ASMR videos from barbers and masseurs have become an unexpected safe space for men online – but the line between non-sexual and erotic contact can become quite blurred
It’s testament to the somewhat democratic nature of the internet that a smiling 53-year-old, silver-haired, bushy-tashed man can become one of the stars of online content creation. Münür Önkan is an award-winning hairdresser from Ankara and one of the pioneers of the Turkish barber ASMR genre, with over 1.79 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.6 million followers on TikTok. Known for his combination of body massage, personal grooming and skincare, his videos have racked up over 600 million views.
Önkan’s videos are typically filmed in his barbershop, surrounded by certificates and awards, with only him and his client in shot. He might trim a client’s beard with manual clippers or wax their back hair, before massaging their head, neck and torso. Microphones strapped to his forearms capture the activity, each recorded sound clear as a bell: the slow lathering of foam, fingers scrubbing the scalp, the meditative trickle of water. For a global audience, the videos provide insight into male grooming culture in Turkey and the kinds of services on offer in a Turkish barber shop, from cupping to ‘hair singeing’.
“I have been a hairdresser since 1983,” Önkan tells me over WhatsApp. “But when I placed first in Turkey and third in Europe in some hairdressing competitions, I got a lot of attention from the national media.” A couple of content creators approached him to make ASMR videos in return for a fee. When those videos went viral, tax inspectors visited him looking to recoup the money he had supposedly earned. “The inspectors informed me that those creators were making serious money from my videos, whereas I wasn’t. So, I did 500 hours of additional massage training and started making my own.”
But it’s not just Önkan – a new generation of Turkish barbers have taken ASMR to new heights and audiences. Looking to emulate his success, Önkan’s former apprentice Emircan has started his own ASMR channel, as has Emircan’s apprentice Nebi. Other prominent figures on YouTube include Yusuf Akc and Mehmet. So what’s so special about Turkish barber massage videos? And even though they’ve been around for years, why are they having their moment now?
Watching someone get a massage is relaxing. It’s easy to imagine yourself in the chair receiving the treatments, to think of yourself as the kind of person who engages in regular self-care. Önkan’s mindfulness, slowly washing his hands, then disinfecting his barber’s chair before asking a client to sit, acts as an invitation for the viewer to slow down. Plus, the barbers are good at staying on top of the pressure for content creators to constantly innovate. A typical massage routine is flexible enough to adapt to emerging ASMR trends: the barbers can easily incorporate a fad for the sound of soap being carved, for example, by simply grating it into a client’s hair.
@munur_onkan MEET THE WHITE SKIN GUY WHO HAS A STRANGE FEELING WITH SOAP 🗽🎅🏼 Massage 220 🎄👹🚑 Cre: ASMR_Munur_Onkan 👉 #asmr #massage #relaxing #newyork #massagenewyork #newyorkrelax #trendingUSA #fypシ ♬ original sound - Munur Onkan
But there’s a whole other dimension that’s less about relaxation and more about intimacy. The barbershop is a space where men can be close. Where eye-contact, vulnerability and touch – the inspection of pores, fingers running through another man’s hair – are sensual but not sexual. And as viewers, we participate in the intimacy on display in the videos. We hear the cotton pads sweeping across a forehead, water sprayed into dry hair, oil squelching on skin. It’s as if we’ve got our ears positioned right next to the bodies in the barber chairs. And by watching the same barbers on repeat, we might begin to feel like we know them intimately too.
It can also be kind of sexual. While Önkan’s age, technique and professionalism push the locus of his videos towards platonic intimacy over eroticism, the younger generation of Turkish ASMRtists are more than happy to blur the line. Granted, the titles of their videos are quite bland (for the most part), but their content is anything but. The clients are young, good-looking and muscular. They are topless or stripped to their underwear, submissive on a massage table and shot with a tightly focused lens. The barbers are handsome too, and up the sexiness by squirting their clients with various oils and creams. At certain key moments – Emircan whispering into his client’s ear, Yusuf staring down the camera as he massages perilously close to a client’s groin, Mehmet repeatedly grabbing a client’s ginormous pecs – their intentions become clear. This is soft porn as ASMR. Or vice versa. Or both at the same time.
“They’re all after a show,” says Anil Çakmak, an ASMR barber of the more traditional variety, about the more erotic of his fellow content creators. “It’s not a massage, it’s a show.” Many of the comments on these videos seem to support this idea. On an online forum, a person known as ‘Jabr’ wrote, “Firstly, I obviously watch them because of ASMR massage. Secondly, the guys featured in those videos are quite attractive.” In a culture that pioneered the hammam, there’s enough plausible deniability in a Turkish massage video; it’s possible to refute being gay, should anyone ask. However, given that Emircan, Mehmet and Yusuf have also all branched out into OnlyFans and Patreon, offering exclusive content for around $20 per month, it suggests there might be more to this content than first meets the eye.
Nearly everybody reached out to discuss their reasons for watching the videos refused to talk, mirroring the reluctance of the barbers to admit their motivations out in the open. What is their motivation? It goes back to the coin, surely – as Önkan himself made clear. YouTube ASMR is a massively lucrative business, after all. The top earners can make hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of pounds a year from their videos. And the captive audience with very healthy imaginations are more than happy to keep watching, if the ecstatic comments beneath the videos are anything to go by.