‘It’s not sexual, it’s relaxation’

It tingles. It feels good. And it has nothing to do with sex.

By now, you may have heard of the phenomenon of ASMR, the soothing, static-like sensation that some people feel in response to certain triggers. These “brain tingles” are often said to pulsate on the scalp or back, putting people into a state of calm and pleasure so deep that it is often described as a “brain orgasm.”

You may have even experienced the feeling yourself by accident, while getting a haircut or watching old videos of the PBS star Bob Ross paint.

But whether or not you have any idea what I’m talking about, trust me when I say that these private sensations have turned into a public sensation.

The abbreviation stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a name that was coined in 2010, as videos intended to stimulate the response started to take off.

It now drives an entire industry on YouTube, where video artists rack up millions of views filming an array of audio and visual triggers for their viewers: They whisper, tap their fingers, flip through pages of a book, play with slime, slurp up noodles, make “mouth sounds” and even role-play scenarios like a spa visit or a doctor’s appointment – anything to evoke the sensation.

For many people, the videos have become a part of their daily routine, a way to help them relax and fall asleep. Grammy-nominated rapper Cardi B released one of the videos last year, in a signal of how popular the genre has become. “My husband thinks it’s very strange and weird,” she said, but, “I watch ASMR every single day to go to bed.”

And during the Super Bowl on Feb. 3, Michelob Ultra aired a commercial in which actress Zoë Kravitz whispered and tapped on a beer bottle, giving shivers of delight to untold numbers of viewers.

But as the industry has expanded, it has also faced resistance from those who see it as something sexual.

The Chinese government cracked down on ASMR videos last year because it said pornography was being released under the guise of the genre. And video artists have complained that YouTube has flagged some nonsexual ASMR videos as inappropriate for advertisers. ( YouTube said it had no policy against the genre.)

“We have to justify all the time what we’re doing: It’s not sexual, it’s relaxation,” said Sharon Dubois, 24, who has hundreds of thousands of subscribers on her channel, ASMR Glow, and said she deletes sexual comments from her page.

It’s true that there are some tingle-inducing videos that are overtly sexual, as well as some pornography that uses the technique.

Still, experts said the tingle itself is not sexual. And, they said, most brain-tingle videos are not intended to be salacious. ( Yes, even if a video of a woman licking a microphone has gotten more than 12 million views. But we digress.)

Few have researched any of this. But a study published last year found that watching the videos was associated with reduced heart rate, something not associated with sexual arousal. It also measured people’s self-reported feelings after watching ASMR videos and control videos. No significant difference in sexual arousal was found.

In a separate study from 2015, which surveyed people who experience the sensation, 98 per cent said they used the phenomenon to relax, while just five per cent said they used it for sexual stimulation.

“ASMR is not a sexual response, which doesn’t mean it can’t be sexualized,” said Craig Richard, a professor at Shenandoah University in Virginia and the author of the book Brain Tingles.

He compared the videos to watching yoga. Both types of videos, he said, tend to feature goodlooking people doing things that could be sexually suggestive. “Yet everyone understands yoga well enough to know that yoga is not a sexual activity,” he said.

But while most people can stretch, only some people get the brain tingles. Richard estimated that 20 per cent of the population can feel them strongly.

It hasn’t helped the phenomenon’s sexual reputation that some describe it as a “brain orgasm.” And there’s another factor: The tingle industry is overwhelmingly female, with many videos featuring women who are young and attractive. Tingles, a leading ASMR app, reports that nearly 70 per cent of its artists are women.

In the videos, the women talk in velvety voices, make eye contact with the camera, give compliments and pretend to touch the viewer. The Atlantic described such efforts, to make whoever is on the other end of the video feel calm and supported, as “the emotional labour of ASMR.”

But men often mistake women’s care and friendliness as sexual intent, said Asia Eaton, a feminist social psychologist and assistant professor at Florida International University.

Eaton, who said she could experience brain tingles, said people were also applying existing prejudices to new phenomena. “Our stereotype about women who are giving care and friendliness in a gentle, intimate way,” she said, “is linked with our image of women being sexual.”

The 21-year-old woman behind ASMR Darling, a YouTube channel with more than two million subscribers, said she goes only by her first name, Taylor, because she has experienced stalking and doxxing – a term for publicly identifying someone’s often sensitive personal details such as addresses, phone numbers and employer information. This made her fear for her safety. She said she made her first video when she was a teenager. “Being that young and being sexualized like that, it wasn’t a good confidence boost,” she said.

The confusion with sexuality takes away what she said were the real psychological benefits of brain tingles.

“When you sexualize it, people don’t take it as seriously,” she said, adding, “I’ve had people email me saying they don’t need to take their sleeping medicine or their prescription pills because it helps with depression or insomnia.”

Some artists also said that they believed sexual stereotypes had influenced YouTube’s decision to remove or limit ads on certain videos. YouTube has faced allegations of censorship after cracking down on a wide range of content that could be deemed offensive.

The site prohibits ads from appearing next to videos with adult content or themes, among other things. But it’s also possible that certain language – “role play” in the title of a video, for example – could trigger the algorithm.

In a statement, the company said: “We don’t have any restrictions on ASMR content that meets our community guidelines, in fact we welcome it on YouTube.”

Some artists have addressed the controversy directly with their viewers.

“I know it’s hard to explain to people who don’t experience the tingles,” YouTube user Olivia Kissper ASMR said in a video on her channel. “It’s just too weird having people coming so very close to you, trying to touch you and stuff, right?”

But she said there’s no such thing as waiting for “one big tingle.”

She offered an analogy: “Most people don’t think of a massage as sexual,” she said. “But if you make it that way, then it is.”