[patal]

Parent commenter definitely has got an idea what he's talking about: He isn't affected by these things. And then it's hard to tell if someone's getting something out of it or just being scammed.

However, there's no denying an effect on people in these videos. I can't listen to Mrs. GentleWhispering more than a couple seconds before feeling sick. And I mean that! My best guess is that I feel the video being deliberately manipulative and generate a shut off.

[Ronsenshi]

I do experience, but I'm not a fan of a lot of ASMR videos and for one reason only - they don't feel natural.

From your description it sounds like that's what you feel.

You should check some other category of ASMR videos. For example those where people show their collections of various elements or simply some brushing without any words or videos where author makes candies from special toolkit [1].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsiO8XcPo-o