What’s the deal with Sharpener ASMR?

Hello Dear! This is my first blog and I’m going to dive into the weird world of online sex education. And how I ended up sharpening pencils to pay my mortgage in the first place. Buckle up!

So one of the most common questions I get is: what’s the deal with the Sharpener ASMR?

The short answer: it’s how I get paid to teach sex education

At face value, it doesn’t make any sense that I get paid to sharpen pencils… unless you understand that as a sex educator I don’t get paid to teach. That’s because 1. the sex education system is messed up and 2. forces sex educators (trying to reform that very same system) to end up teaching on social media, where 3. we rely on advertisers to pay our salaries, and unfortunately due to the nature of social media 4. Content creators are paid based on quantity rather than quality, which leads us to 5. create pencil sharpener ASMR content to sell products. Confused? I don’t blame you. Let me break it down for you: 

1. The sex education system is messed up

Think about the sex education you received. If you live in the US, like me, most likely you were taught AOUM (abstinence-only-until-marriage) curriculum. Basically, that consists of a half-assed condom/banana demonstration, a loose description of cis-heterosexual p-in-v sex, that completely omitted pleasure, consent, queerness, and accuracy. Let’s be clear: this is NOT comprehensive sexual education. Quite the opposite actually, AOUM curriculums not only do a terrible job at preparing teens for the realities of having sex, they actually reinforce r*pe culture… the very thing sex educators like myself, work so hard to abolish. Brad Perry describes this nicely:

“AOUM programs reinforce many harmful norms about sexuality and perpetuate ‘the game’. [Sam’s note: ‘the game’ here refers to heterosexual-gender-normative roles that assign men as ‘predator’ and women as ‘prey’] They shame girls who choose to engage in premarital sex, and blame survivors of sexual violence through an obsessive contention that just saying no is the solution to everything- there is no conservation of what happens when no is ignored. Meanwhile, the male violation is left largely unexamined” (Read, Yes Means Yes, for more on this).

Yeah, fuck that. I don’t want to CONTRIBUTE to r*pe culture by teaching sex ed! That doesn’t make any sense, and we’re barely scratching the surface of everything that’s wrong with AOUM programs. Either way, I refuse to contribute to that.

2. Sex educators (trying to reform that very same system) end up teaching on social media

Now most teachers get paid salaries by the institutions they teach at. But our education system is fucked (as we established above) and doesn’t hire sex educators like myself. So rather than traditional teaching in a classroom, I have to teach online. My Instagram account, for all intent and purpose, is my classroom. It’s not a “traditional” classroom by any means, but it’s the only classroom I can have as a gay, patriarchy-smashing, potty-mouthed, cunty, sex educator who wants to dismantle r*pe culture rather than promote it. I use my platform to teach which ends up generating a lot of traffic to my social media. Now even if the state won’t pay my salary, advertisers will because of that traffic. That’s where things get weird and why a large part of my job also requires me to be really good at selling shit to people.

While I’m primarily a teacher, I don’t have a traditional classroom, therefore I don’t have an institution as an employer, therefore I don’t have a salary. By definition: a job deserves pay and I should be paid to teach. I don’t put in full-time work for fun or free. And that’s how I ended up being a contract content creator (or “influencer” if you prefer) for advertising companies.

3. Sex educators are forced to rely on advertisers to pay our salaries

Let’s take a second to define how social media works. If you casually use social media, by that I mean, you post occasionally but mostly use it to look at other people’s content: you’re a consumer. If your job is conducted on social media, like myself, your employer is ad companies selling shit to consumers. That’s who pays our salary. Now don’t get me wrong, most of us didn’t set out to do this job. Quite the opposite. I started teaching sex education to escape the advertising world. But I’ve ended up being roped back into it in order to teach.

Think of it this way: on social media, my goal as a teacher is to keep your attention and spread information to help shape your behavior… that’s also the exact goal of advertisers. Consumer Psychology 101. As I’ve discussed, since my classroom is on social media, I have to adapt my communication to be efficient on that platform. Advertisers want content creators with large audiences who are good at spreading information. That’s me. So bottom line: my job is facilitating education through advertising. My professional goal as a sex educator is to convey information about sexual wellness while selling you shit so I can get paid. In other words, I see my real job as being a sex educator, but I can only get paid from advertising since the education I do is free.

4. Content creators are paid based on quantity rather than quality

Being a content creator is hard fucking work. Social media is really popular so lots of people and things are competing for your attention. To be a professional content creator, you need to pump out a LOT of content. New content, once a day, every day. In order for me to get paid, I need to create at least one illustration with a short essay each day in hope that advertisers will ask me to create illustrations with short essays for them! If I stop producing so much content, the algorithm stops noticing and prioritizing my content, which means advertisers won’t be interested in paying my salary. That’s like the state telling their AOUM sex educators: “hey, keep coming in here each day and teaching these kids subpar sex ed, but we won’t pay you to do it anymore”. You get the point. Even if their curriculum sucks, teachers need to get paid to do their job.

All that to say, it does get tiring creating content each and every single day. I want the educational content to be thoughtful and meaningful. I think what I teach is important and I want it to be quality. But quality requires a lot of work. And I get paid on quantity rather than quality. So it’s hard for me to consistently get paid because quality takes time, which goes directly against the goal of social media. And remember, social media is my classroom! So on the days when I’m taking the time to work on good ideas, or I run out of ideas completely, it’s way easier to film myself sharpening pencils.

5. So now I create pencil sharpener ASMR content to sell products

In order to keep getting paid, I have to make content. But the problem is I’m required to pump out content faster than it takes to make. I can’t keep up. If I can’t keep up I don’t get paid. And like I said, I don’t do this for fun. It’s my job. So one day I stuck a pencil in a sharpener, called it a day, and went back to working on writing and illustrating. And I did the same thing the next day, the day after that, the day after that, the day after that. It was just a tactic to keep my income and buy me the time I needed to make content. But social media is fucking lunacy and suddenly people were ASKING for pencil sharpener videos. And just like that, pencil-sharpening became a part of my weird digital classroom. New followers assumed it was an innuendo. People commented with their hypothesis, which generated traffic, which got me paid. And suddenly not only did my job include selling dildos in order to pay my salary to teach sex education, I also got paid by those companies to sharpen pencils, to sell sex toys, to pay my salary to teach sex education. It’s a clusterfuck if you think about it. There’s no other meaning behind it. I just want to be able to pay my bills based on the work I do. It would just be awesome if the state paid actual sex ed teachers to teach. But they don’t. So here we are.

Conclusion

While I’ve got you here if you’re on the market for new pencil sharpeners to make your own sharpener ASMR to get ad companies to pay your salary because the world doesn’t believe you belong in a classroom… buy your sharpener using the link below and I will get 6 whole pennies from Amazon (if I’m lucky) to continue paying my bills. Some of you will likely tell me to get fucked, and that’s a pretty chill side effect of having to work on social media. But at the end of the day you’re the consumer and you decide what to buy. I can’t tell you what to do, I can only sharpen pencils

Maybe you want some "softcore" pencils

Maybe you want a dildo sharpener

Or maybe you like a vibrator sharpener

I hope we got your juices flowing. As always, we aim to provide as much free and accessible content as possible; thanks to the amazing support of our patrons. Head over to our Patreon to support our work and get access to bonus content! If you have any questions or want to chat, please book a peer support session.