W Magazine recently recruited Parks And Recreation and Legion star Aubrey Plaza for its ongoing, aurally uncomfortable video series, “Celebrity ASMR,” which is exactly what it sounds like. But where folks like Jake Gyllenhaal, Margot Robbie, and Gal Gadot only paid loudly-smacking lip service when they sat down way too close to W’s mics—posting videos a mere 2 or 3 minutes in length—Plaza approached the task with the same intensity with which she appears to tackle pretty much everything in her life, laying down a 36-minute sonic odyssey in search of “the tingles.” Also, a lot of it was about how much she still hates Jerry.
The shushing sound of voices whispering, or clothes rustling—and then a tingling feeling begins on the scalp, and spreads down into the neck, shoulders, and limbs, and along with it comes a state of calm, or even euphoria. This is how people who experience autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, describe the peculiar phenomenon. ASMR is “similar to the deep relaxation someone might feel if they’re getting a massage”. It’s a form of auditory-tactile synesthesia; “brain tingles.”