Gibi ASMR, a YouTuber with more than 5 million subs, has created a shot-for-shot remake of Shrek along with 80 other ASMR creators. It premieres Wednesday.
ASMR videos started as a fringe section of YouTube, but the industry has grown exponentially in the last decade — rough estimates say there are at least 25 million ASMR videos on YouTube alone, coming from at least half a million channels dedicated to the craft. In the last five years or so, ASMR videos and their creators have increasingly entered public consciousness, despite common misconceptions about what ASMR really is.
For some creators and viewers, ASMR just means whispering — but ASMR videos can be anything designed to elicit autonomous sensory meridian response, a tingling feeling in the brain that some people have in reaction to specific visual or audio triggers. ASMR fans (myself included) say that response helps them relax, stave off panic attacks, and most notably, fall asleep. A note on vernacular: The ASMR community uses the acronym in a lot of ways, including as a noun that refers to any content that elicits ASMR. For instance, I might tell my husband, “No, I can’t watch TV with you tonight; I’m falling asleep to ASMR.”
Gibi ASMR, aka Gina (who does not share her full name online), found early success with her ASMR YouTube channel, which she launched in June 2016. Known for her funny role-play, her costumes and cosplays, and her fast-paced videos, 29-year-old Gibi (pronounced “jee-bee”) has amassed a huge community over the last eight years. Her videos often turn up on YouTube’s homepage, or you might see her pop up as a guest in other YouTubers’ videos. Now, as her channel exceeds 5 million subscribers, she’s releasing her magnum opus: The entire movie Shrek, but in ASMR.
The full-length, live-action fan film premieres on YouTube on Wednesday. Gibi said that ideally, fans can set up Shrek and Shrek ASMR side by side and they’ll be perfectly in sync, shot for shot. For instance, where DreamWorks animated Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Shrek (Mike Myers) walking through a sunflower field together, Gibi and her team filmed B-roll with paper cutouts in a diorama-like setup.
This isn’t the first time Gibi has made an entire movie in ASMR. Her initial feature-length film, which premiered on YouTube three years ago, should give you an inkling of her and her fandom’s taste — it’s Bee Movie. She started that project after hundreds of days of one of her subscribers asking for it in the comments, then she figured out what she was doing during the process of making the film. Gibi told Polygon that Shrek was a natural next full-length for her and her subscribers. But for this production — which Gibi said she lovingly considers to have “school play vibes” — she had a much better idea of how to make the project work.
She told us that she and her team — editors, assistants, and her husband/manager, Ben — spent months scripting out the ASMR version of the film, creating shot lists, and determining which roles Gibi herself would play. Then, she cast her fellow ASMRtists (a common term for ASMR creators) in the important roles. She and her team spent the summer filming, with her as Shrek, of course, and a few in-person shoots with other important roles, like Batala from Batala’s ASMR as Donkey.
She’s kept her fans up to date throughout this process, including a video of her practicing her Shrek makeup and Instagram posts about the editing progress. She’s also opened up to her fans about her pregnancy along the way. She’s spent the last several months racing to finish editing the film before her first child is born: “NO, PLEASE STAY IN THERE LITTLE BUDDY, WE’RE NOT DONE WITH SHREK YET… KEEP COOKING…” she wrote in the description of her Oct. 2 upload, “ASMR What’s in my Hospital Bag?”
Polygon sat down with Gibi — who also co-owns ASMR-focused talent group Mana with her husband — for a video interview in August. We talked about ASMR’s recent growth in popularity, the monoculture around Shrek, her success as a YouTuber, and of course, Shrek ASMR.
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Polygon: What’s it been like to watch ASMR become a familiar, common word after spending so much time having to explain it every time you talk to somebody about it?
Gibi: It’s been really refreshing to finally have ASMR be a household term. […] I remember that vividly as a high schooler, figuring out that ASMR was a thing. And then even when I started my own channel, which was maybe six years after I even discovered what [ASMR] was, I had to explain what it was to so many people. I mean, my parents, my parents’ friends, my friends, my boyfriend at the time, who’s now my husband — and it’s his full-time job, working with creators and ASMR people.
I frequently find that when I talk to people about ASMR, they think it’s a sexual thing. Have you found this? And can you speak to why there’s that misconception?
When I first started doing interviews talking about what ASMR was, that was 100% the second question I would get: “Is it a sex thing?” Because people just aren’t used to a lot of vulnerability and feelings and being comforted and having closeness with somebody without it being sexual. […] And the ASMR industry, I guess, does tend to be dominated by women, which, again, is not common in anything in the world.
