How far will someone push themselves to be big in the mukbang community? (Credit: YouTube)
Not long before she died, Pan Xiaoting was rushed to hospital. The morbidly obese 24-year-old “influencer” had gastrointestinal bleeding from an eating challenge, one of many she livestreamed to thousands of fans. Undaunted, though, she was back at the table days later, promising her followers that she would eat 10kg of food in one sitting. The stomach tear which then killed her live on air was inevitable.
What made a young woman eat herself to death in front of legions of viewers? One word: Mukbang. Korean for “eating broadcast”, it’s a trend which slithered out of the early 2010s and has ballooned into popular culture. These videos were an amalgamation of YouTube’s favourite genres: routines (“get ready with me”; “what I eat in a day”), ASMR (splurpy, sizzly, crunchy textural noises), unboxing (testing and reviewing products) and food porn (self-explanatory). They are by turns horrifying and awe-inspiring — often featuring pretty, young Asian women with doll-like makeup slurping up some pretty nauseating victuals. The videos are, inevitably, saturated with pornographic imagery.
For young women, there is a morbid fascination in watching people devour huge quantities of the worst kind of food; I’ll regularly wake up on a hungover Sunday morning to watch Becki Jones and Abby Taylor Bannigan put away three McDeliveries as the kettle boils. It is a sort of liberating abandon for those of us who instinctively look to restrict our diets. My most intense period of viewing was in my first year of university when, limp from my own eating issues, I would lie in bed salivating over videos of cheese, potatoes, cakes, cookies, burgers. That’s the thing about denying yourself food: it is guaranteed to become your primary fixation. Hence the escalating popularity of mukbang; it is deeply rooted in our eating-disordered culture, fuelled by the thrilling sacrilege of bingeing for complex-ridden teenagers. Girls who once trawled Tumblr for Kate Moss quotes now stare through their fingers at TikToks by Plus Size Park Hoppers, who visit the restaurants of Disneyland trying to squeeze into the seats. The flip side is, if anything, more enticing — with genuinely anorexic creators and emaciated models aggressively promoting “clean eating” and sending scores of followers towards recovery clinics.
There is more to mukbang, though, than just teenagers being weird about food. Something different, something supercharged, something powerful enough to set the scene for the death of an otherwise healthy 24-year-old. To find out what’s driving it, just follow the money. Ad revenue from YouTube, or earnings from TikTok’s creator fund, are notoriously low — and ordering all those takeaways is expensive. So who’s footing the bill?
Who else, but horny men with a fat fetish. The internet is awash with “feeder” culture, to the extent that the specialist forum Feabie.com terms it “a sexual orientation, sorta like being straight or bi”. Feeder, as you might have guessed, encourage — or force — “feedees” to eat to the point of immobility or death. Even more extreme versions of feederism involve “vore”: that is, partners eating one another, performing a sort of sadistic obliteration of identity. And these bizarre, hardcore fetishes filter back down into mainstream mukbang: one particularly challenging video I watched was of a women shovelling live octopuses into her mouth, prising tentacles from her face with chopsticks as they fought being gobbled up.
Fetish communities have existed on the fringes since Adam met Eve. But the line between mainstream internet content and gnarlier sex stuff is disappearing: Twitter is awash with OnlyFans models replying to every viral post, while Facebook is flooded with weird “cooking” videos which are Trojan-horsing fetishes into clips your nan might share. And within the mukbang world, men are paying young food bloggers to produce pornified content. If you can treble the revenue from an eating clip by throwing in phrases like “I can feel myself getting bigger…”, why wouldn’t you? It’s a quick, if stomach-churning, way to earn a lot of money.
Enter Jellybeansweets, a 20-year-old American with 1.2 million followers on TikTok. Previously known for her dancing videos, she now prefers gruesomely fast eating sessions, shovelling down burritos the size of her head. She sits there in a tight crop top, slathering her food in sauce and letting it drip all over her face, making slurpy mouth noises and grunting. It’s probably slightly safer than doing sex work proper — but how far will she take it?
