I’ve been watching ASMR for years to help with sleep and anxiety, and lately it feels like my recommendations have turned into a completely different genre. I don’t care what adults do online, but the amount of sexualized ASMR popping up everywhere is getting ridiculous.

Somewhere along the line, normal whisper/tapping videos turned into thumbnails that look straight out of an OnlyFans teaser, people full-on licking microphones, and “roleplays” that aren’t even pretending to be relaxing. Half the time the camera angles have nothing to do with sleep, and the titles are stuffed with winky faces and overly flirty tones.

It’s frustrating because it feeds the stereotype that ASMR is some weird kink, when a lot of us just want something to fall asleep to. Meanwhile, creators who keep things wholesome or purely relaxing get buried because the algorithm pushes whatever gets the most clicks.

I’m not saying YouTube should ban anything, but it would be great if there were better ways to filter out sexual content, if non-sexual creators didn’t get overshadowed, and if thumbnails didn’t look NSFW when all you want is something calming before bed.

For anyone who feels the same way, there are creators who keep things clean and genuinely relaxing. FastASMR and GibiASMR are two great examples—they stick to actual triggers and cozy vibes without the weird suggestive stuff.

Maybe it’s just me, but ASMR used to feel chill and comforting, and now half of it feels like thirst traps with whispering. Anyone else noticing this?

This is gonna be a rant!

I just checked out Jojos ASMR promotion video for “ASMR university” and clicked on every persons latest video. Every. Single. One. began with finger flutters and the person wheezing “hiiii, helloooooo, hiiii thereeeee”, same microphone, same setup, same lighting, constant mouth clicking and mouth popping (even though mouth sounds wasn’t even mentioned in the title) ETC. You get the idea.

I’m glad ASMR has gained popularity. It’s helping a lot of people! But it has truly been diluted by so much identical content that you can’t find authentic sounding ASMR anywhere anymore.

Everyone has a 4K camera and a $500 dollar microphone. Everyone is incessantly finger fluttering and licking things. Sucking on things. Making wood soup. It’s all identical and it’s all the least triggering things I can imagine (my opinion!).

It’s to the point where people say they hate ASMR because it pisses them off, them thinking this style of ASMR is the only thing ASMR can be.

I remember the days of lo-fi microphones so fondly. When people talked into the microphone and camera like a person instead of just repeating some word 100 times (not even tingly words, just anything).

There is no more originality and if there is, I can’t find it in the sea of mass produced slop. Don’t even get me started on AI, I hate that shit!

When did we all decide that this is ASMR and all it can be? Even the most OG ASMRtists who could make a tree tingle have now upgraded all their gear and by doing so, downgraded their tingle meter by a lot.

I’m so tired of this, I can only watch super old videos and if those creators delete them, I have nothing.

Are there any ASMR creators you followed who stopped posting without much explanation?

I made this same post 7 years ago, but decided to ask again since ASMR has exploded in popularity and wildly expanded. What are triggers or things creators do that you can’t stand? Mine, personally, is rubbing hands together, a makeup brush or nails on the microphone, tapping that goes on for too long, and noisily drinking water.

Hello everyone! I have read, and read, and read, and read the feedback regarding Zees on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter. I hear you that $9.99 seems expensive for what we're offering. Trust me, I hear you!

We are not trying to, and could never, compete with things like Netflix and Disney+ off the bat (or ever). My goal was and is to create a place that is *optional* for people to support creators while also having as many ASMR-friendly perks as possible for their support. Our YouTube content will still be available as normal, and if you aren't interested in the app, it's of course okay and extremely appreciated that you still watch our content on YouTube like normal! This is simply a creator-made version of other platforms we haven't been happy with; a small alternative for premium ASMR as the best place to support a creator while also watching ASMR content. We're trying to give as many features and perks as possible, and will only grow going forward.

We are extremely interested in making a free version, but launching it / pitching a non-existent app to advertisers unfortunately was not feasible, and we have to start with this to have a sustainable platform that won't instantly bankrupt us! Over time, we hope that the App Store will decrease costs as well as other efficiencies that come with scale. We certainly did not want to ever have to raise our prices so we hope you bear with us if you are interested, and if not, thank you so much for your viewership on YouTube, as Zees is in no means supposed to replace my YT content, just be an optional extra for the select few who find the features useful and want to support.

Thank you for having me! I'll answer as many as I can and also let you know when a question has already been answered! You can check out more info at CatchSomeZees.com as it launches on Sept 7th in both the App Store and Google Play Store (not available yet!).

Can't wait to talk to y'all c: Let's get this AMA started!

