Every two weeks, Kaelin Brady scours her local shops in search of soap.
But the 28-year-old's routine is not a body odor-related chore: it's so she can slice up the colorful bars on camera in order to deliver "brain-gasms" -- or physically pleasant feelings -- to her more than 10,000 Instagram followers.
Brady -- better known as “SoapyDopey416” online -- is part of a wave of social media users embracing the budding virtual trend of soap cutting, another part of the broader ASMR scene.
ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and is known better in layman's terms as "head tingles."
Essentially, some people say they find that certain sights and sounds can cause a physically pleasurable sensation from their fingers to their toes.
Listening to a woman's whisper, watching slime being squeezed and cutting up bars of soap are all apparently tantalizing triggers for those who feel ASMR.
(MORE: How Boring Videos Can Give You a 'Brain Orgasm') (MORE: Some Use This YouTube Whisperer's Videos To Sleep)Brady, who lives in Frederick, Maryland, admits that she doesn’t feel the effects of ASMR herself. But she said she enjoys filming herself cutting softer soaps "because they’re like a nice, smooth cut and make a good sound when they drop."
#SoapCutting has more than 70,000 posts on Instagram alone. Most posts were of videos showcasing a single bar of soap being sliced up.
Brady is a school bus driver by day and every morning before her daily run, she contributes to the carving community.
“When I first started, I would get two, three hundred followers and I would get super excited,” she said. “And that number just started getting higher and higher.”
The comments section underneath some of her videos may provide a window into why her follower base keeps building.
“Yay you finally started doing thin slices,” one follower said.
“My favorite <3,” posted another.
“Just the simplicity of it,” Brady said, when asked why she enjoys contributing to the craze. “There’s no gimmicks. I just cut the soap, it’s relaxing, and we’re good.”
