Why do ASMR videos give some people satisfying 'tingles' while driving others bananas?
Do these sounds soothe or annoy you?

ASMR videos have millions of views on YouTube.
I'd never heard of ASMR when my kids started talking about how "satisfying" ASMR videos were. They had shared other "satisfying" videos with me, such as machinery making precise movements, Play-Doh being squished through holes, and more. I understood what they found appealing about them and I figured ASMR videos would be similar.
They weren't.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, which refers to the deep relaxation and tingling sensation some people experience from certain triggers, such as sounds. The sounds we're talking about, however, are not the soothing music or birds chirping or ocean waves one might normally associate with relaxation. They're things like hair brushing, scraping fingernails on a plastic water bottle and mouth crackles, all amplified with a powerful microphone.
Yes, mouth crackles. As in the popping sound people's saliva makes in the corners of their mouths when they talk. (The mouth sounds usually accompany someone whispering—another ASMR favorite.)
Intentional ASMR videos highlight these sounds and people either love it (because it gives them the tingles) or they don't (because it's annoying).
This whispering ASMR video has 24 million views and offers a glimpse of what I'm talking about:
The past decade has seen ASMR videos grow in popularity to the point where Reese's made an hour-long film featuring five ASMR stars who whisper into microphones while unwrapping Reese's candy wrappers.
This YouTube video is three hours straight of nonvocal ASMR sounds made primarily with a woman's fingernails gently scraping across various different textured surfaces, and it has 37 million views:
People who experience ASMR prefer different triggers, and it might take some experimenting to see what works—if it does at all. It seems that people either get ASMR or they don't. My children do, but I don't. I actually find these videos vaguely irritating.
Why is that? What makes some people have a positive, soothing reaction to ASMR videos while others get annoyed by them?
One answer may lie in our baseline mental states. A study from 2022 suggests that people who experience ASMR tingles tend to be higher in neuroticism, which means being more likely to experience negative emotional states such as anxiety. Notably, ASMR appeared to reduce anxiety in those people, whereas the people who didn't get the tingles showed no difference in their anxiety before and after watching the videos.
Joanna Greer, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of psychology at Northumbria University who co-authored the study, told Verywell Health that the study's findings can encourage further research into how ASMR can help reduce anxiety.
And anecdotally, the people-more-prone-to-anxiety-tend-to-get-ASMR idea is reflected accurately in my and my kids' case, as my kids are much more anxiety-prone than I am.
Neuroticism isn't the only personality trait associated with experiencing ASMR. University of Winnipeg professor of psychology Stephen Smith has studied ASMR and personalities. He told CNN that people who get the tingly response tend to score high in the "openness to experience" trait as well as neuroticism, while scoring lower in conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness.
"I think they’re more receptive to specific types of physical, auditory and visual experiences than the rest of us," Smith said.
ASMR isn't purely triggered by the videos shown and described here, either. The response is something most of us have experienced at one point or another, whether it's from someone brushing our hair or making slow movements or simply giving us personal attention. But the videos that have taken over YouTube are designed to tap straight into the phenomenon with specific sounds.
Whether it actually works is an individual question. In people I've casually polled, responses to ASMR videos seem to be fairly split—some find them "satisfying," some find them annoying. But the people who respond to ASMR sounds share that they reduce their anxiety and create a sense of calm in them. In an increasingly anxious world, the more ways we can find to soothe people's minds, the better. Whatever floats your boat.
Even if it does involve loudly breaking saliva bubbles.
- This Milwaukee library's TikTok videos have become the season's surprising new must-see ›
- Comedian perfectly nails the 'sound effects' that every teacher makes ›
- Watching this kind woman clean homes for free is its own form of therapy ›
- Neuroscientists share how to learn things up easily - Upworthy ›
- Expert shares how to get kids to listen - Upworthy ›
- Doctor warns that having this in your bathroom is a huge red flag for your health - Upworthy ›
- Why people become curmudgeons and how to fight their negativity - Upworthy ›
- Why certain sounds don't just annoy me, they enrage me. Here's how I learned to cope with my Misophonia - Upworthy ›
- Communication expert shares 3-step reset method for dealing with extremely negative people - Upworthy ›






A woman is getting angry at her coworker.via
A man with tape over his mouth.via
A husband is angry with his wife. via 
a man sitting at a desk with his head on his arms Photo by
Can a warm cup of tea help you sleep better? If you believe it, then yes. Photo by 
Three women sit on a blanket in the park. 
Two women engaging in a pleasant conversation inside a coffee shop
Two men engaging in a peaceful disagreement.
Resurfaced video of French skier's groin incident has people giving the announcer a gold medal
"The boys took a beating on that one."
Downhill skiing is a sport rife with injuries, but not usually this kind.
A good commentator can make all the difference when watching sports, even when an event goes smoothly. But it's when something goes wrong that great announcers rise to the top. There's no better example of a great announcer in a surprise moment than when French skier Yannick Bertrand took a gate to the groin in a 2007 super-G race.
Competitive skiers fly down runs at incredible speeds, often exceeding 60 mph. Hitting something hard at that speed would definitely hurt, but hitting something hard with a particularly sensitive part of your body would be excruciating. So when Bertrand slammed right into a gate family-jewels-first, his high-pitched scream was unsurprising. What was surprising was the perfect commentary that immediately followed.
This is a clip you really just have to see and hear to fully appreciate:
- YouTube youtu.be
It's unclear who the announcer is, even after multiple Google inquiries, which is unfortunate because that gentleman deserves a medal. The commentary gets better with each repeated viewing, with highlights like:
"The gate the groin for Yannick Bertrand, and you could hear it. And if you're a man, you could feel it."
"Oh, the Frenchman. Oh-ho, monsieurrrrrr."
"The boys took a beating on that one."
"That guy needs a hug."
"Those are the moments that change your life if you're a man, I tell you what."
"When you crash through a gate, when you do it at high rate of speed, it's gonna hurt and it's going to leave a mark in most cases. And in this particular case, not the area where you want to leave a mark."
Imagine watching a man take a hit to the privates at 60 mph and having to make impromptu commentary straddling the line between professionalism and acknowledging the universal reality of what just happened. There are certain things you can't say on network television that you might feel compelled to say. There's a visceral element to this scenario that could easily be taken too far in the commentary, and the inherent humor element could be seen as insensitive and offensive if not handled just right.
The announcer nailed it. 10/10. No notes.
The clip frequently resurfaces during the Winter Olympic Games, though the incident didn't happen during an Olympic event. Yannick Bertrand was competing at the FIS World Cup super-G race in Kvitfjell, Norway in 2007, when the unfortunate accident occurred. Bertrand had competed at the Turin Olympics the year before, however, coming in 24th in the downhill and super-G events.
As painful as the gate to the groin clearly as, Bertrand did not appear to suffer any damage that kept him from the sport. In fact, he continued competing in international downhill and super-G races until 2014.
According to a 2018 study, Alpine skiing is a notoriously dangerous sport with a reported injury rate of 36.7 per 100 World Cup athletes per season. Of course, it's the knees and not the coin purse that are the most common casualty of ski racing, which we saw clearly in U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn's harrowing experiences at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn was competing with a torn ACL and ended up being helicoptered off of the mountain after an ugly crash that did additional damage to her legs, requiring multiple surgeries (though what caused the crash was reportedly unrelated to her ACL tear). Still, she says she has no regrets.
As Bertrand's return to the slopes shows, the risk of injury doesn't stop those who live for the thrill of victory, even when the agony of defeat hits them right in the rocks.