IKEA Is Producing Weird Audio Porn Now

The sounds we associate with IKEA are mostly of the "frustrated grunting and swearing at the instructions" variety, so it might seem odd that they've decided to get into the ASMR game. And it is. It's profoundly, disturbingly odd.

The video released on IKEA Australia's YouTube channel this week purports to "showcas the intimate sights and sounds of organizing the bedroom," but with a weird POV that never shows the face of the person who is organizing this bedroom with comical inefficiency and a full 17 seconds of lingering drawer-stroking, the veil here is thinner than one of their rugs. Let's cut to this chase: This lady wants to fuck that drawer.

And that's fine. Slam your genitals in as many consenting drawers as you want, but don't pretend it's making them cleaner. (At least, not unless you've attached a duster to your hog and/or ham.) My understanding of ASMR videos, which is basically limited to the cursory YouTube search I did last night to make sure this was weird, is that there's usually a pretense that a person is just doing normal things and if it happens to produce pleasant sounds so be it. What I am an expert on is tidying, and no part of it involves erotically massaging a pillow.

The Swedish furniture chain has actually tried this before, releasing a series of "ASMR" videos on the IKEA USA channel two years ago and then acting like it never happened until now. Here's one of a woman abusing a cushion:

And another with the appropriately porny setting of a college dorm room and a voiceover that sounds like the actress is recovering from vague throat trauma:

The lessons the Australian video team seems to have taken away from this experiment in provoking discomfort have resulted in 1) shifting the perspective so it's less "POV porn" and more "hidden nanny cam porn," and 2) ditching the voiceover because anyone with eyes can see "how well the sheets fit over a typical dorm room mattress," and the answer is "not at all." That's it. Nothing else could possibly be improved upon. Knowing professional social media, they'll probably all get raises soon.

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