Have you ever experienced a tingling sensation in your head, triggered by the sound of a soothing voice, a foreign accent or rustling papers?
If your answer is no, then you may find this weird or downright creepy.
Google the acronym ASMR and you鈥檒l find dozens of YouTube videos of (mostly) women whispering into the camera, blowing softly into the lens, on cardboard or pretending to brush the viewers鈥� hair.
They may sound like fetish videos, but those who make them say it鈥檚 all about relaxation and helping viewers sleep.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, or 鈥渂raingasm,鈥� as some people call it. ASMR is a scientific-sounding name for the brain tingling sensations triggered by certain stimuli, but there are no known scientific studies of the phenomenon that has exploded online over the last couple of years.
Ilse Blansert, a woman from the Netherlands who now lives in Canada, has garnered millions of hits on her ASMR videos. On , she produces various relaxing sounds for her viewers, such as typing on a computer keyboard, running her fingers and a pen over newspaper pages, and lighting matches.
In one video, she lays out crayons on a bed and repeatedly runs one over the others.
Blansert told CTV鈥檚 Canada AM Friday that she discovered the online ASMR community in 2011, after searching for solutions to her anxiety and insomnia.
鈥淚鈥檝e experienced these tingles my entire life, but I never knew that they had a name,鈥� she said, recalling how she would fall asleep 鈥渋n five minutes鈥� as a child when her grandmother sang Dutch songs and stroked her face.
After learning about ASMR, Blansert started making her own videos and her viewership immediately grew.
鈥淚鈥檓 blown away. I never saw this coming in any kind of way,鈥� she said.
鈥淚 just wanted to help people fall asleep.鈥�
Now, there are 鈥渉undreds of video makers,鈥� Blansert said, catering to diverse demands for 鈥渂raingasm鈥�-inducing sounds.
