Quarantine hobbies were a popular component of the 2020 stay-at-home orders. With various activities on hold due to the pandemic, many were compelled to start a garden, bake bread, or design the most impressive Animal Crossing island.
Molly Begnaud, a first-grade teacher at Mission Bell Elementary, decided that quarantine was the perfect opportunity to start making autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos for social media. Also known as satisfying-to-watch videos because the sights and sounds can be pleasing and stress-relieving to viewers, Molly’s content features a blend of soap cutting, slime squishing, and clay cracking.
She began posting videos as "Molly Mashes" in May 2020, and now has nearly 60,000 followers on
Instagram and 1.6 million on
TikTok
. Her
YouTube channel, which is more recent and features longer-form videos, has over 7,000 subscribers. Her fans range in age from kids to adults, including students and staff from Mission Bell.
“Satisfying videos [are] very trendy right now,” shared Molly, a longtime fan of the videos herself. “They’re very eye-captivating and [relaxing]. Everyone right now is kind of struggling with mental health, and everyone needs that self-care, that break time.”
Molly’s soap cutting videos are consistently popular, with many garnering over 100k views and one compilation receiving 1.1 million. Because most of the soap she uses is premade, these videos require the least amount of time, taking a few minutes to film and edit. But her soap content is shared exclusively on Instagram because videos with blades are often reported as “dangerous acts” on TikTok.
Slime also comes premade, requires less clean-up than soap cutting, and does not face restrictions on TikTok. However, filming and editing take longer because slime kits require assembly, and stretching slime to its desired consistency takes extra work. But slime videos are always fun to film because slime shops will often send Molly products to showcase and review.
Overall, Molly's most successful content across platforms is clay cracking. Clay cracking involves covering clay with layers of plaster or nail polish, letting the materials dry overnight, then cracking the shell. “The one that really blew up my TikTok the very first time, it was a tutorial on how to make the clay cracking,” shared Molly.
But regularly posting these videos is a challenge due to how much preparation is involved, something that did not matter so much during the summertime but certainly matters now that Molly has resumed teaching full-time. Whenever she does post a clay cracking video, there will inevitably be comments begging for more. Sometimes the pressure to please her audience can be overwhelming, especially when comments on her other videos turn negative as a result.
Thankfully, there is plenty of love to outweigh the hate. “I obviously get more positive comments and supporters than negative,” said Molly. “So I just have to shake it off and tell myself I’m making videos I love.”
Molly’s goals include designing Molly Mashes merchandise and one day opening her own slime shop. For now, though, she is focused on finding the right balance between her two passions: teaching and making videos. “I think what keeps me going is the potential [of] being able to turn this little hobby into something big,” she shared. “The possibility, the unknown of what I could do.”
