For Spirit Payton, the 47-year-old “ASMR artist” behind the YouTube channel ASMRTheChew, the sounds of someone eating are some of the most beautiful in the world. “A person naturally eating is making water sounds, crushing sounds, could sound like you’re walking in the snow, could sound like you’re in a cave. Could sound like water’s dripping,” she says. It’s the Friday before Valentine’s Day, and she’s talking to me on the phone from her Houston home, where she’s spending the day editing a makeup video involving bubblegum pink eyeshadow and life advice.
The videos on ASMRTheChew, which cater to the tingling sensations a person may experience when encountering certain auditory or visual stimuli, may seem odd to the casual viewer. One of Spirit’s most popular clips is of her loudly crunching on a pickle while wearing a full face of makeup. Every bite — every crunch, smack, and swallow — is amplified ten-fold, and when it made the rounds on Twitter, people, in a mixture of reverence and derision, dubbed her the “pickle lady.”
But Spirit doesn’t pay that much mind. Recently, Cardi B and a couple other big names followed her on Instagram, and she just reached 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. Plus, she’s too preoccupied with her own mission of bringing ASMR into the mainstream as a natural and easy healing alternative. After all, that’s what brought her to ASMR.
Spirit began making videos in 2015 after a series of bad turns in her life: losing her burgeoning florist business, losing her home and having to live with her children in her car, and then getting diagnosed with a rapidly degenerating bone disease. ASMR became her way to relieve pain, find peace, and fall asleep. Already, flocks of people are commenting on her videos, telling her, “‘Spirit, you saved me,’” she says. “And I realize that I am a different ASMR artist than other people.”
Q: I have been watching ASMR videos for a very long time and you stand out to me for how intentional you are with your videos being used for healing and for wellness. Why is that focus so important to you?
Some other ASMR creators bring some type of fantasy to other people, and that can be a nice ASMR. But the reason why I started my channel is because when I was going through something where I thought I was dying — because I had been told I was going to die within five years — I was listening to ASMR videos. Once I came out of it, I started really watching different ASMR videos. What bothered me was typing in and trying to find someone who has ASMR. No one came up for me. Then when it did come up, they were acting. They were still doing the same thing they all do to kind of repeat each others’ videos.
It was a secret! Other ASMR creators didn’t want people to know that there was ASMR communities out there. I decided that I needed to break the glass because there’s people out there like me who don’t know that ASMR exists and they’re suffering every day. I was bedridden and I could not walk. I had to learn how to walk all over again. So when I started listening to ASMR, weird stuff started happening to me miraculously.
When I listen to a certain ASMR, I literally feel like my body is being lifted and I’m being healed. So because I feel that, I purposefully go after sharing that because I want to help someone. I go after ASMR because I feel like the world is stressed out and people have been forgotten about, people can’t afford some medication. People need help. They need to feel happy.
I saw that Cardi B followed you on Instagram, that’s huge. How did you feel about that?
I’ma tell you something weird. If a person watches my video everyday and never misses one, they know I talk about Cardi B. I just have this love for Cardi B because I like the fact that she’s able to speak her mind and not be ashamed of who she is. And one of the things I liked about her was when her teeth wasn’t the way it is now, she still smiled. She still laughed. She still made people laugh. She still spoke her truth. She had a very high confidence as a young lady.
When she followed me I thought it was one of the most amazing things she could ever do for a person that she didn’t have to do. And then right after her, it was Blac Chyna, it was Porsha [Williams], it was Bebe [Rexha]. It was so many different artists starting to follow me and just leave a comment and repost my video. It was just shocking because I felt like people have been re-downloading my videos, making fun of me and making jokes about me and becoming famous and not even giving me credit. So for Cardi B and different people who use my video and give me credit, I just feel like it has something to do with God, it has something to do with the energy, and God want people to know that I’m on a mission and this mission is serious and big.
we have decided to stan forever
No one is doing ASMR like ASMRTheChew
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