Does It Really Matter if ASMR Is a Sex Thing?

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Crinkly paper, rustling leaves, a clacky keyboard, someone puttering around the kitchen. The feeling of someone running their fingers through your hair. For some people, including me, these sensations provoke a response almost like floating, one that makes the skin prickle, an electric feeling often described as “the tingles.” Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), a term to describe the phenomenon, burst into the public eye in the 2010s. There are a few studies on ASMR, including one that’s been tremendously influential in the conversation: the 2018 paper “More Than a Feeling” about the emotional and physiological effects of ASMR. But there’s still considerable dispute over what, exactly, is going on here and if it should be considered a sex thing—a question that has big implications for ASMR content creators.

There is an incredible diversity of ASMR content that is designed to provoke the tingles—and parodies of the same— proliferating on the internet since the genre got its initial boom, especially on YouTube. Popular creators like Gentle Whispering (whose early work was a huge catalyst), WhispersRed, and Gibi ASMR rack up millions of views on videos such as one of my personal favorites, which promises a "tingly crystal shop" in the soft-spoken style, complete with crystal ball emojis. ASMR also lives on TikTok, in podcasts, and effectively anywhere fine sensory experiences are sold, including real-world events such as the “immersive theatre performance” Whisperlodge and hairplay spas, which tap into much older traditions across Asia. 

A genre that may have initially began with relatively low production values and a warm, charming, personal attention aesthetic has evolved into an empire with a slew of videos to evoke tingles, sometimes via elaborate and beautifully produced roleplays, like those of Moonlight Cottage ASMR. They’re fast. They’re slow. They’re themed. They’re unintentional, as in the case of this Japanese artisan making woodblock prints. If you can think of it, there’s ASMR of it; you can experience an ASMR spa, an ASMR girlfriend, and even an ASMR pelvic exam and pap smear. We knew we were in trouble when ASMR showed up in a Super Bowl commercial. Even Mother Monster has taken it for a spin.

ASMR reactions, and subsequently ASMR content, are extremely broad. Even those who experience the tingles don’t necessarily react this way to all stimuli in the same way. Some people hate mouth sounds, for example, or tapping and repetitive noises, while others love them. Interestingly, some people who experience ASMR also report that they experience misophonia—again, like me—where noxious sounds are so unpleasant that they cause extreme distress, including feelings of anger. This phenomenon is supported by some very small studies that indicate we should explore this in more detail.  (For further reading on misophonia, I always recommend the fantastic “The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing,” by Jake Eaton for Asterisk.) 

Too Sexy for Your Ears

“Arousal” is a feeling of awakening the senses, sexual or otherwise. This is also an accurate description of ASMR—and the nexus of some debate in the community. 

Some ASMR content consumers and creators consciously identify this sensation as sexual, whether videos are intended to be sexual or not. For purposefully sexual ASMR, there are a slew of options: On OnlyFans, ASMR erotica is a lively category where you can find, for example, the intriguingly-titled niche content of “pussy ASMR.” You can actually find ASMR on numerous porn sites, the content ranging from whispering sister’s friends catching you masturbating to murmured small dick humiliation content. 

Others do not think ASMR is sexual, finding it relaxing and calming, and some see it as more of a blurred line that may vary depending on content, creator, and the mood of the consumer.

Regardless of intent and how it’s received, ASMR taps into embodiment and sensory experiences of the world in a way some find unusual, leading some to describe it as a fetish—a term often used to describe anything sexual that is “weird,” the word now so broad and vague that it’s effectively meaningless. Are you a “foot fetishist” or just someone who appreciates feet? Does it matter?

ASMRtists often hotly insist this is not a sex thing, as do some fans, with heated battles over sexual ASMR content and whether it should be considered part of the community. At times, there is a “not like other girls” approach to these conversations, with creators and viewers alike slut-shaming ASMRtists and differentiating bad, gross, fetishistic sexual content from pure, good, innocent ASMR. They complain about excessively erotic mouth noises, tight shirts, showing too much skin, “polluting this community,” claiming sexual content is ruining ASMR—though some of these lady doth protest too much complainants don’t seem to question why notoriously accurate algorithms routinely serve them sexualized ASMR content. 

