EAR CLEANING examines the affective economy of online news consumption and the circulation of hate speech in digital comment sections. Drawing on real news forums, the work juxtaposes aggressive, racist, and inflammatory user comments with the sensory aesthetics of ASMR — a format commonly associated with intimacy, care, and relaxation.
Through this unsettling contrast, the piece explores how pleasure, attention, and violence coexist within contemporary media environments. By pairing comforting audiovisual stimuli with extreme verbal hostility, Ear Cleaning exposes the normalization of hate and the affective mechanisms through which media toxicity becomes consumable.