Why millions of people watch videos of strangers eating huge amounts of food

Mukbang, or “eating broadcasts,” have been big in South Korea for years, so big in fact that you can actually make a living from streaming your meals. Broadcast jockeys, popularly referred to as “BJs,” sit before sprawling feasts, slurping their ramen, smacking their lips, and talking to their fans over huge meals that often last for hours. One BJ, since retired, was reported to have made over $9,000 a month live-streaming her meals.

Now, Americans are starting to follow in their footsteps, broadcasting themselves eating elaborate meals; American mukbangers are also attracting sizeable online audiences—but of a notably different character.

If you aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, check out The All American Mukbang, a YouTube video made by Erik the Electric, a 23-year-old from San Diego who has 88,000 YouTube fans. He begins by biting into a 3×3 cheeseburger from In n’ Out and quipping at the camera, “Fitness? Fittin’ this burger in my mouth!” Over the next forty-five minutes, he goes on to eat an impressive menu of tacos, chow mein, hash browns, salad, donuts, potato chips, skippy peanut butter bites, and Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream. If this makes you feel like heading towards your nearest gym, Erik has you covered there too. His channel also features fitness and cycling videos.

“I like eating a large amount of food, I like lifting heavy weights, I like cycling a lot,” he tells me. “I think people watch because they are alone and want to eat with somebody else through the computer.”

From most reports, that’s what made these videos popular in Korea: having the sense of community around eating that we traditionally associate with binging together during holidays. In Korea, many fans watch people eat in real time: Korean BJs broadcast their meals on AfreecaTV, where live comments stream down the side of the frame and viewers can respond with balloon tokens, giving small micro payments to their hosts. Because the comments are live, hosts interact with their fans and take suggestions. With most Koreans watching on their mobile devices, the comments section feels like a chat room with all of your friends. If AfreecaTV sounds a bit like our social video gaming platform Twitch, it hasn’t gone unnoticed; Twitch just added a social eating channel in July to capitalize on the mukbang trend.

“I think people watch them because they are alone and want to eat with somebody else through the computer.”

In America, however, on Twitch and on YouTube, the popularity of mukbang seems to have a different flavor. While some fans do appear to crave the company of eating with someone else, if only virtually, others seem to be using the videos as a way to change their own relationships to food. Some use the videos to stimulate their appetites, and others as a dieting tool. The hosts, after all, are effectively binge-eating on camera, and it appears to have drawn in people with eating issues who are looking for a place to talk about them.

Erik the Electric said he noticed that some of his viewers “are more restrictive with their diets and want to live vicariously through me.” Erik himself struggled with anorexia for years, and says that making the videos has helped him become more relaxed about food and gave him a forum, and a following, to talk about his passion for food.

In comments on the videos, fans confess to feeling full after watching. Mukbang, a form that seems to exalt gluttony, is instead playing a role in dieting. Food vlogger Linda, who just started making mukbang videos on her channel La Delicia de Linda, says this motivation for watching is the key difference between mukbang in South Korea versus here in the States.

“Koreans tend to see it more as entertainment,” she tells me. “I’ve noticed that the crowd in the US tends to be people with eating disorders.”