Most importantly for Hunnicutt, Aoki seems 086
to love making the videos simply for their own
sake, and isn’t pushed to perform. Like many
five-year-olds, she also loves trying on her mother’s
lipsticks; but unlike most five-year-olds, Aoki was
encouraged to rummage through her mother’s
make-up bag – and a camera captured the results.
“I put all the lipstick on!” Aoki grins, explaining that
this video was her favourite to make.
“If you can’t experience it you’re gonna either
think it’s weird or you’re gonna think it’s creepy,”
Hunnicutt says. Aoki – now playing with her toys
in the corner of the room – thinks aloud. “IT’S NOT
CREEPY!” she shouts emphatically (although it’s
worth noting that with her childish rhotacism, it
comes out as “cweepy”). Like many ASMRtists, she
notes that these videos help people with insomnia,
PTSD and stress. “I mean there’s always some
weirdos in the world, but you can’t stop helping
others just because there are those people.”In October 2017, Anthony Fleck, a 24-year-old
ASMR fan, reported a channel by a “little girl”
YouTuber whose commenters asked her to suck
on pickles and lick lollipops.
“I can’t speak for everybody but as an adult man
I have no reason to ever want to watch a kid make
ASMR videos,” Fleck says. “I saw her channel and
it only took a few seconds of scrolling through the
comments to see all these people asking her to do
really perverse things that she obviously didn’t
understand she shouldn’t be doing.”
Fleck reported the channel to YouTube and
asked others in the ASMR community to do the
same. “I reported it under child abuse, which you
think would immediately throw up a red flag, but
the channel stayed.” Months later, the channel
disappeared – though it’s unclear if it was removed
by YouTube or the girl herself.
“I don’t think enough is done,” Fleck says. “This
little girl was wearing sweatshirts with her school’s
name on them, you have the danger of being doxxed,
people finding out where you are.” Thankfully, Fleck
feels members of the ASMR community look out for
each other. “It’s just a little difficult, because other
than reaching out to get YouTube to do something,
we’re kind of powerless.”
What does a YouTuber do when they want to
complain about YouTube? They make a YouTube
video. In October 2018, Makenna Kelly became
the topic of outraged videos after she uploaded a
role-play entitled “ASMR – SASSY Police Officer/
Cop”. In the video, Kelly wore a police officer
costume and knee-high boots while wielding a
baton. Her “sassy” behaviour – smacking her lips,
singing the Pussycat Dolls song “Don’t Cha” and
talking about Tinder dates – was interpreted as
sexual by some viewers.
“We got a lot of hate,” her mother says. “In
the video she’s wearing a Halloween costume of
super-thin fabric – and this is probably too muchThe bizarreness of this footage means ASMR isn’t
without controversies. In June 2018, the Chinese
government banned ASMR videos, branding
them “vulgar” and “pornographic”. Following in
August, PayPal began blocking the accounts of
ASMRtists who received money to make custom
videos (although the company later denied it has a
policy against ASMR content). For those who don’t
experience ASMR, the videos can seem fetishistic.
Beyond the weirdness of whispering and making
“mouth sounds”, as in Kelly’s honeycomb video,
some people nickname ASMR a “brain orgasm”.
In June 2018, Poerio conducted a study of the
physiological responses around ASMR. Videos
designed to trigger ASMR were played to 50 people
who get ASMR and a control group of 50 non-ASMR
participants. “We found that people who experience
ASMR showed significant reductions in their heart
rates compared with non-ASMR participants,”
Poerio explains. “These reductions are compa-
rable to other stress-reduction techniques such as
mindfulness and music therapy.” Poerio says this
finding is crucial, because reduced heart rates prove
people who enjoy ASMR are not sexually aroused.
“I compare it to getting the world’s best massage,
but no one has to be touching you because you
can feel it by watching ASMR videos,” says Craig
Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences
at Shenandoah University, and founder of the
website ASMR University.
Richard, who is also the author of Brain Tingles:
The Secret to Triggering Autonomous Sensory
Meridian Response for Improved Sleep, Stress
Relief, and Head-to-Toe Euphoria, estimates that
about 20 per cent of the population experience
strong ASMR. What triggers people may come down
to individual preferences. “The key to triggering
ASMR is to create gentle sounds,” he says. Richard’s
own triggers include eye tests and the old PBS series
The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross.
According to YouTube estimates, there are more
than 45 million ASMR videos uploaded to the site,
and over the past year there has been a marked
increase in children making ASMR-related videos.
Richard hypothesises that our brain is probably
more receptive to an unknown child than a strange
adult, making it easier for some individuals to be
relaxed by ASMR videos featuring children.
The unanswered question remains: is it right for
children to trigger – as the title of Richard’s book
puts it – “head-to-toe euphoria” in adults?
For instance, on her ASMR Toddler YouTube
channel, five-year-old Aoki Hunnicutt (pictured
following spread) whispers, plays with her dolls’
hair and chews gum for delighted fans. In her
most-watched video, she role-plays as a make-up
artist by pretending to apply products to the viewer.
(She also gets distracted and picks her nose.)
“For me, something about when kids whisper,
it’s, oh my god, it’s so relaxing,” enthuses Desiree
Hunnicutt, Aoki’s mother, who started watching
ASMR videos in 2011. Hunnicutt says that she was
motivated to create the ASMR Toddler channel in
order to help people. “I see comments where people
are like, ‘Oh my goodness, I watch every night and
it helps me fall asleep,’” she says. “To me that’s
perfect, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
@KLUNA.TIK
AGE: UNKNOWN
MAJOR: STUNT EATING
5.7M SUBSCRIBERSKluna eats unusual
“food”, such as sand or
balloons. This is more
macabre audio-visual
ASMR – all the posts warn
not to try this at home. SETDESIGNER:^ DANE^JOHNSON