hypnotize children before he abducted them, just like the The Flute Player of Hamelin (Grimm's Fairy Tales). I think this episode exaggerated the effect of ASMR and seemed more like Sci-Fi.
Well, after watching the real ear cleaning video, I searched for a lot of different other ASMR videos, and discovered the variety of types in ASMR.
Ear Cleaning or Massage
Ear cleaning, along with massage, hair combing and hair washing videos, they all expressed a sensory of cleanliness and comfort. Although audiences did not experience these scenes personally, they can get relevant feelings through the video.
Aside from real ear cleaning and massage, video creators (Or should we say Youtubers) can even perform Fake ear cleaning and massage with silicone ears and mannequin heads that we see at the hair salons. Some video creators even create animations and guide audiences to imagine the real ear cleaning and massage experience. I'm really impressed by their dedication to these videos.
They treat these lifeless objects very carefully and thouroughly, as if these objects are real humans, they do consider creating ASMR videos as their profession.
Here are some ear cleaning and massage video creators that I like:
- Tingting ASMR: She looks like Ruby Lin (林心如), and she always performs the most gentle massage with sweetest smile, only that the massage and smile are for mannequins.
- ASMR Suna 꿀꿀선아: This girl is a sweetheart from South Korea, she has created various types of videos, like Mukbang, handcraft, massage, etc. The very first video of her that I saw was hair washing, so I'm recommending her in this section.
- ASMR Alice: This girl only features her hands in the videos. She performs massages to silicone ears, and suppliment the video with unrelated captions.
- LULUPANG 루루팡: This channel only contains animation videos, featuring spas, making up, removing make-up, ear cleaining, hair combing and so on.
Tapping, rubbing, squishing
Tapping video creators can find different types of objects, like boxes, jars, mugs, plates or anything that they can tap on, and use their fingernails to tap on them to create sounds. I think their fingernails might need to be insured.
Or sometimes the Youtubers would create sounds by rubbing or squishing objects like sponges, brushes or papers, or even use liquids or foams to make sounds.
Here are some channel recommendations:
- ASMR Zeitgeist: A mature man with deep voice who speaks English.
- Coromo Sara. ASMR: A Japanese girl who doesn't reveal her face in the videos, her fingernails are very pretty and her voice is very gentle and soft.
- Hatomugi ASMR: She is of similar type as Coromo Sara.
Whispering and small talks
In the previous two types of ASMR, sometimes the Youtubers would whisper to us when doing tapping or massage, so that the video will sound more colorful.
While in some videos, the Youtubers would whisper to us all the way till the video ends, without doing anything else. They talk about their daily life events, even very trivial things. Videos like this can last 20 to 40 minutes, I'm really surprised by their ability for small talks, I certainly cannot talk to myself for 20 minutes.
And if you want to watch (or listen) to these videos for sleeping purpose, you might want to choose a language that is different from your mother tongue. I have tried Chinese videos, and found myself focusing on the tones of language because I understand every word he said, and I got awaken a few times by certain words, so no point in watching this if I still want to go to sleep.
Here I recommend some Youtubers doing whispering and small talks:
- Tiptoe Tingles ASMR: A young college girl who speaks English, she is famous for finger snapping sounds.
- 곰돌이 숭늉이 [Bear Soongnyoong]: This channel features cute cats and is famous for the "Cat spa" series, the Youtuber speaks Korean. She owns several beautiful cats, they are all calm and obedient. The Youtuber pretends to have a cat spa, she performs massage and facial treatments for the cats, selling expensive spa services during the sessions. The whole series of videos are extremely fun.
- Veiled ASMR SJ: A good-looking young man who speaks Korean. He announced retirement from ASMR in March 2021, so no more new content from that time, but you can still check out his old videos.
- Rose ASMR: An English and Korean speaking girl who mainly does whispering and mouth souds.
Among videos of Tiptoe, the video that first drew my attention was a Recipe Visualization
video, in which she imitated the process of cooking with her hand movements and mouth sounds.
She now has total 2 videos of this type:
Mouth Sounds
It's a little difficult to introduce this kind of videos. Mouth Sounds
is as it looks like, referring to the sounds created with mouths, like a tsk or kissing sounds. If you are new to ASMR, you might find it not appropriate to listen to. Some people have bad impression towards ASMR because of this.
But this is just a kind of sounds, and some people do get relaxed with them, and this means the video creator's hard work paid off.
No Talking
If you do not want to hear small talks or mouth souds, the No Talking
videos are here for you.
The Youtubers I recommended above all provide No Talking
videos, you just need to type the keyword No Talking
and they will show themselves to you.
Natural Sounds
Also there are videos that do not involve human interaction, they contain only natual sounds, like wind blowing, birds singing, water flowing, snow falling, etc. The video creators would use relevant screens to suppliment the sounds, usually with animated pictures. These videos help you imagine about the nature, and relaxing yourself along the way.
Recently I'm obsessed with fireplace sounds, especially a western fireplace, see this video or a Japanese Irori, see this video. The whole video only contains a flame dancing scene and wood burning sounds, repeating for hours. The burning sounds teleported the warmth to me, I'm having a vision of a stuffed goose walking slowly to me ...
No, I'm not having this vision, but the fireplace videos are amazing, I recommend you use them as white noises while studying or working.
Erotic or Explicit
ASMR videos aim to provide mental euphoria, what brings more euphoria than Erotic videos?
Some Youtubers would show cleavage or do some movements that have certain meanings, in order to get more subscriptions.
But they are allowed to do this, until they are disallowed.
I particularly like 2 Youtubers of this kind:
- HeatheredEffect ASMR: An English-speaking mature lady
- ASMR MOOD: A Russian-speaking attractive girl
What they have in common is a kind of aggressive beauty, but sometimes I don't know where to look at when watching their videos.
Another one I remember is a Korean girl who looks young and thin but has kind of big breasts, there is one comment that recommended "watch with mute mode", so I'll not recommend her here.
Conclusion
ASMR videos have various types, and video creators are doing their best to create content. The Youtubers I recommended above may have multiple types of videos in one channel, so they do not neccessarily belong to the category I assigned them to. You will find a type that you like eventually, or you can even switch types every day, anything that suits you best.
And the fireplace videos are awesome, please have a try!