Paper short abstract:

From physical recording equipment to online algorithms, the technologies involved in ASMR content can be found to co-constitute an affectual, intimate and distinctly queer relationship with the humans who both produce and consume it

Paper long abstract:

​​In the production and consumption of ASMR content online, the chain of relationships between content creator, recording equipment, algorithm and viewer could be considered as linear, or one-directional. This understanding, however, relies on a conception of technology as merely an instrument, utilised by and separate to human bodies. In this paper, I demonstrate that ASMR technologies are instead actively involved in both affectual and emotional formations of relationality.

Auditory, visual and haptic stimuli within ASMR videos provoke a sensation named by the community as ‘tingles’. This paper proposes these ‘tingles’ to be an affectual impression on the body which orientates those involved towards pleasure and connectivity. In this paper the term ‘bodies’ is taken in its broadest possible sense to include the algorithmic and digital technologies used to promote closeness. By considering the algorithm as itself a ‘body’, with the ability to both affect and be affected, one can destabilise conceptions of who can contribute towards sociality and embodied pleasure.

In looking to the emotional closeness and trust which govern users' exchanges with the algorithm, I establish that each relationship between human and technology within the ASMR community is intimate and interdependent. In doing so, I bring attention to and challenge the discursive and symbolic boundaries which project polarities between humans and machines. In this article I construct a reparative analysis of human relationships with technology, in an attempt to make imaginable collective and queer formations of intimacy which exist beyond offline closeness, touch and heteronormative monogamy.