quote:

ORIGINAL: ARIES83

Is anyone into these ASMR video things? Apparently it's a fetish. I just saw a bit about it on the news and to be honest it struck me as a bit weird and creepy...
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Ok, I didn't watch it for too long and skipped a bit. But I definitely could see an appeal, especially the close, breathy whispers, essentially I think this is intimacy porn.
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OP, you might want to check out this ASMR thread http://www.collarchat.com/m_4721312/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm where smileforme50 had posted back in August from Wiki: "Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a neologism for a perceptual phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp, back, or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and/or cognitive stimuli."

Having ASMR, which I don't think I do (unless grooving to musical beats and tunes counts!), is involuntary and I'm not sure I would characterize these ASMR-geared videos as a fetish. They could possibly be to some individuals, as more of a vanilla fetish compulsion than a BDSM (kink) fetish.

. . . and as RockaRolla points out, it's less about content or thematic backdrop than it is the sensory stimuli experienced by those with ASMR, who have a kind of hypersensitivity to sensations, sound (the reason for the breathy whispering, low-level rustling), repetitious noises, etc, which appear to be soothing to them. This link in particular struck me as a more sensual version. (Admittedly, I have only seen a scant few of these.) There's a thin line between sensual and sensuous, so while not overtly sexual, you picked up on how there is an underlying element of eroticism which could be used as "intimacy porn."

I'm not familiar with any women who have this condition, but I've known two men well who do. One was a long-time partner who loved getting his head scratched, much like soothing the savage beast, along with light scalp massages. He also developed a fetish of sorts for getting trimmed of facial hair on the edges of his beard and neck (saying his skin was too sensitive to shave) by having them plucked. This bordered on mild masochism, and it relaxed him so much that he would go into a form of subspace (is how I see it now) before passing out. If he didn't stay overly relaxed, he would want to perform sex on me right afterward, but in time that waned due to his falling off to sleep. The other one enjoyed the "feel" of sexual intercourse so much that he deliberately prolonged sexual acts for at least half an hour or a culmination of half-hour segments before ejaculating to intensify the earth-shaking effect of coming that it had on him, which had maddened his sex partners for being such an inconsiderate lover.

DreamLady

quote:

ORIGINAL: dreamlady
"Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a neologism for a perceptual phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp, back, or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and/or cognitive stimuli."