Touching Sounds: ASMR as a Digital Remedy

Contemporary media cultures are characterised by an overflow of stimuli. The constant need for connection leads to calls for disconnection and recuperation. What if some of this digital exhaustion may be undone through digital remedies? The emergent genre of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is composed of videos, often shared and found on social media, that brings together visual and aural aesthetics to evoke a tactile response, arguably undoing some of the dispersing effects of digital media. This chapter explores the remedial potentials of digital media in countering the pathos associated with the (over)use of social media, computers, and smartphones, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, by examining the modes of connections offered by ASMR. It does so by analysing the formal similarities of media of disparate effects in their mode of dissemination and consumption but underscoring the different types of connection at stake in this techno-cultural context. The analysis will be directed at the aesthetics of ASMR videos on YouTube such as the channels of ASMR Darling and Gibi ASMR, with a particular emphasis on videos in which they perform in medical scenarios. The aesthetics of these videos articulated here extend from one explicitly about identity and performance to one that concerns a range of sensory experiences associated with this genre.