Getting paid to do odd and harmful things to make money online is a story as old as time — or as old as Internet Explorer, at least. From the OnlyFans feet pic seller to the Dark Web gore merchant, vulnerable individuals are always poised to sacrifice health for a quick buck. But we, the audience, are as much to blame, egging these grotesques on. We have all become deliciously complicit in the spectacle as every one of our clicks clogs an artery. Witness poor Nicholas Perry, aka Nikocado Avocado, a 32-year-old YouTuber from Pennsylvania, who went from scrawny vegan to 400lb mega-mukbanger in the space of a couple of years, with clips of him screaming in despair surrounded by mountains of junk food going hauntingly viral. Just type “mukbang” into any social media search bar, and a crowd of ecstasy-wracked faces, mouth open wide, emerges. Pan Xiaoting, our mukbang martyr, was once among them – and is now just a stale nugget of internet lore.
The bulging bodies of clinically depressed YouTubers do seem to be a neat metaphor for the overconsumption of capitalist internet culture. But I suspect the popularity of these chumps is simpler than that: as the algorithms simmer our brains, we are pulled to ever more extreme — gross, sexy, extravagant — content. And a critical part of the recipe is loneliness: these videos are totems of our parasocial existences: to pierce the isolation of the internet surfer, we all voyeuristically watch each other do things as traditionally communal as eating.
It is no coincidence that mukbang, this all-consuming trend, sits at the intersection of eating disorders, fetishes and loneliness. A fixation on what goes in the mouths of others speaks to an emptiness, a vortex at the core of modern life. And within this vacuum, the strangest human impulses are blown into obsessions, leaving individuals to scrabble about for connection by anonymously watching one another choke down 20 tostadas. Influencers lose themselves as they amp up their online personas until we, their guilty, gratified audience, have reduced them to rows of fattened ducks, force-fed attention. Mukbangs have a greater reach than any other snuff film — but that is, nevertheless, what they really are. And the worst thing is, we are the assassins. Even the most casual viewer in the world harbours an unexpected compulsion to make foie gras of TikTokers’s livers, and the hungrier their audience, the harder they fall.
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SubscribeAnd yet I never heard of him till he jumped off that balcony. I am severely out of the loop.
Really funny to read the disparaging comments from Unheard’s resident bunch of pseuds and smartarses. As a published writer myself I recognise Poppy’s ability to write well. Another very good article.
As a fan of music and of autobiographies, I find it interesting to read/listen to stories about the creative drive and the need to be recognised or to be successful.
I have just finished reading producer Trevor Horn’s book on starting out as a professional musician before moving into recording and production, becoming successful at 30 (Payne died aged 31). Horn started out by quitting his job as an apprentice accountant while still in his teens to become a jobbing musician. He was sight reading bassist in a number of dance hall type bands which paid barely enough to cover the food and rent.
It’s a cliche but success can come too early. Many musicians of that period, the 1960s and 70s were still driven by the music and would avidly talk about the artists and bands that had influenced them while growing up.
In drummer Bill Bruford’s autography he recalls leaving the band Yes in 1972, just as it’s about to hit major success only to join a band that was less successful. He talks about the difference between artists and craftsmen with relation to another band that he was briefly in. The craftsmen deliberately look to produce product while the artist seeks to create music. Today it is almost all about product.
TV and music “industries” by their very nature attract the narcissistic, the self-absorbed, and also the ordinary. They are captained by people who do what they please, be it drugs or people or both. Fame allows them to abuse and desperation for fame creates a queue of those ready to be abused. Then the abused become the abusers and the cycle repeats and the orgy of depredation continues. It becomes impossible to tell the victims from the perpetrators. The problem for us all now is that fame and the platform media provides has allowed this to crossover into public life and influence public policy. The way an industry was run is more than likely to be how our societies will be run: for the indulgences of an elite.
Simon Cowell should hang his head in shame. He feeds these people into the meat grinder for his own profit.
I might have easily skipped this article only because I am the wrong demographic. I saw the headlines and assumed Liam Payne had been in a boy band, I had no idea it was One Direction until the news became widespread.
I was listening to Times Radio and they had two clips, one of a 14 year old Payne singing Fly Me To The Moon in which it was clear he had an outstanding singing voice. The next clip was him talking to the podcaster /entrepreneur Steven Bartlett where Payne was open about his addictions and shortcomings and wanted to change. The shocking thing to me was that he was aware of all of this but reverted to his previous behaviour in such a devastating and fatal manner.
