“Why does it feel so good to be touched?” asks one of the most popular ASMR bloggers Olivia Kissper in her YouTube video. ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, shows the changes that the notion of physicality, intimacy and identity has undergone in recent times. It has become a specific phenomenon of Web 2.0 (the transition from text-centric to multimodal software), linked to the massive proliferation of technologies and the emergence of blogging platforms or social networks with the main motto “broadcast yourself”. This term is meant to encompass feelings of low-threshold euphoria, “chills” or ringing in the head as a particular response to auditory, visual and tactile stimuli generated by video bloggers. Slow speech, whispering, mouth sounds, hissing, clicking, tapping, pointing and groping objects in front of the webcam are its characteristics. The artist Tasha Bjelica speaks of “digital intimacy” as a self-satisfying tool of late capitalism designed for a population without a secure health care system, alienated nomads who experience only a distant intimacy built on heteronormative gender roles of care, i.e., the idea of the mother-carer.
“Why does it feel so good to be touched?” asks one of the most popular ASMR bloggers Olivia Kissper in her YouTube video. ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, shows the changes that the notion of physicality, intimacy and identity has undergone in recent times. It has become a specific phenomenon of Web 2.0 (the transition from text-centric to multimodal software), linked to the massive proliferation of technologies and the emergence of blogging platforms or social networks with the main motto “broadcast yourself”. This term is meant to encompass feelings of low-threshold euphoria, “chills” or ringing in the head as a particular response to auditory, visual and tactile stimuli generated by video bloggers. Slow speech, whispering, mouth sounds, hissing, clicking, tapping, pointing and groping objects in front of the webcam are its characteristics. The artist Tasha Bjelica speaks of “digital intimacy” as a self-satisfying tool of late capitalism designed for a population without a secure health care system, alienated nomads who experience only a distant intimacy built on heteronormative gender roles of care, i.e., the idea of the mother-carer.
