Chilling Out After TV News
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A-S-M-R stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response”
It is described as a euphoric, tingly sensation people can feel upon hearing or seeing specific things.
Former WUSA Investigative Reporter Russ Ptacek left the station back in 2016 and is now trying his best to find A-S-M-R.
DCist writes that when Ptacek left the Tegna station, his plans were to travel the world, but he found something else entirely when listening to some classical music about a year ago. “It was almost like I had been drugged with, I don’t know, a sedative that makes you feel content,” Ptacek says. “I had no idea what was happening other than that this music became five dimensional.”
“As an investigative reporter, what do you do?” he says. “You use a different skill set to find out what the hell is going on.” He tried to recreate that night by eating the same thing, by watching the same television programs as he had that day, and through research. Months later, he finally felt that frisson again while listening to jazz, but he couldn’t explain why he was able to achieve that sensation that day rather than during any of the other attempts.
Making ASMR a part of his daily routine has changed his life—he credits it with helping lift him out of a deep depression. “This morning I went to the roof to watch the sun rise and that is something that, a year ago, I would have been like, ‘whatever,'” Ptacek says. “It is, for me, really similar to Dorothy [from Wizard of Oz], and everything all of the sudden went to color, and all of these familiar places look so different. It takes you out of whatever world of crisis that you’re spinning in and it makes the world stop for you.” (He calls ASMR “Ozmyrhh,” inspired by Dorothy’s world going from black and white to prismacolor when she arrives in Oz.)
But he was flummoxed by how little people understood about ASMR, a relatively new term, and how to harness it. Enter the ASMR Foundation, which Ptacek founded this month. The goal is to compile and endow research about the phenomenon, create videos that will introduce people to ASMR, and experiment with the best ways to record sounds and sights to discover how people are most responsive to the medium.
Right now, Ptacek is the only employee of the foundation, which “is currently functioning on a very generous donation from Russ Ptacek,” he says with a laugh. Ideally, he wants the ASMR Foundation to score corporate sponsors, which will help him spread the gospel of ASMR and see if it can help others manage anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and more.
It all sounds a little too new age, coffee shop crap to us. But hey, if he is enjoying it and can make some money off of it? We wish Russ nothing but the best.
