New social media experiment: Tracking India’s growing addiction to ASMR content

Ishtaarth Dalmia, 25, is considered an expert on ASMR at his office in Bengaluru. In the last week itself, he says, three of his colleagues have asked him: “Bro, what is ASMR?”

It is short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, he tells them. The expansion, not the easiest to parrot, is codified in his brain now, says the anthropologist, who works at a digital agency. But the expansion alone doesn’t help. Dalmia says ASMR describes the tingling sensation on the skin caused by auditory stimuli like gentle tapping, whispering, scratching, food crunching, soap cutting or by visual stimuli like watching origami paper-folding and neat painting strokes.