Cover Photo: A screencap of ASMRtist and Youtuber, The Lune Innate, speaking to the viewer and moving her hand across the image. She is standing in front of a glowing, soothing purple background, fading into oranges and reds as though picking up on their energy, or like an overexposed photo.
Still from "Healing Sleep Session Reiki ASMR", courtesy of The Lune INNATE/Youtube

You’re in Good Virtual Hands: On ASMR, Anxiety, Relaxation in the Side-Hustle Economy, and Being Baby

In this strange territory of dorkiness, role-playing, and absurd props, there is something like real magic, and it makes me shiver.

This is , a monthly column by Sarah Lyn Rogers on finding self and community in digital spaces.


Dog bite. Cat scratch. Spider crawling up your back—bite-bite-bite! Cool breeze. Tight squeeze. Now you have the shiverees

shiveree

Amelie

hell

experiences

making

look, I am tryingfragmenting

Image: Kirby using a handpointer to point at text meme. Text on white poster: "being baby is a radical response to a culture in which older generations have infantilized us without nurturing us, a rejection of capitalist productivity standards, a joyful reclamation of tenderness, a revolution"
Photo courtesy of Aiden Arata/Instagram

Everythingeverything

feel cared forafford

Will my silence be interpreted as disapproval? Does my face convey the right amount of appreciation?Am I talking enough during this, am I talking too much? What do I say, how much do I tip, am I allowed to say I don’t like something, that the massage hurts, that I don’t like the haircut?

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Sarah Lyn Rogers is an NYC-based writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the editorial assistant for Soft Skull Press, a contributing editor for Catapult, and was formerly the fiction editor for The Rumpus. She is the author of Inevitable What (Sad Spell Press 2016), a poetry chapbook focused on magic and rituals, and was the 2014 winner of the Academy of American Poets' Virginia de Araujo prize. 

For more of Sarah's work, visit sarahlynrogers.com.