🌙 THE NIGHT I TRIED ASMR… AND IMMEDIATELY REGRETTED EVERYTHING

 I don’t know what possessed me. Maybe it was the dry weather. Maybe it was the fact that my Tums were staring at me like, “Buddy, you’re gonna need us.” Maybe it was the faint hope that I, too, could be one of those serene people who fall asleep to whispering strangers tapping on plastic fruit.

But no. No, no, no. I clicked on an ASMR video and instantly realized I had made a terrible life choice.

The girl on the screen had nails so long they could have doubled as roofing shingles. And she was clacking them on everything—wood, glass, her own face—like she was trying to summon Beetlejuice. Every tap echoed through my skull like a tiny jackhammer operated by a caffeinated squirrel.

Then came the whispering.

Not normal whispering. Not “soft and soothing” whispering.

No. She was whispering like a toddler who just had a boo boo in her pants and needed to tell the teacher about it. Breathless. Apologetic. Confused. A little too close to the microphone. I swear I could hear her dental history.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting there thinking:

“I grew up in a loud German, Irish, and Native American home. If someone wasn’t yelling, banging pots, or reenacting a car crash, it wasn’t a normal Tuesday.”

ASMR? ASMR is the opposite of my DNA.

You know what does put me to sleep?

Ten hours of Rich Evans laughing like a malfunctioning lawnmower. That’s my melatonin. That’s my white noise machine. That’s my lullaby.

Give me Rich Evans’ laugh, a couple Tums, a cough drop for this desert-dry weather, and I’m drifting off like a baby in a Buick.

But hey— To each his own.

If people want to pay charlatans to tap on shampoo bottles and whisper like they’re confessing to stealing crayons, that’s their business. I’ll be over here listening to a man cackle like a broken amusement park ride.

Sleep tight, ASMR nation. I’ll be in the corner with my chaos soundtrack.