In more ways than one, the tingles seem to be fading.
Just a few years ago, autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), a puzzling and blissful sensation, became the sudden focal point for a sizable Internet community. Practitioners liken it to a current of electricity running down the scalp and spine. Audiences marveled at online videos, the community’s primary artifacts, featuring earnest amateurs performing whispered role-plays and small, repetitive gestures designed to invoke the sensation in others. Specific triggers varied, but larger patterns emerged: haircuts, visits to doctors, even the gentle-hearted painting lessons of Bob Ross. Enthusiasts and bystanders alike speculated at length on the nature of this community, how and why it came to be.
More recently, our collective interest seems to have stagnated, as have the videos in basic style and structure. The output of the ASMR community persists, to be sure, new clips still gathering hundreds of thousands of views. But among subcultural spectators, ASMR has become a familiar curio on the digital media landscape, recognizable and thus—somewhat boring. Reports have also emerged of the sensation itself eroding at the individual level. This epiphenomenon has various names, but one of the…
Read More…