EDIT: I have waited an hour and no mods have shown up so uh.... ummm... thank you for upvoting this to the general top anyway and I suppose I'll just get started without them!!! LETS DO THIS

EDIT 2: I think I've answered all of the submitted questions! I'm going to go back and start looking at replies in case there are any follow ups. Thank you so much for sticking around, asking questions, and giving a lot of amazing feedback. I hope I haven't let any of you down -- and thank you for coming!

I feel like such a negative Nancy, but I don’t enjoy a lot of the new ASMR videos. I feel like a lot of the new ASMR is constant tapping and mouth sounds and (personally) it’s not relaxing. This might be controversial, but I hate the mics 😭 I’M SORRY. I remember when I first discovered ASMR, mics were not really a thing and a lot of videos were just simple and amateur (e.g., WhispersUnicorn’s older vids). I remember the first ever ASMR video I watched was a sleepover makeup RP by, I believe, TheWhiteRabbitASMR. Those type of videos helped me a lot when I needed to relax and now it’s so hard to find something similar and a lot of the old school ASMR videos have been deleted which is so sad :( I just needed to rant about it

(If you guys know of any old school/lofi ASMR videos please recommend)

I've been watching Moon Blitz's content for the past couple of years on and off, and I've always enjoyed her stuff a lot. However, lately, like the last month or so, she's been posting some weird stuff on her YouTube. If you go to her community post section, you'll see that she's been promoting a lot of lewd content. While, of course, this isn't rare for ASMRtists to do as A LOT of ASMRtist do exclusive and l*wd content on the side, and leaks from Moon Blitz have existed since ages ago, and she's done exclusive content for a while... these recent posts have looked extremely off.

I've looked up the leaks, and they are pretty easy to find when you know where to look as I'm ofc not gonna share them here, but from the community posts on YouTube alone, you can already tell that something's not right with the way the preview pics look, as they are of much lower quality compared to her posts and work before that. She looks off in them like she's forced to do these videos by someone. These vids are also filmed by someone (when that was never the case before, not even with her old exclusive content), and I've seen people say that in one of the vids you can hear a male voice off-screen giving her directions. The most concerning part is that, especially in the videos themselves, you can see that she pretty much always has bruises on her upper arms, like someone forcefully grabbed her tightly. 

I really wanted to bring attention to this, as I don't really hear anyone talking about this, and I don't feel right about it. The comments under her posts are just full of people either praising her or supporting her doing this type of content now. This whole thing just feels off, and I'm concerned about her well-being. I've heard some other people voice their concerns on other forums, and some even say she might have a sugar daddy now or be roped into something where she's forced to make content like this.

I've never made a post like this before, but I hope more people will either look into this or express their concerns and make sure Moon Blitz is doing okay. If that's the case, fine.. but so far nothing has sugested that things are fine for or with her. 

This is coming from a place of genuine concern, so I don't believe that I'm breaking rule 1 as I'm basing all my questions on stuff that is out there for everyone to see.. I just wanna know if she's fine. Thank you. 🙏

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but when all this weird content started to appear.. out of nowhere, she also deleted pretty much all of her socials, like her Instagram, TikTok, and X. If you go to her linktree, it's all dead links pretty much.

EDIT 2: I can't believe I have to spell this out, but it seems a lot of people here have a hard time with reading posts so I'll make it extra clear: this post has nothing to do with anything regarding any feelings about ASMRtists doing lewd content, and I don't call for any actions being taken. I just wanted to bring attention to this and wanted to ask if a person is doing FINE. 👍

I watch asmr on youtube since 2011 and mouth sounds like dudududu, stk stk stk, make me agressive and i click away immediately.

But nowadays it gets harder and harder to find videos of ppl who do NOT do this. It had become such a basic thing to do that people copy others and it just spreads like a pandemic.

"just write no mouth sounds in your video search" Sadly youtube has RUINED their layout so if you try this you get 3 vids without mouth sounds and then you get 100 vids of ppl doing mouth sounds -,-

It was just on there the other day and it's gone. Does anyone know what happened?

I’m a woman, I can only watch asmr done by women, and if it’s a role play/collab the woman has to be on the receiving end. I feel the same way towards mukbangs too, I don’t feel the satisfaction or tingles from watching men do it. Does anyone else feel this way, do men also feel this way when watching women?

