After years of working in marketing, social media, and content, our perception of Tech has slowly shifted from skepticism to outright disappointment, and what once seemed like tools with unparalleled opportunities now looks more like a not-so-smart tyranny of consumer surveillance. It is not a surprise, then, that our algorithm, always lost, just adds terms to the tag “hot guy” as the simplest way to grab attention within the randomness of our content consumption. Gay guys, we are simple. Yet we wonder whether, instead of educating, we have diskilled our YouTube algorithm to the point that it even considers showing material that we actively avoid, such as ASMR, a whole sensory world that we, slaves of the flesh, cannot physically tolerate.
Traumatic example number one: this video of a guy licking inside an ear.
This type of content was something we first encountered while researching anime girls streaming ASMR sessions, and we cannot find words to properly express the visceral reaction those sounds produce in us. Traumatic example number two: this video of a guy suggestively looking at the camera while making sloppy sounds.
We gag just by looking at that video, and don’t find the guy ugly. We like spit, sweat, and think blow jobs should be sloppy and gagging, but that video…. So, if our readers got the idea, ASMR is something we cannot tolerate. However, when our YouTube algorithm plunges into one of its sudden obsessions and we start seeing videos of men objectifying themselves while teaching human anatomy and doing ASMR, we must at least check them.
As we have mentioned before on the blog, one of the unexpected results of platforms pivoting to short-form video is that many corners of the internet started looking like a performance or video art class on assessment week. Using your body as digital matter -to monetize- is a reality for many in the current economy, and we can only wonder where all this is going when AI, most likely, rather than replace people is here to optomize their discoverability in the sea of content creators.
In the meantime, we can enjoy the oddity of a concept like ASMR you’re kidnapped by Himbo (forever), idea that, leaving the moral connotations aside, as Colombians, we find hard to imagine what is ASMRic about being kidnapped.
A couple of weeks ago, during a job interview, we were asked what was financially smart about applying to their position. While finding the proper HR answer, ignoring honesty, we only thought about how Himbo ASMR probably makes more with a video of him apologizing than we can make in months with our traditional jobs, insisting on using our mind rather than our body in this economy.