I actually find very few ASMR stuff works for me.
Lots of the stuff regularly featured, such as whispers and gentle tapping etc, actually cause rage in me.
I suffer from Misophonia so that kinda sits in direct opposition to the effects of ASMR!

I can't stand noises made with the mouth. I can't even stand the sound of my own chewing

That's the best thing about TEAMS meetings, trousers are optional;)

I can't stand it.
Makes my skin crawl.

I just put the second video on and immediately gagged when she smacked her lips. Felt mild but actual pain shoot down my legs.

Sexual like jamming pins up your fingernails is sexual.

White noise is a different story. Water flowing, rain all that stuff is nice.

Everyone has their thing, but I’m listening to the second video and the ‘presenter’ is whispering and I want to fucking scream.

I also don't like "soft" sounds. mostly it's due to my hearing impairment where they end up as white noise more than anything, but ASMR stuff is garbage to me as I struggle to hear people in normal every day conversations. Something someone with significant hearing loss just doesn't need to even consider.

GurtTractor wrote:

I kind of dislike ASMR because it made it so hard to find quality videos about a particular binaural mic headset I was researching a while ago (I do a lot of field recording), most of the results were ASMR people using it which wasn't helpful. In general if I want some audio stimulation that isn't a video or music I'll put on some natural field recordings (this site is pretty amazing for exploring sounds around the world btw).  I'm not keen on actual manufactured ASMR stuff personally, feels too invasive. My main interest in it would be academic; the equipment/techniques used, and the psychoacoustics and neurological stuff that it utilises.

I enjoyed clicking around on that site.  Some lovely stuff from around the world, a waterfall just up the road from me, and just as I was at risk of thinking everything was idyllic, a caravan site in York where someone gets called a "silly old cunt" whilst a dog barks incessantly...

It's not for me but I hate that the trend has made every fucker making any kind of reel or tiktok showing how they made something be it food for painting or whatever having every fucking sound they make in the process. Like a million edit cuts just for each slice of a knife into an onion. Like, okay, we fucking get it.

There's a youtuber called Jang who does various Lego content.
He has a channel called Pure Builds which is just him building Lego sets in real time, no voiceover or music just pure builds.

I don't watch that channel myself but I find his main review channel Jang Bricks to be really meditative. Not really sure why, he doesn't start shouting about Clone Trooper helmet holes like every other Lego reviewer which helps but I think it's his voice and general waffle about brick colours and the like. It's like those send you to sleep stories on the meditation apps. They are kind of boring but I can watch/not watch hours of it.

Tell me more about these titty streamers.

Titty streamers? You mean like longer nipple tassels??

DrewMerson wrote:

Thinking more about the general reaction to this, I recognise that our response to sounds is personal. I like Gibi’s voice (the lassie in the second two videos I posted) when she’s talking softly, but not always when she’s whispering, and a lot of ASMRtists don’t work for me because of the timbre of their voice or the way they whisper.

I’d be curious to know, for example, if Wookie’s Misophonia extends to, say, his wife’s voice if she were to talk to him quietly and gently in a darkened room, akin to the voices on many meditative and sleep apps.

I think my reaction is purely contextual.

When I’m watching TV, film, sports, etc., the presenters or characters are not whispering, or doing anything for my particular personal pleasure. I’m just watching content. Whereas, these video feel manipulative to me.

YouTube is monetised and the presenter is trying to scratch someone’s ASMR itch for views, therefore money. And perhaps because it’s about causing a physical reaction in the viewer, it has a certain cheapness to me.

I saw some ASMR videos of a semi-dressed presenter flicking her fingernails on the hubcaps of a premium car while whispering the brand. I know you said it wasn’t sexual, but it just looked like the softest, soft-core porn lite for a particular audience. Kinda gross in my view.

Maybe that’s the thin end of the wedge though.

“Mercedes”, as well. Yuck.