Internet search that triggered woman’s ‘weird’ obsession

It would usually involve the murmurings of a person whispering “I love you”, telling her how special she was or even stoking her hair as she drifted off.

As far as ways to get to sleep, it has to be up there as one of the most comforting methods – except it wasn’t from a partner lying in bed next to her.

Instead the voice cooing words of affirmation and comfort would be coming from her screen, a video the Sydney TV development producer had stumbled across as she delved deeper and deeper into the world of ASMR.

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response but is easier understood as that ‘tingly feeling’ you get when you experience a comforting sound or visual.

It’s the “audio equivalent of getting a massage” that soothes in the same way you were as a child, Ms Nagy, 32, tells news.com.au.

ASMR can be triggered by anything from the sound or visuals of fingers tapping, whispering or chewing, (yes, chewing!).

“On the surface it does sound so weird,” Ms Nagy said with a laugh.

“But I think if you scratch the surface you find there is really deep things going on here, and people are turning to ASMR to interrogate and soothe really deep emotional wounds.”

ASMR is one of the most-searched for terms on YouTube and one Ms Nagy began googling when she returned to Sydney in 2017.

She had moved back home from Europe nursing a broken heart and feeling incredibly lonely.

“I basically started listening to it because, like most people do when they go through break ups, it’s quite hard to adjust initially to just those little domestic things you’re used to – no-one in the bed with you,” Ms Nagy said.

“That silence just felt very loud to me.”

After watching the standard types of ASMR, Ms Nagy began clicking through her recommended videos until she came across one type of scenario that had major appeal for her newly single status – relationship role-plays.

“I was really missing intimacy, the feeling of seeing someone and really being seen and sharing all the big parts of life and but also the little parts,” she said.

“But (I was) kind of not really ready to go dating again, so it was almost like a stopgap where I could experience sort-of what that was like without having to go on a bad date with someone that I don’t like.

Ms Nagy found these videos, which could involve everything from helping you get to sleep or deal with period pain, soothed her anxiety and loneliness in a way the real world couldn’t at the time.

Ms Nagy would watch it as often as she could – on public transport, when going to bed or to keep an anxiety attack at bay – documenting her consumption in her new Audible Original podcast series Pillow Talk.

Before long she came across another subgenre within the ASMR boyfriend role play community – and it wasn’t as PG as the other videos.

This kind of ASMR involved the role play of explicit sexual scenarios – with videos ranging from vanilla sex to every kind of sexual kink under the sun.

“It was just so different to the erotica I had seen before – it was mostly made by women,” she said.

“A lot of it has a focus on love, relationships, respect and consent and all these kind of things that you don’t see in conventional erotica.”

But Ms Nagy found the X-rated videos appealing and “couldn’t stop listening” to one type of role-play in particular.

“I listened to a lot of the consent-based ones. I didn’t really know why I was doing that, but then it became really obvious,” she said.

“I think I was listening and I know a lot of other women listen because they have experiences where consent wasn’t prioritised or it was actively rejected, so listening to it can be quite a healing thing.”

Ms Nagy delves deep in this subgenre in her podcast, which she stresses is just one small niche in the ASMR community where the vast majority of content is not sexual.

Now feeling healed, Ms Nagy no longer finds the boyfriend role play videos appealing and scaled back her consumption of ASMR when she began making Pillow Talk in 2020.

But she still likes to use it to help her sleep, however, prefers a very different kind of ASMR nowadays.

“I still listen to ASMR to help me get to sleep or relax, but now I just watch stuff that doesn’t have people in it,” Ms Nagy said.

Pillow Talk is available now as part of Audible’s Plus Catalogue

Originally published as Sydney woman investigates ASMR world in new podcast