I’ll admit that I’ve never been one for ASMR. I never got past the videos of people whispering into a microphone because quite frankly they made my skin crawl, but I may have finally found the exception. On an exceptionally wholesome corner of the internet, Pokemon ASMR exists.
There are two videos put out by the Pokémon Company’s Japanese YouTube channel. The first one, called Charmander’s Fireside Slumber, is half an hour of a sleepy Charmander snoozing by a fire. At one point the fire goes out and he wakes up to relight it with his tail, then goes right back to sleep.
The second one, called Chespin’s Happy Snack Time, is a video of a Chespin munching his way through a pile of macarons. Normally the ASMR of people crunching into a mic is the sort that makes me want to flip a table, but I’m actually ok with this. When Chespin runs out of macarons, a Pikachu turns up with another plate so that Chespin can keep on snackin’.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and people who swear by these videos say that listening to them gives them tingles and relaxes them – sometimes so deeply that they fall asleep.
It’s not just Pokemon and whispering, there are all sorts of weird and wonderful variations of ASMR. My favourite cursed videos include a dude eating glue sticks, a nun takes care of you because you have the plague, and five minutes of Rona Weasley saying “fookin’ hell, Harry.”
Pokemon ASMR might be odd, but it’s certainly wholesome af. We live in a burning world and every time we log on we’re hit with everything bad that’s happening. Small pockets of the internet where nothing matters except how many macarons Chespin can gobble down are rare and beautiful, and should be protected at all costs.
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