When I first searched ‘people eating food in front of camera’ on Google many years ago, the results did more than just weird me out.
I was greeted with a long list of thumbnails of girls – pretty ones mind you – stuffing their faces with unbelievable amounts of food. From buckets of fried chicken to enormous bowls of soup; you name it, they’ve devoured it.
And no, this isn’t some obscure corner of fringe Youtube videos. It has since become a national preoccupation that has millions of viewers hooked. Still perplexed? Welcome to the club.
One doesn’t simply string pretty girls and devouring food in the same sentence, so how did this phenomenon come about?
Welcome to The Weird and Wonderful World of Mukbang
Social Eating, or more commonly known as Mukbang, is the broadcast of an individual eating massive amounts of food, while entertaining a live audience through several live-streaming platforms. Platforms such as AfreecaTV have spearheaded this trend to its current level.
Women are primarily the main group of Broadcast Jockeys, also known as BJ’s, fronting this phenomenon. Throughout the years as the trend grown, men and foreigners too, have since hopped onto the bandwagon and ventured into the surreal world of Mukbang.
BJs are often seen as paid performers. They do what the viewers direct them to do at an expense of a tip or donation during a live stream. It is also one of the reasons why this phenomenon thrives till this day – it’s earning them big bucks, with some BJ’s reportedly earning up to $9,000 a month.
It is important to note that while Mukbang traditionally means eating a huge quantity of food in front of an audience, different variations of ‘Mukbang’ has since surfaced over the years.
YouTube is filled with people tackling other strange and usually torturous challenges (spicy noodle challenge anyone?) and labelling them as such.
Keemi is a South Korean (currently residing in the United States) Mukbang streamer and youtuber that has more than 500k subscribers under her name. The 27-year-old first started YouTube 2 years ago by reviewing MacDonald’s then new burger, but broke into fame shortly after as she started eating bigger quantities of food.
Her claim to fame? Consuming towering columns of nuggets and korean fried chicken along with a bed of cheese — all live in front of her fans.
As most of you already know, youtubers are paid based on advertisements and views. With Keemi being able to garner hundreds of thousands of views on average with her highest grossing video of all time, an astonishing 4.5m views just of her eating, cooking and interacting with fans, you can be sure she’s making quite a bit of money.
Our Local Talents Step Up
Of course, it wasn’t long till the K-wave hit our shores and indeed, Singaporeans have risen to the challenge. A Singaporean youtuber that goes by the name of Peggie Neo on YouTube, has been on the rise over the past couple of months.
Though her numbers may not be as impressive, Peggie herself has gathered more than 70k subscribers (still pretty huge for the Singaporean YouTube scene) that would willingly sit through her up-to-40 minutes long eating videos.
An art teacher cum artist by day and a Mukbang star in her videos, she has dedicated herself to release new videos of her eating twice every week.
Similarly, Peggie eats a variety of cuisines to cater to her fans with an insatiable hunger for everything edible it seems. It’s always nice to see a local’s take on a worldwide trend; having consumed more than 15 different fried deliciousness from Old Chang Kee in one of her videos, I’ll leave you to your imagination on the magnitudes of foods she has conquered.
Not many can stomach the hellish burn of the Korean nuclear spicy noodle but your girl (as Peggie would say) here gobbled down 5 packets of that, leaving no sauce behind over a 22 minutes video. It is not only her most viewed video of all time, but it also topped the trending list on YouTube when it first came out.
What It Shows About Korean Society
The reason underlying this affair isn’t just about the glamorous facade of being able to eat good food.
Michael Hurt, a professor at the Busan University of Foreign Studies, has said that Mukbang is the elevation of humankind’s trajectory away from face to face interaction.
“Korea is a society of the spectacle, and it’s gotten to the point where social interaction can’t happen—can barely be understood—without being mediated in some way.” He also says that in the Korean context, Mukbang is not so peculiar. “They have a different understanding of how media is used,” he said. “It’s become truly a part of life.” – Quartz Media.
Now, being a tech-savvy and reliant millennial, it is easy to have separation anxiety when left without my phone for more than just a couple moments. I bet we’ve all been told off to not use our phones when having a meal. Oftentimes we’d much rather be facing our phones than to interact with the very person sitting right in front of us.
Well, Koreans have brought the use of social media to a whole new level. Instead of live-streaming on webcams from a computer, they’ve evolved to mobile live-streaming. This by explanation, brings about the opportunity for viewers to watch their favourite streamers on the go.
Eating plays more than just satisfying one’s hunger in the Korean culture. It is also an inherent act of socializing and a communal activity. You see the correlation now; with the isolation that exists in people with their technology, it is no surprise that they seek comfort and satisfaction from the interaction with the food porn superstars of the internet. Not like it’s hurting anyone, so let’s not be too quick to judge.
Whatever it is, I certainly hope I don’t chance upon one of these videos in the middle of the night when hunger pangs hit the hardest.