The pretty blond woman is plucking at the bristles of a hairbrush with gold-manicured fingertips, tapping her nails softly against the wooden handle as she holds it close to a microphone. Bathed in soft lighting, she smiles knowingly into the video camera, as if sharing a secret.
“The tapping sounds remind me of the sound of the rain,” she breathes in a subtly accented whisper.
This is Maria, a 28-year-old Russian expat in suburban Maryland, starring in a YouTube video that has been viewed more than 7 million times. Hundreds of thousands of Maria’s devotees return again and again to listen to her hushed whispers as she assumes simulated roles — librarian, hairstylist, masseuse — and performs simple motions: folding towels, blowing smoke from an incense burner, flipping through the pages of a magazine.
It might sound like a bafflingly bizarre way to spend time on the Internet. But for Maria’s viewers, her voice and movements hold a certain magic: They can instill tranquillity, overcome insomnia — and induce a mysterious physical sensation known as autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, wherein the body is flooded with waves of euphoric tingles.
“It’s like showers of sparkles,” says Maria, speaking as herself. “It’s like warm sand being poured all over you, trickling over your head and down into your shoulders. It’s like goosebumps on your brain.”
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via A whisper, then tingles, then 87 million YouTube views: Meet the star of ASMR – The Washington Post.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6gLlIAnzg7eJ8VuXDCZ_vg
In this world of stress and chaos I wish my channel to be your secret island of relaxation and peace. I’m here to comfort you, to share my love and care with you, to make you feel relaxed and stress free through creative and soothing videos.Let me try and keep you company at hard times, let me calm you down and help you sleep on restless nights, let me be your friend and be a triggerer for your tingles (ASMR) or simply help you find beauty and peace in places you might have never thought of looking.
In a scathing expose of the USDA’s new meat inspection program, the Washington Post quoted a representative from the meat inspectors union, who said: “pig processing lines may be moving too quickly to catch tainted meat… Tremendous amounts of fecal matter remain on the carcasses. Not small bits, but chunks.”What about the other white meat?
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