The strange death of youth

from The Oldie magazine March issue 410

Ask Virginia Ironside

definitive answers, the respondents shared their own experiences as well as videos that had triggered the brain-gasms. Once Allen came up with the name and search-friendly acronym, she started a Facebook group whose members started sharing videos with content specifically created to act as triggers instead of relying on happenstance.

Since then, there has been an explosion of YouTube videos. Content ranges from hair-washing, -cutting and -brushing, vacuuming, drawing and bubble-popping to makeovers, dental or ear-exam role-plays, all with augmented audio.

One of the most prolific creators is Gibi Klein. Her YouTube channel, Gibi ASMR, has 3.91 million subscribers. Her most-watched video to date, Fastest ASMR|Dentist, Eye, Cranial Nerve, Sleep Clinic, Lice, Ear Exam, Ear Cleaning, Makeup, Spa!, has had

‘You’re not going out like that?’ Incredulous parents first started asking this question of their teens in the 1950s. Previous generations had been defined by religion or class; these kids were the first of their kind with disposable income and radio stations playing their choice of music.

Their commercial clout attracted sophisticated marketing and, over the next 50 years, they formed a series of tribes whose look, attitude and behaviour were inherently British. Where have all those tribes gone today?

Teds appeared first in the fifties, defining themselves by their flamboyant clothing, age and love of rock ’n’ roll.

Throughout the sixties, new groups kept emerging: Rockers, duffle-coated Beatniks, Mods and Bohemians. All were anti-establishment. When the baby boomers amalgamated causes under the broad banner of ‘hippy’, the messages of John Lennon and Tariq Ali caused consternation among the moral majority.

Joining a tribe gave youngsters a philosophical and cultural identity, plus a great new record collection. The seventies and eighties were the glory years: skinheads flicked a V sign at hippie culture, followed by suedeheads and Space Rockers dipped in LSD. The Northern Soul, Glam and diametrically opposed Prog and Pub Rock scenes all strutted down our high streets. Punk mutated into Post Punk and Anarcho Punk, to which there was a right-wing reaction with Oi, before New Romantics ditched the politics in favour of flamboyance. There was heavy regional bias to Headbangers and the Two-tone movement while the hairspray of Goths and Psychobillies threatened the ozone layer.

For a brief egalitarian moment at the end of the eighties, Ravers brought down the barriers of background and race, before promptly splitting into a manyheaded beast of mutually dismissive electronic styles. There were occasional cross-pollinations: Soul Boys & Disco, Punk & Rasta before New Age Travellers & Ravers bonded so successfully that the Major government felt the need to legislate against them. Crusties, Shoegaze and the Baggy phenomenon marked the last of the clearly identifiable pop cultural clans.

Music and fashion just didn’t have the same driving force as the millennium drew to a close. New interests such as food and tech competed for attention, and dressing up was something embarrassing your mum and dad did.

The internet had the greatest impact. When Spotify lists every song ever recorded and social media plugs you in to the world, there is no space for subcultures to incubate. Gaming, Grime and Skating persist but they are not as all-consuming as the original cliques, when every penny would be spent on your scene’s accoutrements and you would speak only to your kind.

Key motivating factors in joining tribes were revelling in the tabloid hysteria your leaders inspired and offending passers-by. But the shock value has gone and the tribal raison d’être with it. Old ladies just don’t care any more if you’ve got a green Mohican and a pet rat and you smell of solvent.

RIP the great youth tribes.

‘Robbery is spelled with two “b”s’

over 33 million views. The 18 actionpacked minutes consist of a tight shot of Gibi performing the exams or treatments for the viewer. Her voice just above a whisper, she repeats phrases, adding in clicks, pops and other mouth sounds to punctuate the tapping of her various tools against the screen.

Relieving insomnia is one of the purported benefits of ASMR. YouTube pays not only by the number of views but also by the length of view: while you sleep and the videos continue to roll, the revenue pours in.

Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting series endures as a popular ASMR trigger thanks to Ross’s soft voice intoning phrases such as ‘happy little trees’. The effect is increased by his extended eye contact with the viewer, the focus on his deliberate hand movements, loud, repeated brush strokes and the scrape of the palette knife against the canvas.

Whether or not ASMR is a real phenomenon is difficult to prove – and largely beside the point. In the ‘see a need, fill a need’ world of the internet, the act of searching for specific content is enough to stimulate its creation. You want to hear someone chew honeycomb or slurp oysters for your pleasure? You got it!

Donna Freed