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The latest YouTube phenomenon of people roleplaying as ASMR girlfriends gets turned into an art film.

Many of us are wondering whether this strange occurrence would stay or if it would be nothing but a mere fad. Either way, Dutch filmmaker Guus Voorham, won the bid by documenting it as an art film way ahead of the others. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR for short, has been the trend for a while. It produces a sensation of pleasure visually and aurally for those who are sensitive to them. Voorham made the art film called Alone Together after being intrigued by the whole idea of combining the current craze, ASMR, with a rather odd concept, Girlfriend Roleplay.

It seems that in this day and age, you can simply outsource everything in the internet. Clothes, books, food, and now maybe intimacy. Or at least, the feeling of having a girlfriend whispers to you in your sleep, intimately. Today’s generation lands us on modern-day relationships and like it or not, most of us are already used to it. We’ve reached a point where there is a pressing need to always be social, while at the same time, a pressing need to be alone to process your own thoughts. We want to be alone but we still want to be connected. The irrational fear of being disconnected with people drives us to look for that particular ‘connection’.

Alone Together encapsulates the feeling of being connected but still be alone. Maybe one of the reasons why ASMR girlfriends are a hit these days, is because it resembles real intimacy. People respond to visual cues whether or not its genuine. The videos are an instant fix without commitment and isolation is just a click away. Through them, people can trick their brains into feeling that they’re not lonely anymore. In an interview with i-D, Voorham says that “I thought intimacy was something that, by definition, you could only feel for someone you know well, but now it seems that the people watching these videos also experience intimate trust and recognition. To them it’s something that can exist between two people who have never met each other, and that’s really fascinating.”