DOES THIS MAKE YOUR Brain Tingle?

What may be the internet’s most boring video is playing on my laptop. A blonde woman in immaculate make-up and black-rimmed glasses is tapping her fingers on a table. Hang on, now she’s scratching them over a towel before folding it. In a moment, she’ll start passing tiny balls of beeswax from one hand to the other so they sound like dry rice being tipped into a saucepan. Throughout it all, she gives a whispered commentary of what she’s doing, though, for the uninitiated, the question of why she’s doing it at all remains a total mystery.

Thankfully, I already know. This is an ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) video. It’s part of a bona fide YouTube subculture, in which millions tune in to watch the seemingly pointless as a sort of meditation. There’s a host of ‘ASMRtists’ – whispering presenters