Ear Eating: tingle-heavenly or inappropriate?

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

I've been wanting to share my thoughts on ear eating videos for a long time. I don't have a ready opinion though, I have a bunch of contradicting ones, but...well. Ear eating is not a black&white issue.

So what is ear eating and why the fuss? If you haven't seen an ear eating video yet, be careful if you're misphonic or hate mouth sounds. This trigger is intense and people usually LOVE it or HATE it. Yes, that's right: the level of emotion intensity is high, so caps lock is what I meant.

I can easily understand why people might hate ear eating. It's weird to the depths of this word. I wouldn't tolerate anybody getting that close to my ears and trying to chew on them. However, all ASMR is about getting close and pretending (role plays, personal attention videos and ear cleanings - it's all about acting in its essence). On the other hand, a girl or a boy who's nomming the silicone microphone ears doesn't look common-sensical either. This picture requires a footnote. Without it, this is just a boy or a girl who's doing weird unsanitary things in front of the camera. (Or sexual things if a special look and a smile is attached OR the viewer's imagination is ready BUT that's not what I want to discuss in this post: ASMRtists don't control what the viewers might think of + ASMRtists are free not to expose their sweet seductive charm in front of people they don't really know).

Having said that, we're coming to the other side of the story. The magical footnote that makes sense and lets us forget about the questions. With the earbuds in and tingles on (=if a person is able to experience them + a person is not misophonic), ear eating works wonders. It's probably the most intense trigger I've ever encountered. Ear eating or, even "worse", ear licking is incredible. It's the epitome of tingles. Seriously.

However, ear eating can be done so wrong. I'm super picky when it comes to choosing an ASMRtist to "fall in love" with, so I can't stand gross specimens - putting some food on the ears and licking it off with a face expression of utter delight (it's silicone, sweetie, and it doesn't smell roses!) or pretending it's their lover's ears (come on, find yourself a room and don't take all YouTube there!)

There are ASMRtsts though who make ear eating/licking so gently, so naturally that I can't even think that it might look and sound wrong. I know she's become popular because of these, but that's earned: Frivolous Fox' ear licking in black and white is probably one of my all time favorites - it's super tingly, it's fun, it's full of self-irony and it's cute. (Speaking of her: she also has pen noms and, maaaan, this is unexpected! but So Good Sounding.)

What am I trying to say here? I'm pretty amazed at the popularity of ear eating. I know that a big part of those who watch it are...hmmm...perverts. I have a loooong black list of words that are not allowed in my comments. I get a ton of comments on review after an ear eating video. It's ok, I don't mind: my vocabulary is rich and diversified now. The other part of viewers are still those who look for tingles, and it's perfect. But well, it's anyways amazing how quickly an ear eating video gets views. My last long ear eating is over half a million views now. (And I feel sorry for all other videos that I worked on: they are not as pampered with attention as these ear eating things are.) I don't want to try and guess what the main reason is - I believe it's a mix of reasons and if it works good, so be it. I'm just still surprized, that's it.

What do you think of ear eating videos? What did you think when you saw an ear eating video for the first time?