Meet the Portsmouth YouTubers helping to sooth people to sleep with ASMR

Others pretend to be hairdressers as they massage shampoo over a mannequin’s head, recording every squelch in crisp, 3D surround sound.

Then there are those who eat food as noisily as possible, and the ones who slowly move their fingers towards the camera, like snake charmers hypnotising a serpent.

To the uninitiated, ASMR may seem like a bizarre and kooky world, filled with oddballs. Yet in the past few years, the online phenomenon has exploded over YouTube, with millions religiously tuning in every night to be lulled to sleep by the home-made videos – or to experience the fabled ‘tingles’, a pleasurable tickling sensation on the top of the head, known within the community as the ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’.

And it’s a surreal world that has reached the shores of Portsmouth, with content creators from the city – or ASMRtists, as they are known – now commanding thousands of viewers on their channel.

‘My friends and family really don’t get it, most people closest to me just think it’s really weird and that’s cool. It’s like, “what’s your hobby?”: whispering into a camera at 3am. I get why people think that’s weird,’ says Luke Murray, who is one of the city’s ASMRtists.

‘Drunken’ whispers and soothing rambles

The 36-year-old shop worker has crowned himself the ‘King of Lo-Fi ASMR’ – the name of his YouTube channel, having previously been called ‘Drunk ASMR’.

And his content has so far racked up more than 2.6m views, with a dedicated subscriber following of almost 10,000 people.

But this is just a drop in the ocean of the ASMR community, with some of the world’s biggest ‘whisper celebrities’ having close to two million subscribers and almost 900m views.

‘I have been recognised twice, which is quite weird,’ Luke adds. ‘It’s definitely a way to express myself artistically. That sounds really pretentious because I’m really not that artistic. I just like to make people laugh.

‘My thing is that I just get hammered and hit record. Then I edit it the next day. I really don’t take things very seriously at all. I’m just hitting record and hoping for the best.’

Helping people through humour

Luke’s channel is populated with bizarre videos, ranging from tongue-in-cheek ones ‘pampering’ a Styrofoam head of Hitler to surreal role-plays dressed as a robot from a video game.

He insists his channel is about helping people through dark situations by injecting humour into his videos.

‘The idea of someone giving Hitler a makeover, to me, was quite funny. I’m doing his moustache, pampering him, colouring him,’ he says. ‘I just think turning the most evil man in history into a farcical meme is hilarious.’

But there is also a frankness behind his channel, which was born as a way of ‘self-medication’ to cope with his mental health problems in his youth.

‘Self-medication’ for mental health disorder

‘I found ASMR while I was in a bad place mentally and it really helped me,’ says Luke, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a condition that causes extreme mood swings.

‘I was suffering with mental health issues in my 20s which I had been ignoring. My wife started bullying me into seeking help, so I did. I found it in the form of ASMR at first, which helped calm me down at night.’

Although Luke admits the name ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’ is a ‘stupid, meaningless name, for a nice feeling’, there is growing belief ASMR can be used as an alternative form of therapy for anxiety.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield and Manchester Metropolitan University found that those who experience the phenomenon had significantly reduced heart rates, increased relaxation and feelings of social connection.

‘The health benefits are undoubtedly what has made ASMR so popular,’ Craig Richard, professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University, Virginia, and founder of the website ASMR University told The Guardian.

‘From reducing stress, to helping you fall asleep, or increasing focus at work, people are self-medicating with a range of ASMR stimuli.’

‘ASMR helped me recover from redundancy’

Mike Reed is among those who has attended the ASMR University, set up by Craig.

The 49-year-old of Liverpool Road, Fratton, now runs two ASMR channels.

His main channel, Mike Fiend's ASMR show, has notched up more than 3.5m views and has a following of almost 9,700 people. His other features him recording his drives across Portsmouth.

Mike turned to ASMR after being made redundant from his IT job more than five years ago, a decision he said has since changed his life.

‘It was no surprise when I was made redundant – I could see the writing on the wall. But when it hit, I was definitely down in the dumps,’ adds Mike, who is now a producer for adult chat programme Babestation in Portsmouth.

‘But I responded to that by making myself busy and looking for opportunities and YouTube at the time was a good opportunity.

‘But there’s no doubt about it, I was in the dumps for quite a few months, especially being over 40, I found that trying to get back into the IT industry at the same level was just impossible.

‘They saw me as old and dispensable. But I was at the end of my tether in the IT industry. It’s nice now to be creative and not just dealing with broken things day in, day out.

‘Now with ASMR I feel like in my own small way, I’m improving my little corner of the world.’

City’s ASMR community is praised

Luke adds his channel has a mental health focus to it, in which he regularly speaks about the difficulties he has faced as well as topics like suicide, alcoholism and coping with stress.

During the coronavirus lockdown, he says he noticed a surge in the number of people watching his content.

‘ASMR can help a lot with mental health,’ he adds. ‘It can make people laugh. It can make them relax. It really can help people through things.’

It’s a view shared by Emma Smith, Britain’s biggest ASMRtist who goes by the name WhispersRed ASMR.

The mum-of-two from London, who has a following more than three times the size of Portsmouth – at a whopping 925,000 – said she used ASMR to recover from a devastating car crash.

‘I had a car accident and I hadn’t been able to walk for a long time – I had lots of operations to get the use of my leg back – but once all of the physical stuff was taken care of I had to deal with the mental fallout,’ she says.

‘I just wasn’t sleeping. I was really stressed. It turned out later that I had PTSD. So I was looking for anything to help me sleep. That’s when I ended up finding ASMR whispering videos.’

Emma adds her videos have helped subscribers through the turmoil of lockdown and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic – and praised the work of Portsmouth’s ASMRtists

‘People find these videos really comforting because there is an element of personal attention, like getting a haircut,’ adds the YouTuber.

‘For me, ASMR has really helped discover the person that I am. I’m a calmer person as a result. We definitely have a much calmer household as a result of ASMR.’

Portsmouth’s growing ASMR scene was championed by Emma, who has previously visited the city with her family and tours the globe promoting the YouTube phenomenon.

‘One of the main things for me is trying to bring people together from local areas, so it’s really great to hear there are creators in Portsmouth,’ she adds.