A video has just been unveiled on social media of rapper Cardi B attempting an ASMR technique, whispering into a microphone about herself and her music following a magazine photoshoot. But the questions on a lot of people's lips are: What on earth is ASMR and why is she whispering?
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An ASMR (or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) recording is one of those things that's either a strange pleasure or majorly uncomfortable to listen to. It involves watching videos or listening to recordings of people making soft sounds - whispering, chewing, scratching or tapping, for example - to achieve a tingle that some find extremely relaxing.
Yes, we said tingle. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a sexual thing. In fact, it's quite the opposite for a lot of people. It can take us back to a infantile state of being, as though we were babies being cooed at by our mother, or more often than not it can send us right off to sleep.
"My husband thinks it's very strange and weird that I watch ASMR videos every night to go to bed", Cardi B explained. "But it gives me a very tingling, tingling, tingling sensation."
The term ASMR was first coined by Jennifer Allen, whose main goal was to distance the experience from a sexual one as many forums were colloquially branding the experience as a "brain orgasm" - a term that was always going to stigmatise some members of the community.
"I came up with a lot of ideas, trying to think of one that would capture the key components of the sensation without the possibility of being too embarrassing or too removed from the actual experience", she said in an interview in 2016. "I ended up listing the key characteristics and then looked for terms that would adequately describe each one."
In the end she chose the words Autonomous (self-governing or independent), Sensory (pertaining to sensation), Meridian (the peak or climax) and Response (the trigger to the stimuli).
While the ASMR experience is designed to elicit feelings of joy, peace and relaxation, if you don't get the whole thing at all, it will just come across as weird and creepy, and in some cases you probably won't be able to stop laughing. Especially as there are endless combinations of weird objects used in such videos.
But it's worth giving a chance; not everyone will experience ASMR, but for those who do it's a wholly unusual sensation that's often very difficult to describe.
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