TikTok’s Bottle-Breaking Trend Is The Antithesis To Traditional ASMR Videos

My eyes are glued to my phone screen; I’m transfixed. All my usual internal worry and chatter are silenced and the only thing that remains is a laser focus on the scene unfolding before me. Am I relaxed? Kind of, but there is a frisson of tension, too.

Then, a foot on the screen nudges the bottle of wine and sends it rolling down a set of concrete stairs.

Yes, the video on my screen is from TikTok, and it’s one of the many accounts that have cropped up recently with people sending various bottles of liquids and solids rolling down sets of stairs to watch them clunk, clatter and sometimes shatter as they explode their way to the bottom. 

(For anyone wondering, the wine bottle broke pretty quickly on the second step.)

The trend reportedly started back in May 2022, with a TikToker named Lillo Alencar, but it seems like it's only now that these videos are cropping up all over our FYP. Videos of bottles shattering and breaking on stairs are amassing, in some instances, over 212 million views at a time. The comments are peppered with the same sentiment as “this is my kind of ASMR”. 

In many ways, these bottle-breaking videos are the antithesis to ‘traditional’ ASMR videos — the ones that are defined by soft, gentle noises; a scratch of nails, a whispering voice, or crinkling paper. Or even the ones preoccupied with power-cleaning that went viral on TikTok not so long ago — filthy carpets or dirt-streaked driveways satisfyingly made pristine by the brute force of a jet of water.

In bottle-breaking videos, we get the opposite, with loud noises, glass shattering and liquids or foods cascading down steps. There is nothing quiet, soft or even clean about these videos. They’re messy and chaotic, but undeniably soothing — but why is that the case?

Dr Catriona Davis-McCabe, president of Australian Psychology Society suspects the "soothing" effect of the bottle-breaking craze may be triggered by the repetitive nature of the videos. 

“It may be the repetitive nature of the bottles rolling down the stairs, and the accompanying, mostly repetitive, sounds as the bottle hits each stair, that may elicit a response," she says. "The repetitive motions of bouncing objects, like orbeez and marbles that fill the bottles, may also be a trigger once let loose.”

I’ve never liked other ASMR videos — the soft noises feel like a cheese grater to my skin. And that isn’t to say loud noises are any better for me, but basically, I’m an all-around sensory issue girl. And yet, the crash-bang of these bottle-breaking videos doesn’t bother me. Is it because the entire aim is to be loud and jarring, and thus the element of surprise is somewhat eliminated? It might also be because the clattering noise is, in some ways, inconsequential — my eyes and my mind are more focused on the bottle itself, and the accompanying tension as it rolls.

Mr Davis-McCabe agrees that the anticipatory element can explain some of the appeal. “Some viewers may also experience a certain suspense building in each video, wondering if (and when) the bottle or vessel will break and what the result will be,” she says.

Which begs another question: why do we like to watch things being destroyed?

Beyond bottle-breaking videos, there’s a whole subset of TikTok that involves various items being fed into shredders or broken under heavy machinery. You can watch rubbery balls stretch to capacity and then burst abruptly, or a pair of thongs be fed into a shredding machine. “So satisfying,” someone comments on one of the videos. Where does this perverse sense of satisfaction come from?

In a BBC Science article titled ‘Why is destruction so satisfying?’, cognitive neuroscientist Dr Christian Jarrett posited that our thrill at watching things be destroyed can stem from a human desire to control and a good old-fashioned desire to exert power. He also cited a “cathartic” element to the destruction. At a time when the world at large seems to be spinning off its axis, I’m not surprised that we might be drawn to things that illicit feelings of control, power and catharsis.

The other point that crosses my mind when I watch these, is, of course, the waste. It seems odd to me that this trend grew so big on an app that is heavily dominated by Gen Z —arguably one of the generations who is the most vocal about sustainability and the elimination of excess. Of course, it’s not just Gen Z who watch these videos (I’m a millennial myself), but I can’t help but wonder at the soaring popularity of videos wherein items are bought purely to be destroyed. 

Let’s put it this way: in a single video, seven bottles of something might be sent down the stairs — and not just bottles of liquid, some are bottles containing food. Consider then, that the single video that just wasted seven bottles is probably one of a thousand out there. That’s a lot of food and liquids being destroyed for the sole purpose of going viral on TikTok. 

So, how do we reconcile a fascination with these videos with the amount of waste they’re surely producing? The short answer is that we probably can’t. When I watch a video where a jar of olives explodes on the stairs or a fidget popper is fed into a shredding machine, I can’t ignore the comment that points out the fidget popper costs $24.99 or the one that simply says: "what a waste".

And so, as much as these videos bring me an odd sense of calm, I think I might have to, heartbreakingly, start to click “not interested” when they pop up on my newsfeed. I know that I can’t, in good conscience, keep consuming them. And I wonder, given the wastefulness of the trend, can we really see it survive for an extended period of time with sustained popularity?

In any case, we’ll always have the jar of colourful beads that went cascading down the stairs. What a sight. What a time.