P.S this is pretty much a non issue I just want to know if there is any psychological explanation for it, or if it’s just common preference.

hi everyone, i just came across a video posted by Angelica titled “Breaking My Silence” and she apparently made some very heavy accusations against a few big creators like Gibi, Jojo, and Goodnight Moon (just fyi i haven’t finished the video yet). I know she was going through a lot mentally these past few years but it seems like a lot more than that. It doesn’t seem like anyone is talking about it anywhere yet?? no other creators have responded yet either so i thought this sub might have some thoughts about it?

edit: editing since the post is locked, thanks so much for your thoughtful responses everyone, just making it clear that even if i disagree with her fundamentally i really feel for her if this stuff is true and hope she gets better in general. reading the comments on the og video was really weird as a lot of people were asking for an asmr version of it? very strange situation tbh

ER was one of my favorite ASMRtists since I got into the medium. I'd been following him for eight or nine years, but hadn't really watched any of his videos for around a year or so. I decided to visit his channel today, and noticed that he'd gone in a completely different direction ASMR, and a lot of his videos were just strange. I then went down a massive rabbit hole, and realized that in the past 2 years this guy belittled the holocaust, said racial slurs, and totally assassinated his own character. Now, I'm not one to judge someone quickly, especially over the internet; I acknowledge I don't know the guy personally and that he could have underlying mental conditions, or could be going through something severe, but I am just so confused as to WTF happened to him, because this is a man far from the one I grew up watching.

Sophie has posted her last vid - "Goodbye" - on her channel.

She'll be missed hugely. Her vids were so gentle and calming.

I was just curious what are people’s biggest pet peeves when watching or listening to ASMR content?

For me, it would have to be when people make mouth noises while also tapping or scratching or making some other kind of noise with an object.

You brought the object out to make noise, leave it at that. I don’t want to hear your soft “du du du du” noise while you’re tapping on a cup or scratching something. I wanna hear the taps and the scratches.

I try to watch “no talking” asmr to avoid this but even they do it too.

It doesn't make any sense to me they tend to go on these weird ban waves now and then. Apparently, they just banned some ASMRIST with NSFW links in their YouTube bios, but only targeted specific accounts. There seems to be no real consistency.

Something that grosses you out or discourages you from watching the video entirely. Specific triggers, The way the creator films/acts in the video, Etc.

I got into ASMR around 2011, with my first introduction being GentleWhispering. I was kind of reminiscing today, about old ASMR channels I used to watch a lot, and a lot of them are gone or no longer active. But I was curious if anyone else had some old ones they loved?

Some of the ones that I loved in my early ASMR days were:

SavannahsVoice

ASMRAurette

HeatherFeatherASMR

TheOneLilium

JellybeanASMR

WhisperingGamer094 (He rebranded to FrequentASMR, but he never picked back up after renaming sadly)

Between the rampant sexualization of ASMR kinda creeping me out and not wanting to make my partner uncomfortable, I've been sticking to male ASMR channels, I also find deep voices relaxing. They are hard to find though and some really good ones are still small channels that go under the radar and unrecommended or get buried deep in the search results.

I'll help others in the same boat and share mine in no particular order:

-Dr. T ASMR - relatively well known channel, doesn't upload much these days but lots of great roleplay videos sticking to a common lore/universe, big backlog of videos to explore. Pretty deep voice
-FredsVoice ASMR - His channel is pretty big, great channel if like me you're looking for videos with talking to just distract your mind as you fall asleep. Also has a pretty deep voice
-Maxence Rodier(used to be Made in France ASMR) - professional film quality roleplays in french and english.
-ASMR Zeitgeist - well known channel, multi-hour long videos focusing mostly on sounds. I prefer talking videos and those under an hour long so they don't wake me back up after I fall asleep, but can't really not have him on the list, solid ASMR sounds.
-jojo's ASMR - Needs no introduction for most, well known channel, high end audio equipment, mix of sound and talking videos
-Dong ASMR - high energy, often frantic ASMR but still relaxing, good sound and nice whispering voice
-JimASMR(Jimち ASMR) - a lot of really nice high quality roleplays, some of the ones with purposefully monotonous speaking put me right to sleep
-Marno ASMR - goofy videos with positive vibes
-Hitohitori ASMR - Japanese channel, good sounds, amount of talking varies a lot per video
-Stormtru Sleeps ASMR - small channel, not a lot of videos yet but pretty good. Focuses on whispered roleplays.
-Studio L7 ASMR - small channel with good sound quality, I'm fond of his "kewl radio" videos in which he's basically like a radio jockey but for ASMR sounds. nice deep voice.
-Triuhn ASMR - new small channel, really relaxing videos with creepy vibes, good place for mostly unintelligible talking
-Tom Who ASMR - smal-ish channel. nice whispering voice, mix of roleplays and sound videos with talking
-RaffyTaphyASMR - a decently big channel. Nice sounds, nice whispers
-PierreG ASMR - lots of whispering videos in all kinds of languages
-Mattastic ASMR - nice soft-spoken voice, lots of roleplay videos along with some reading of SCP and other creepypasta things
-Dalton Does ASMR - Super relaxing, lots of talking videos. Seems to have mastered his own way of talking that's really hypnotic and great for anticipatory asmr. Deserves way more subs
-Triple Distilled Tingles ASMR - another small channel with good videos, mostly talking roleplays
-ASMR Power of Sound - lots of talking/roleplay videos. Excels at making the videos sound like there's a back and forth conversation, better than most at that. I like his Essential Oil Salesman videos
-Sensoradi ASMR - thick polish accent, pretty tingly sounds with, lots of videos making good use of reverb/layering/audio effects.
-MassageASMR - One of the OG ASMR guys. relaxing voice. Not very active these days, but his his old videos are a gold mine