Discussing ASMR in these polarized terms may be one reason there are people who think ASMR is weird, who mock creators and people who say they experience the tingles, as anything adjacent to sex work is subject to disdain. The sometimes extremely aggressive responses to ASMR from people eager to talk about how much they hate ASMR content are noted, as many hew closely to social attitudes of discomfort around sexuality. If you don’t care for it or find it uncomfortable, it’s weird.

Sexual content—fetish or not, unintentional or not, whether you like it or not—is a HUGE part of the internet, and is a perennially popular element of sex work of all sorts. Understanding the overlaps (and lack thereof) is an important element of talking about ASMR. When I started thinking about ASMR in these terms, I knew I had to call Lauren Kiley, a professional pervert and friend of the blog.  

“I think if we had a more accepting vocabulary around fetishes and kink, that would go a long way toward self-acceptance,” she told me. “If you set up some internalized shame and denial, that sucks…We do have words for these things, but [if] you’re scared of the words, we can’t use words, we can’t have a proper conversation,” about ASMR or anything else that people may experience as sexually arousing.

Capitalism plays a role in these conversations as well; setting aside the question of how listeners and viewers experience ASMR, creators have to consider how they market and position their content if they want to thrive in the hostile environs of community guidelines standards and keyboard warriors. 

Kiley raised a critical point: “It’s a fetish for some and not a fetish for others. If you call it a fetish, you will be punished. Your money will be taken, you will be deplatformed.”

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Fear of the almighty algorithm, and more specifically, terror of being demonetized, is a very real reason for people to insist that ASMR is not sexual in nature. Demonetization, in which given videos or entire channels are excluded from revenue streams, is a constant fear for creators of all sorts because it often appears capricious, arbitrary, and completely mysterious, with a labyrinthine appeals process that frequently results in unsatisfactory answers. Creators also fear malicious reporting and the leveraging of abuse reports as a form of harassment. Enough strikes on an account can have serious consequences, which, for some, are a direct threat to their livelihood. Some ASMR creators already routinely face penalties for “sexual” content, whether or not their content is designed to be so.

This is further complicated, Kiley says, by the fact that some creators who produce explicitly sexual content may label it as ASMR in an attempt to get around the algorithm. For example, creators of erotic hypnosis videos are well aware that labeling them as such is an express ticket to a strike, so they call it ASMR, intentionally muddying the waters.

These things loop around each other. Fetish content is demonetized because it is demonized and advertisers don’t want to appear alongside it, driving creators to lean in on “definitely not a sex thing” even though it’s perfectly fine if some ASMR is a sex thing. 

But there’s another factor at work in the heated debate over the fetish nature of ASMR: labor rights. 

Sexualization on the Job

It’s hard to control human sexuality, and there’s no way to know when someone will experience ASMR as sexual versus relaxing, sometimes in response to the same video. One person can find the sight of long nails trailing along various surfaces very calming, while another experiences sexual excitement. Viewers can, however, choose to control how they talk about that response, and many feel the acute need to share with the class, particularly in response to videos produced by young, attractive women. The comments of ASMRtists producing content clearly designed for relaxation, for example, often include gross sexualization. ASMRtists such as Gibi have discussed feeling objectified and sexualized because of their content, with some creators experiencing stalking and harassment that puts them at physical risk. These conditions turn the debate into not just an academic question, but a workplace safety issue.

“These are professional content creators and this is the gig,” writer and long-time ASMR consumer Claire Willett told me when we discussed ASMR content creation as a profession in a climate where a growing number of content creators of all stripes are making big money. The sexualization of their work is “about audience boundaries, not a fault of the art form being ambiguous. They should be able to create what they want, we just need to behave ourselves.”

Willett’s point speaks to a larger cultural issue: What kind of content creation, specifically, is sexualized and treated like a hobby or oddity instead of a job? Erin Gee, a music professor at Université de Montréal, studies ASMR and integrates it into her practice as a creator of experimental music. She notes that ASMR content, as a genre designed to evoke feelings and intimacy, is a very pink collar, female-coded art, with creators using “emotional hacks” to connect with viewers—something seen in many feminized professions, including caring professions and sex work. 

