Can YouTube videos be intimate?

Alexis Schlagenhauf
Language In Digital Media (LING 3800)
Advisor: Dr. Kira Hall
LURA 2021

Can YouTube videos be intimate? ASMR video content may very well show that they can be. ASMR is a non-scientific term that stands for ‘Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response’, which specifically refers to a pleasurable, relaxing tingling sensation in the back of one's head, caused by certain sounds or stimuli. There are a wide variety of potential ASMR ‘triggers,’ such as tapping and especially quiet or whispering voices. On YouTube, an ASMR community has sprung up, where ASMR creators (dubbed ASMRtists by the community) produce videos intended to trigger viewers’ ASMR response, or simply to relax or calm the audience. However, researchers such as Joceline Andersen (2014) have found another important part of these ASMR videos, which is intimacy. Andersen has argued that the connection between the video creator and each viewer is an intimate connection, just not in the way we would traditionally use the term. In this way, ASMR videos use a form of nonstandard, digitally-mediated intimacy in order to create the connection and even the ASMR effect. 

My project, titled “Digitally Mediated Intimacy in ASMR Role-Play Videos,” addresses how these videos create this remediated form of intimacy. While other work on ASMR videos has shown certain methods that are commonly used in ASMR videos, such as embodied touching and domesticity, this paper focuses on adjacency pairs as the main unit of intimacy, as described by Gottman and Driver (2005). An adjacency pair is a unit of speech between two speakers in which the first utterance calls for a second response from another party. For example, a question followed by an answer, or a greeting followed by another greeting. Gottman and Driver’s work on marriage conflict describes a certain adjacency pair as a unit of intimacy, known as bids for intimacy. “Digitally Mediated Intimacy in ASMR Role-Play Videos” looks at these bids for intimacy in ASMR videos with one caveat, that the ASMR videos are only half of the conversation, and thus only feature half of each adjacency pair, with the second pair part implied by the creator in order for the viewer to be, or at least feel like, an active participant in the creation of intimacy. Below I include two examples of how these bids work from one ASMR video by Gentle Whispering, who is one of, if not the, most popular ASMR creators on YouTube.

From  Sleep-inducing Haircut  ASMR | Shampoo | Page Flipping | Scissors by Gentle Whispering ASMR:

1. “Have you tried this before? It’s so delicious so {yummy/healing}. (long pause) Okay” (Gentle Whispering ASMR, 2018). 
2. “[Long pause while clipping scissors] Yes I know it's a relaxing sound isn’t it a little [clips scissors twice] sound like that I agree.” (Gentle Whispering ASMR, 2018).

In the first example we see a bid for intimacy in the form of a question which Gentle Whispering askes to the viewer. She then waits for a little bit, which acts as a space where an imagined listener utters an imagined response for the second part of the bid. Gentle Whispering then confirms that she “heard” the response by uttering “Okay.” The second example is also similar, however rather than Gentle Whispering initiating the bid for intimacy, the imagined second party does, and all that is actually present in the video is Gentle Whispering agreeing with the listener that hair clipping sounds are relaxing. By having these one sided conversations, the listener is able to feel like they are participating in an intimate conversation with the ASMRtist, even though a premade video which thousands of other people also watch. 

YouTube commenters on these ASMR videos show clearly that the viewers are aware of these pairs, and indeed feel like participants in this pre-recorded, implied conversation, as they even express the feelings of intimacy created in them by each video. 

This work is just a baseline explanation of certain techniques ASMR creators use in order to create the ASMR feeling and intimacy in their videos. There are a wide variety of different kinds of ASMR videos which are understudied, as is the whole community. However, this paper shows how the internet is changing our ideas of intimacy, romance, and more through digitally-mediated remediation.

Works Cited

Andersen, J. (2014). Now You’ve Got the Shiveries. Television & New Media, 16(8), 683-700. doi:10.1177/1527476414556184

Gottman, J. & Driver, J. (2005). Dysfunctional Marital Conflict and Everyday Marital Interaction, Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 43:3-4, 63-77, doi:10.1300/J087v43n03_04