Autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, is a thing you’ve probably heard of. There have been internet communities devoted to the phenomenon for some time now. It all supposedly started with an internet forum founded in 2007 called “Weird sensation feels good.” Searching ‘ASMR’ on YouTube now produces more than 7 million results, and the term is now widespread in the meme vernacular. These videos typically consist of an ‘ASMRtist’ speaking softly into an ultra-sensitive microphone and generating other sounds from crinkling paper, tapping their nails, painting, you name it. And this is supposed to give you the tinglies.
Now, I didn’t want to do a Procrastination Destination post on ASMR writ large. That would be much too stale. Instead, I have decided to focus on a subgenre of ASMR videos that was founded at the intersection of another popular and inexplicable YouTube genre: Unboxing videos.
The genre has been around just a tad longer than ASMR videos. According to the Unboxing wiki, the first incarnation of the modern unboxing video was this one of a guy unboxing a Nokia E61, uploaded to YouTube in 2006. The gist of the genre: people open up shit that they buy and record their reactions.
Now, as with many intersections, the genesis of the ASMR unboxing subgenre is unclear. But, as you will see, it is heavily populated. Here are some vids, for your procrastination:
ASMR Unboxing a military ration. I think this video is a ripe source for a student forum under the banner of President Roth’s new course initiatives.
ASMR Unboxing NECA Life Size Xenomorph Egg & Facehugger Prop Replicas. This guy seems to be really into Alien. The internet is weird, man.
What we all needed: an ASMR unboxing of an iPhone 7:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL8z5X78zmk
And its counterpart: the ASMR unboxing of Apple’s airpods:
If you wanted to have some tinglies while watching someone open a box of toothpaste, here you fucking go:
Oh and my absolute favorite is most certainly this video of an ASMR unboxing of a Harry Potter collectibles set:
That’s all for now. Please don’t waste as much time as I did watching these. Save yourselves.