History & Content Guidelines

History of ASMR

Historically, ASMR was referred to as the "whisper community". Listening to whispers caused a "tingly" effect that could actually be felt on the skin. Over time, members of the community could feel the response from all sorts of triggers, not just whispers. There was some division in the community on whether the experience was purely or purely not family-friendly. To accurately describe the effect without falsely implying anything inappropriate, Jennifer Allen coined the term Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) in 2010.

In 2018, Twitch finally added the ASMR category. Its popularity and use has continued to grow. According to a Twitch tracking website, for all of 2023 the ASMR category had 101 million hours watched, with an average of 11k viewers, to an average of 146 live channels. The category had 28k different streamers stream in the category at least once last year (https://sullygnome.com/game/aSMR/2023).

Many are familiar with the content shift that occurred in the ASMR category in 2021. A huge wave of channels switched to 18+ for reasons other than profanity: a new trigger had been discovered, where the streamer licks the ears of the microphone. It became significantly harder to find ASMR streamers who stuck to the classic and traditional methods. On top of this, the ASMR category on Twitch is particularly oversaturated with bot accounts. They stream stolen content, and though Twitch can confirm they aren't real people and then ban them, they are fast at making new accounts. This makes it even more difficult to find real, live streamers, especially VTubers.

Similar to the field of massage therapy, ASMR is what you make of it, and can be an extremely powerful tool of relaxation. The ASMR Streamer Awards were born to highlight the now-minority field of classic and traditional ASMRtists ("ASMR artists"), to help others find these channels, and celebrate the communities within ASMR that make it all possible.  

Graph of 2021 Spike in ASMR Viewership, from the category's creation on Twitch to December 2023:

History of The ASMR Streamer Awards

The ASMR Streamer Awards was created by ASMRtist SquishShe in 2023. You can read more about the show here. She produces the show with the help of an anonymous committee containing both ASMR watchers and streamers. 

In 2023 there were 29 awards and 4 nominees per category. This was reduced to 25 awards and 3 nominees per category in 2024 to prevent oversaturation. Hidden Gem was added to the 2025 awards by popular demand.

Originally the show was set to exclude any streamer who did any form of licking, though this decision was reversed after backlash from the community. A significant portion of the community feels ear licking can be done in a non-fetishzing way, and therefore streamers can still be eligible in some circumstances. You can read the details below.

The 2025 ASMR Streamer Awards are likely to be the last hosted by SquishShe, who originally started the awards to highlight traditional ASMRtists on Twitch. However, between the time of the 2024 and 2025 awards, Twitch has enabled the ability to filter out streams based on content label, which includes one for sexual content. You can find a guide on how to do this here. This feels like a natural resolution to the ASMR Streamer Awards to SquishShe, as the "problem" of not being able to find ASMRtists on Twitch due to over saturation of fetishizing content has been essentially fixed.

Content Guidelines

• Streamers who perform some ear licking triggers can be nominated, if:

  • they are not found to be fetishizing the trigger, as determined by the anonymous committee

  • they are not doing that trigger >50% of the time, as determined by the anonymous committee

• Twitch VODs from the previous calendar year will have expired by the time of voting, so there will be significant reliance on the community to nominate and vote for ASMR Twitch streamers who adhere to these guidelines. Brief channel review will be conducted for all nominees. Therefore, this is a disclaimer that this will be a somewhat honor-based system. 

  • If you're not sure if you qualify, feel free to reach out. Exceptions do exist. 

• These guidelines only extend to the streamer's content that is broadcast live (or rerun) on the Twitch platform. Content on other platforms is not taken into consideration for The ASMR Streamer Awards, as the awards are built to recognize and promote the ASMR community on Twitch.

• Only content from the last calendar year is under affect from the guidelines.