I heard on the radio just now that he had been dropped by his record company and there were further personal issues.
I caught the end of a radio report yesterday morning with several mentions of ‘Liam’ and his problems with drink and drugs, not realising even that ‘Liam’ had died. My instinctive reaction was to think the reporter was referring to Liam Gallagher (I’m sceptical he and Noel won’t fall out before next summer).
The report concluded with the full name and I was wracking my brain to think who he was.
It’s a familiar story. Perhaps the only surprise is that he got to the ripe old age of 31 (27 is the conventional age to check out in this world)
I don’t wish to seem unkind but I feel like a former boyband member, no matter how many records they sold, would look somewhat out of place alongside Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison.
Indeed, or Amy Winehouse.
Why did this get downvoted? Do you hate Amy Winehouse, another member of the 27 Club?
Heaven knows! I’m a fan
That’s a very interesting observation. What is it that makes a difference?
First of all, there’s no difference in respect of the loss felt by their loved ones, I’m sure. A young man has died prematurely and that must be a terrible thing for his friends and family who have my sympathy.
In terms of their cultural significance – which is a consideration because these are public figures – I think there is a big difference.
Typically speaking boybands – even those as big as One Direction – have their moment and then disappear. Their posters replaced on bedroom walls by the next group of non-threatening, fresh-faced, tweenage boys. There is a production line of these bands created, packaged and sold to their core audience of young girls and gay men. So far as it goes, I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with that. I don’t mind that teenage girls listen to ephemeral pop any more than I mind that my parents listen to classical music.
If a boyband is lucky then one of their number will emerge as a bone fide solo star. But in the case of One Direction I understand that is Harry Styles. The reality is that Liam Payne’s solo career foundered and the likelihood is his future involved a lot of waiting around for the next decade or so until One Direction’s core audience were old enough to discover nostalgia and demand a reunion tour.
The artists typically included in the “27 club” were figures of substantial and enduring musical and cultural significance. Hendrix widely regarded as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. Jones the founder of one of the two most important British bands of the 1960s counterculture. Cobain the man who unintentionally turned an underground rock scene in the Pacific NorthWest into a global phenomenon and took down the tyranny of Hair Metal. (Just as a side note I actually think Jim Morrison was a bit of fat hack by the end, but his legend grew in the telling.)
So I’m not suggesting its not sad that Liam Payne has died at a young age. Nor that his fans are wrong to mourn him. I just don’t think he would have belonged in the same bracket of cultural significance as Hendrix et al.
Great response.
I would start by asking who wrote their own music and/or lyrics.
While I accept that objectivity is all but impossible to committed fans, I’m really struggling with the idea that anyone could think Liam Payne and John Lennon are comparable figures.
Not that I care particularly. People can think what they like. It just feels like quite a stretch.
It’s not, it is the (similar) behaviour of the respective fans at the loss of a beloved artist.
An interesting take might have been how fame has a different effect on men and women, with women being more inwardly self destructive (imo).
Poppy has written instead a thoughful, respectful piece that expresses the loss of an artist from her generation, which sadly is an all too familiar story.
Agreed, but artist? I think entertainer or star would be more accurate.
I was thinking in terms of A & R (Artists and Repertoire). As a lover of music but with no talent whatsoever, I saw no reason to be dismissive of his ability which is singing.
Sad photo.
Obviously something needs to be explained to the downvoters who might be a bit s-l-o-w. Sad because the group were on a high in the photo, they had everything going for them, everything they hoped for and more; they had made it. And yet at that moment in the photo Liam could not know what lay ahead of him. That what he wanted, and got, would destroy him.
As they say, be careful what you wish for…..
finally, some useful insight from Poppy about a modern culture moment. Maybe keep her on for a bit longer….
She just states the obvious, about the perils of fame and fandom in the internet age.
There’s no subtlety at all. For example, no consideration of Payne’s parents, who had legal responsibility for him at the beginning of his career, and no consideration of the question of why some child stars come through it unscathed – What is it in their character and/or actions that differentiates them from Payne? Those kinds of things would be worth analysing, but Sowerby doesn’t look beneath the surface.
It may have to do with philosophy or something, but sometimes superficial one-dimensional things need to be analysed with a superficial one-dimensional approach.
or one directional
Never could have thought of that comparison with Lennon myself
Mkay.