Question of the day: what on earth is ASMR?

On Instagram, on YouTube, in every corner of my online existence, I come across the four letters. At first, I ignored it a bit, until it got me googling for the first time and a second time. Because: what on earth is ASMR?

Let me explain it to you. It's that moment when you would want to look very dazed because something is so incredibly nice. I'm not talking about something dirty by the way, but just about everyday things. It can be brushing your hair or someone gently scratching your back, but people also get it from a cat purring, the sound of raindrops (on the window, mind you) or just by listening to whispers.

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. You might know it, but didn't know it was called that. It's that tingling that starts somewhere halfway up your head and goes down your neck towards your back. Until recently, I just called it a nice shiver, but that's not to be confused, no, because it's ASMR. And now ASMR is taking over the web, entire YouTube series are dedicated to ASMR, to evoke that feeling as much as possible. Which I understand by the way, because research shows that it makes you quite zen; it works when you have stress and you even sleep better because of it. Scientists even think it works for pain. Interesting, interesting.

Not everyone is sensitive to ASMR, it has everything to do with your neurotransmitters. One brain has it in it, the other is not capable of it. It seems to have to do with your default network, which becomes active when you are at rest. But however it works, I can finally explain that I love going to the hairdresser because of my ASMR. But you won't catch me listening to a whisper video on YouTube, how awkward, curled toes with maximum bend. Just Google it.