“The way people perform is deeply creative, very personal, and takes a lot of skill. It’s the same as watching an excellent pop singer, they make it look effortless,” said Gee, identifying ASMR as a devalued art form because of who performs it and the physiological responses it sometimes provokes. That same use of professional skills to evoke emotion plays into conversations about parasocial relationships, where people may think of ASMR creators in very familiar terms because of the environment they create, sometimes becoming angry, according to Gee, when creators set boundaries and make it clear that their work, while intimate, is not intimacy and does not grant permission to sexualize them. 

The tensions over whether ASMR is sexual or not (has no one heard of a venn diagram around here?) are a reminder of overall social discomfort with human sexuality, especially sexuality that diverges from an imaginary norm, particularly when that sexuality is feminized. In the case of ASMR specifically, the content interacts profoundly with something sex workers have warned people about for a long time: When content deemed sexual is isolated and stigmatized, the same applies to the people who create it, and it’s easy to dehumanize them and their work. Not concerned about that? If you don’t step up to defend those people because you think it doesn’t apply to you, you may be next.

This debate isn’t just about individual platforms. Laws pushed by anti-sex work activist groups explicitly attacking people who perform sex work, whether online or in person, create a constantly shifting standard for what’s acceptable that exposes some workers to high risks, especially if they are BIPOC, trans, or living on the margins and providing in-person sex work. Sex workers are more likely to experience physical and sexual violence, not by nature of their trade but because of the way society has presented them. This was starkly illustrated in 2021 when a gunman killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent, at several spas linked with sex work in Atlanta, Georgia. Law enforcement is also more concerned with criminalizing sex workers than preventing violence against them. During a 2017 vice sting, 38-year-old Yang Song died after falling out a window while being pursued by the New York Police Department. For those working online, on phone sex hotlines and via other remote means, sex work can come with doxing and harassment that may spill over into the physical world. Even after people leave the industry, they aren’t exempt from profiling and disrespect, as seen in the case of a teacher who was fired after her school district found out she used to be a stripper. Sex workers are also cut out of the financial world—the source and fluctuations of their incomes can make it hard to get a mortgage; sex workers routinely experience freezes and seizures of their bank accounts; and it’s getting increasingly difficult to find payment processors who will work with sex workers, a particularly acute issue for people doing online work. 

This affects how we interact with content such as ASMR and the people who create it; because some view it as sexual, they also think these workers (as well as those performing ASMR recreationally) don’t deserve respect, basic protections, and the right to perform and live their lives without fear of harassment or abuse. Some question whether ASMR is art at all, or otherwise want to put sharp limits on what kind of ASMR is acceptable.

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas age verification law targeting adult websites, which will inevitably trigger a debate over how to determine what counts as porn. This isn’t just a fun “I know it when I see it” joke opportunity. Samantha Cole writes for our indie media comrades at 404 Media that new legislation on the federal level attempting to end porn comes with harsh penalties, including prison time. The Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA) has the potential to turn any arousing content into “obscenity,” regardless of the creator’s intent, and while it has a minimal chance of making it into law, it’s a sharp reminder that Republicans want to define, and control, “decency.” They want to criminalize not just porn, but a wide swath of content from romance novels to hornyposting, and, of course, ASMR. Watch out, Duolingo owl and most of Bluesky after 10 p.m. 

Taking the not a sex thing defense ultimately draws the wrong boundary line, throwing creators of sensual and sexual content under the bus in addition to feeding larger social attitudes about feminized professions, particularly sex work. Perhaps the question to ask isn’t whether ASMR is a fetish—whatever that word even means—but why people are so anxious to definitively determine this. The argument has clear undercurrents that differentiate between “good” and “bad,” nonsexual versus pure, creating an environment where anything related to “being a hooker online,” as Kiley puts it, is firmly in the “bad” category, one creators and consumers alike should be ashamed of. 

Those eager to distinguish sexual content could run into a rude surprise that sex workers have long warned about: When you open the door to profiling something as sex work and punishing those who do it, that door is going to keep swinging open, ensnaring more and more people in adjacent spaces who thought they were safe. There is an intrinsic social value in standing with sex workers early and often—sex work is work, sex workers are people with inherent value, and the more disdainfully we treat sex work, the more dangerous the lives of sex workers are. It’s also important for people to remember that obscenity is often in the eye of the beholder, so in addition to the Now That’s What I Call Fetish Content™ ASMR, that innocuous video of your imaginary travel agency could be next on the chopping block.

This piece was edited by Nicole Froio and copyedited by Tina Vasquez.