YouTube offers us an endless supply of free entertainment. If you can ignore or avoid the increasingly intrusive ads, it is a great time. Learn to DIY, or cook, or just watch fools doing foolish things, whatever. Or the confusing amount of people meticulously describing things they have purchased. Those are simultaneously relaxing and frustrating. Yoga, music videos, relaxation, hypnosis — I’m just listing things that I think of because I can. It’s all there!
Of course there are plenty of things that shouldn’t be there. Things that should never exist once, let alone in such huge amounts. You know I’m talking about ASMR but does everyone here know what it is? Forgive me for showing you:
omg I hate it.
Essentially, these are videos where people will build a (usually embarrassing for everyone involved) scene for you and then whisper incessantly into a high quality microphone for your listening pleasure. But not MY listening pleasure, no sir. The tiny sounds of everyday life are annoying at best, or if you are like Dollissa and have misophonia, they are legitimately painful. Other people though, ALLEGEDLY, get some sort of pleasant chills from hearing these little sounds, including people just loudly eating french fries (never click this). They don’t want to slap these people, or scream insults. They just want to listen, and shiver, and then listen to a “related video” from the side bar.
It’s unboxing AND asmr! And a hilarious clap left in randomly and I hope everyone listening had a fit.
A note on jollies: Time and again, I have read (okay like three times, I’ve read this) that ASMR does not cater to any sort of sexual fetish. These people being pixie fairy deer tailors in the magical land of Oolala whispering gossip and information about your health are pure and innocent and wish only to give a good feeling — but not a good feeling down there. These people who have decided to pretend to kidnap you and whisper stalker threats at you as though you are gagged and bound are doing this because of nonsexual reasons, so don’t you dare think they are being creepy.
“Torture Roleplay” and “Sleep Relaxation” don’t seem like a good match.
Oh speaking of creepy, I think it is important to note that I might have gone a lot longer in my life without knowing that these things are happening in an online community, but cchris “discovered” them probably around the same time that he was constantly sending those hours long ambient youtubes. I liked those, so he shifted gears to ASMR. When I reacted as negatively as I possibly could, there began months of being sent links to all of the worst he could find. This is why all of the “creepy” ones I linked in the last paragraph involve kidnapping and murder. It’s all I know. Well, those and this Plague Doctor ASMR channel.
You might have picked up somewhere along the line, through articles, photographic evidence, or wild rumors, that I think plague doctors are horrific and intriguing historical figures. Their success and failures, appearance, avarice, mystery — all of these things are neato skeeto. They are A-OK. Personally, I think the steampunk ones you see around are kind of dumb because they certainly were not from that Victorian era or whatever time period steampunks are hott for, and now you can’t find a good old fashioned traditional leather mask with red lenses for sale — they all have spikes and buckles and clock gears embedded in them and no thank you!
This ASMR guy falls into this trendy category. And he talks so much! He doesn’t shut up. I’m not sure if he is trying to be creepier through chit chat, but it just doesn’t work. It’s only irritating. If I did watch it for several minutes, mesmerized, I certainly muted it and silently thought about my life and choice of activities. A silent plague doctor would be the best way to go, guy, if you’re reading this. The sounds of using a pestle and mortar, or of boiling mercury would be enough small sound to appease anyone with this gross proclivity. Or maybe I just detest the sound of people whispering or nearly-whispering so much that I begin to fly into a rage.
Shhh. Stop talking.
In fact, you should make a video not only where you don’t say anything, but also it’s really dark and you are just creakily moving around near the shadows. Throw out those steampunkesque masks and get one that looks like the real thing. Make sure your doctoring breeches are a creaky leather, and tap things with your doctoring stick. Maybe candle light would be more authentic, actually. Position the camera so that the viewer feels like they are sick in bed.
Actually, it would be far more ideal to commit to quality, and make this a nine hour long ambient YouTube — get away from that ASMR! Then a person could sleep to it. Have a fire going in a fireplace off to the side and maybe once every forty minutes the plague doctor gets closer and the beak gets near. In the description, point out that it is best to keep it “full screen.” So sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night the beak will be far back, or closer. Sometimes the sound of coins being counted, beloved florins.
Ooh and sometimes quiet sobbing that sounds like it must be from the hallway, a distraught family member who has been given the bad news.
No one will ever watch it. Except maybe one person, once, and then she will have some serious soul-searching to do for a little while afterward.