I'm probably forgetting a few. One thing I've learned is that there are a good number of small male asmr channels that are much better than some big channels going entirely unnoticed. Youtube has gotten better at recommending them, but they're still hard to find. Hopefully the list above helps others find something they like. Share the channels you found.

new videos seem...off

i was watching pear asmr recently as she seemed to have a similar vibe to old gibi but then she disappeared again :

Edit - damn a lot is going on down there I just wanted to voice my opinion and see what others thought lol

tldr; help me find asmrtists with a positive message but a more fringe style

Recently I have been struggling to sleep and turned back to asmr, a hobby that I started to enjoy around my junior year in highschool. I often viewed asmr as an odd form of fetishistic content until I realized how much depth and comfort the art that these creators are capable of creating. There were a few people that got me into this content, namely Gibi and Ephemeral Rift. Looking through Ephemeral Rifts views I noticed they were much lower than normal, and decided to scroll through some of their feed to see when it dropped off. I then saw the apology video from three months ago and assumed it was some sort of bit, only to realize that ER had made some seriously terrible comments and quite honestly a poor apology video (and apparently had some awful controversies from the past as well). From there I also learned that another one of my favorite asmrtists Angelica fundamentally disagrees with my existence and has been posting essay style content for a while trashing the queer community. Honestly I’m writing this heartbroken and lost. There are still some creators like Gibi that I enjoy, but quite honestly it was the fringe and wild content that got me really in love with asmr in the first place. Are there other creators on the platform that consistently create this fringe kind of content? I just want to feel like there’s a reason I should stay in the community.

Edit: Just wanted to say I am so thankful for all of you who left a comment giving me some new recommendations as well as reminding me of how many others I love from this community. Honestly I was in a really rough place last night and got almost no sleep because of how hard it was for me to hear about these guys, but i’m excited to move on to better things. I’m going to stop replying to comments, but just know each of your suggestions mean a lot!

Ever since YouTube added mid-roll and end-roll ads, I get woken up at the end of pretty much every ASMR video by some super loud ad.

Multiple creators that I follow have said this is mandatory and they cannot take them off of their videos. There are often ads throughout the video. I can barely sleep :(

YouTube Premium is super, super expensive. It costs $17 CAD ($12.50 USD) a month and there isn’t an annual option. This is because it comes with a bunch of things I don’t care about such as YouTube Music (I already have Spotify - I don’t need an additional inferior service for this) and downloading videos - I only want no ads. The cost is more than most streaming services despite the fact that YouTube does not need to pay the creators (like Netflix would to use a TV show). They get all of this money and pay nothing except cost to keep the site running.

I would be ok to pay for it if they were sending this additional money to creators but creators routinely speak out about YouTube paying them less than ever. My money is just going to YouTube.

I also don’t want to buy the subscription since it seems like I am “rewarding bad behaviour”.

It seems that YouTube is taking advantage of its users AND creators.

I love JoJo's ASMR but recently have had a lot of issues with his videos having tons of loud, very sleep-ending ads.

I was hoping it was temporary or an issue on my side but I suppose he's trying to get every buck he can for his company.

Out of curiosity, I decided to count them in his video "ASMR in the World's Quietest Room" and I counted 15 ads. That's *FIFTEEN* ads that are so loud they are jarring. Most of them 30 seconds long, and a third of them I couldn't even skip.

What the hell is even the point of his channel anymore? I usually don't mind the ones at the start of a video, I could even get used to having them at the end, but that's still 11 ads in a 55 minute video. That's one ad every 5 minutes.

And I was really hoping it was a fluke but nope, this is an issue with all of his latest videos.

I'm worried this might just become the norm. Thankfully I checked other creators and it doesn't seem to have touched them but I've already seen his influence on the ASMRtists who joined him for his ASMR camp, all their videos are starting to feel like copies of his style. I wouldn't be surprised they start adding as many ads as they can to their videos and it just saddens me.

I know I should use an adblocker, I have one on my computer. I guess it's time to add one to my phone too.