And here we have another year of looking through my history at the ASMRtists that I found useful for concentrating on my studies and winding my brain down after a long day of focusing on student work. Last year, I tried to platform specifically some artists of colour, because, as was very true, there’s an algorithmic reinforcement of racism.
There’s a little natural turnover when it comes to ASMR, and I’m not going to recommend anyone whose work I consider a little too risque. Here though are some artists who I added to my subscriptions this year.
First up, we have Atlas ASMR:
I believe Atlas is a New Zealander who lives in Britain, which speaks of a remarkable willingness to tolerate bad weather. A lot of his video focus seems to be on the deliberately odd, with conceptual pieces normally that focus on telling short form narratives dealing with awkward but soft spoken dudes. I find him generally pretty easy to listen to, but also varied enough that I don’t fall into concentrating on his work as if it has a long form narrative.
ASMR Jas joined the subscriptions, but I haven’t really got a lot to particularly remark on. She does a lot of what I understand to be ‘classic’ ASMR of late — a person, usually a photogenic woman, addresses the camera, and uses a variety of contexts to do a small number of soft sounds that can yield the ASMR response.
JubileeWhispers does a range of both roleplays, but also a bunch of game reviews and examinations. Which can be a weird thing I enjoy where I’m too tired to write or think hard about things but I don’t want to just turn off my brain, so I watch someone playing a game I can take notes on without feeling like I’m about to get jolted by something that requires me to think particularly hard.
So, this is one of your classic ‘pretty lady does ASMR’ channels, and while there are definitely plenty of them, part of doing these posts is being honest about new stuff I’ve added to the collection lately. In this case, the thing that stands out in my memory is this specific video by Lizi. I haven’t watched most of them — just this one video repeatedly, because I find the attitude of the ‘sister’ who is clearly being roped in to help with the project very funny.
It’s very in-jokey? Like you need to listen to a bunch of ASMR videos to really get any reason why it’s funny to see a Russian Twin being so unimpressed with her sister’s ASMR video.
Minor caveat here: This creator sometimes creates ASMR in other languages and I have no idea how safe that language is. If she was dropping slurs in Russian I wouldn’t be able to give you a useful warning.
Now finally, we have a creator who I debated putting here. It’s a little complicated.
I found Jimち ASMR through the basic algorithm wandering ASMR listening tends to do. I try to sample dude ASMRtists, because I know I have my bias, and he proceeded to be actually funny. I opened the dude’s channel up, had a look, and saw some warning signs – including a few Harry Potter pieces. But also he had a few about crossdressing and drag. While prepping this article, I had to do some due diligence and check if he was a total asshole. Undeniably, I found his work useful – I like his voice and style, and he’s got a good, dry sense of humour. Also, as I found looking into him, he’s not a guy – he’s nonbinary, but uses he/him pronouns. That’s neat, I’d like to put forward more nonbinary ASMRtists.
This also meant finding that there had been Twitter Drama about a year ago, which related to channel drama and included things like lying to people about his marital status, cheating on a partner, and stuff like that. I feel awkward about this because I don’t actually want to stand in judgment of the artist’s personal life. Like if Jim was promoting hatespeech, it’d be easy to just ditch him.
Thing is, he also refers in one – seemingly honest – video talking about drag and presentation as a nonbinary individual, to the idea of the ghost of a gender, and how it’s possible to be literally haunted by it. And that I thought was interesting and an idea that may resonate with others.
But thing is, him being crap at relationships isn’t necessarily my business? And really getting enough information to know for sure about whether or not he should be promoted would involve a lot of inspection into his personal life that doesn’t seem to be my business? Like cheating is absolutely a shitty thing to do, sure.
So what I would say is: I enjoy Jimち’s work as an ASMRtist, but I would recommend against dating him.