When Requests to YouTube Creators Become Sexual Harassment
On June 14, a YouTube creator in the ASMR community, or “ASMRtist,” by the name of Lily Whispers ASMR posted a video called “What is going on in the ASMR community?”. In the video, Lily discussed the increase in hyper-specific video requests for creators and the rather insidious and malevolent intents that seemed to be behind some of them. According to Lily and the screenshots she provided, many of the requests to her and other women-presenting ASMRtists boarded on forced fetishes and arousal.
ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, predates its name and iterations on the Internet. The term describes a tingling sensation one feels on their scalp and down their spine, similar to mild paresthesia. Over the last decade, a community surrounding videos devoted to the phenomenon has cropped up on YouTube, with top ASMR creators boasting millions of subscribers. One of the longstanding misconceptions about ASMR, and its thriving community of creators on YouTube, is that it is somehow fundamentally sexual. This could not be further from the truth. After researching ASMR on YouTube for years and publishing research on the community, I have found that while sexual ASMR does exist, not all ASMR is sexual. Furthermore, most ASMRtists only hope to provide relaxation and anxiety, and insomnia relief to viewers. ASMR is induced in an individual by “triggers,” or sounds and visuals that spur on the phenomenon
But as Lily Whispers ASMR’s video discussed, just because creators do not view their videos as sexual does not mean audience members don’t. Lily discussed how when she first started her channel, she would get “really specific requests…if someone is like can you wear red, and whisper about your day, and do something with your eyes, and they get really specific…it’s a fetish. I’m sorry, but it is. There was another that asked me to make a video pretending they were a little person.” While Lily was quick to assure viewers she wasn’t kink-shaming, she pointed out she was drawing attention to two things: One, there was a time, place, and site for sexual video requests, and YouTube wasn’t necessarily it. Two, by cloaking their requests in the guise of ASMR relaxation, these requesters were sneakily forcing these creators into satisfying them sexually.
In the age of content creation on sites like YouTube and TikTok, creators must constantly walk a fine line between listening to and honoring viewer requests, and doing what works for them. The modern Internet has been described as an “attention economy,” in which the supply of available content massively outnumbers the demand. It is physically impossible for one to consume every bit of content out there, or even all the content within their own interests. ASMR, and its YouTube creators, are no exception. I’ve written extensively on the relationships between ASMR creators and viewers, and I discuss how this relationship is multifaceted. For ASMR creators to be successful, they must listen to and honor (some) viewer requests when they are able to. For viewers who are loyal fans, they strive to do whatever they can to help their favorite creator’s career. As I’ve found, sometimes these requests do get hyper-specific, such as individuals requesting certain letter sounds to be pronounced in certain ways.
This multifaceted relationship, combined with the unique nature of ASMR triggers and numerous possibilities for video types, means that ASMRtists face a volatile and potentially dangerous terrain. As Lily Whispers ASMR points out, the road to cloaked, insidious fetishes and arousal here is a short one. While some ASMRtists do have Patreon and OnlyFans accounts that are purposefully for more adult content, the bulk of ASMR on YouTube is not meant for that. In her video, she went on to detail more instances of this, where “sock puppet” commenters (online accounts used for the purposes of deception) were copying and pasting the same, supposedly urgent request onto numerous creators videos, and then asking them to mail them the props they used. Lily even recounted a more unsettling story, in which a young girl under ten was making ASMR videos, and commenters were requesting her to make videos putting on lotion or making kissing sounds by the microphone (children doing ASMR remains one of the most controversial subjects in the ASMR community).
Lily’s video draws attention to the complex and unsettling ways requests to not just ASMRtists, but all YouTube creators can become sexual harassment or abuse. Creators may want to adhere to audience requests to build their channels and fan bases, but doing so also poses a risk. As Lily mentions in her video, “just because something seems innocent to us doesn’t mean that it is to the person who put in the request.”
In a brief follow-up video, Lily talked about how she had created a private Discord server just for ASMRtists, so they could share creepy screenshots and requests. In doing so, creators would form a network to weed out and avoid any forced fetishization in the future — something that has also been referred to as fetish mining. While a good step in protecting themselves, the move should not have been necessary. This is another instance in which YouTube has failed to protect those who have helped make them one of the wealthiest and powerful social media platforms on the planet. While Lily talks about how these comments wind up in the creators held for review or spam folders, this is not always the case. Furthermore, by allowing users to create multiple accounts or “sock puppets,” the site allows such harm to continue.
To be clear — the problem is not with ASMR, ASMRtists or YouTube creators, but with bad actors and platforms that fail to protect their creators. ASMRtists are certainly by no means the only creators to face this type of sexual harassment. The harassment, sexual or not, that creators face may not be as explicit as slurs or threats, but the manipulation of creator, attention, and platform dynamics for one’s own insidious ends.
