I suspect some of the popularity of unboxing videos can be attributed to the ASMR[0] community.
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...
There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't bought because I saw it in use on YouTube.
There used to be a very good page on the phenomenon, but it's long gone and there's not even any history of it existing that I'm aware of. Now, because it's gone, most pages that document frisson are now calling it "cold chills" and referring back to WP.
Edits appreciated.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515000000*/https://en.wikip...
20060913 includes this content:
An experience, commonly associated with especially moving or Ecstatic_listening moments, where a sensation of "shivers" occurs. The frisson experience begins as a flexing of the skin in the lower back, rising upward, inward from the shoulders, up the neck, and sometimes across to the cheeks and onto the scalp. The face may become flush, hair follicles flex the hairs into standing position, and goose bumps may appear (Piloerection). Frequently, a series of `waves' will rise up the back in rapid succession. The experience lasts no more than four or five seconds. The listener feels the music to have elicited an ecstatic moment and tends to regard the experience as involuntary. Http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music838/glossary.html
Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.
Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.
The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research.
ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill.
Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused.
Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.
Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.
Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well.
While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song).
And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson
A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.
But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time.
The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.
Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit.
I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time.
But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs.
Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
What really interests me is that there are probably other sensory phenomenon that are equally fascinating that very few people experience that aren't generally known (like synesthesia).
Glad to hear I'm not alone. My wife and I listened to the This American Life program on ASMR and I couldn't even stand the few short snippets in the program. The whispery sound of quiet talking where you can hear the speaker's tongue flapping around in their mouth makes me want to pull my teeth out with pliers.
I wonder if any of these conditions are related somehow.
When he was younger he had some low grade Tourette's-like symptoms and various other neurological issues. Misophonia is supposed to have some kind of possible connection to Tourette's.
However, he may also frisson or ASMR (or something in the category) and has an intense interest in certain kinds of music and has built quite a few home-made ultra high end home stereos out of car audio components.
Amazingly, almost none of the things we're talking about here are well recognized by the psychiatric or neuroscience communities.
There are also visual triggers, to make matters worse. For some reason beyond my understanding, I hate when people bounce their legs around in their seats, or tap their feet repeatedly on the floor. Drives me insane.
I've never had Tourette's, or any Tourette's-like symptoms, but I completely sympathize with those who do. My symptoms are similarly uncontrollable. I know they're weird, and I know that telling people about them generally pisses people off. So I am consigned to my own special hell, quietly mustering the mental energy to block these stimuli out in everyday life, knowing that nobody understands the problem nor has the slightest sympathy. Medical research barely takes the condition seriously, and a lot of doctors still refuse to acknowledge that it's real, and not some Freudian, neurotic symptom.
In a way, I feel like what someone with Tourette's must have felt like, back before Tourette's was medically or societally acknowledged. Every now and then, misophonia gets a cursory writeup in a major newspaper or magazine -- but even that coverage typically ends with some dismissive caveat, such as "Medical science doesn't currently acknowledge this as a legitimate condition." Well, I'm certainly not doing this for the fun of it. :)
I suppose I have a name for this now...
Hell yeah, my experience exactly. When I'm eating meals with family, I need there to be a conversation going, or at least a TV or radio running in a background - if there's only silence and sounds of eating, I'm starting to go crazy.
As for the neurological explanations: as the previous poster mentioned, recent studies have implicated a lot of the same brain and nervous system structures in misophonia that are believed to be responsible for Tourette's. There is a high degree of comorbidity. While the two aren't causally related, there appears to be a physical/structural cause that results in either or both conditions with a fair amount of frequency.
Again, I have no definitive way of ruling out some blanket neurosis as the underlying cause. But it seems scientifically dubious, and more important, it's often unproductive as a line of inquiry.
I'll read more about it, but thanks for getting me introduced!
Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice.
A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos.
Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.
[1] some of the rest can be attributed to how views are counted.