Normally inside about 30 seconds of opening the TikTok app on my telephone, I can nearly assure that I’ll see a video of somebody consuming. Possibly they’re sitting of their automobile with a sack filled with quick meals, or maybe they’ve simply ready an elaborate meal that they’re sloppily plating into bowls, however inside seconds, the consuming begins. In 2025, it appears like your entire web is mukbang, and I’m not the one one who can’t cease watching.
For individuals who are unfamiliar with the idea, mukbang, which roughly interprets to “consuming present,” was first popularized in South Korea within the 2010s. In these consuming exhibits — which normally contain a person or group sitting right down to eat a meal that’s already been ready, digicam pointed instantly at them — each celebrities and common people started attracting large audiences, who would simply hang around and watch their favourite mukbangers eat a large bowl of noodles or kimchi jjigae on a Twitch livestream. Abundance was at all times a part of the purpose, creating a visible you simply couldn’t look away from. However so was sound: Mukbangers largely ate with out speaking, and lots of viewers watched mukbang movies hoping to impress an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), or a pleasing tingly feeling that many individuals say is the results of listening to the calming, repetitive sounds of somebody consuming, or tapping their nails, or gently whispering.
The pattern made its option to america shortly thereafter. By 2017, YouTubers like Trisha Paytas began creating their very own mukbang movies, telling the digicam about their day whereas consuming pizza, hen nuggets, and Taco Bell. These early American movies already differed from their South Korean counterparts. They normally weren’t livestreamed, simply posted to YouTube or a Fb account, and regardless that they clearly required numerous prep in ordering the meals and organising a digicam, American mukbang movies usually boasted a extra impromptu, much less structured vibe. “We’ve Americanized it to the place I’m speaking about how I’m feeling that day or telling a narrative from my previous,” U.S.-based mukbanger Ashley Sprankles informed Eater in 2017.
Early mukbang movies proved that there’s a powerful human want to observe (principally) regular individuals do (principally) regular stuff.
Almost a decade later, although, the that means of mukbang appears to have shifted dramatically. Now not does a creator should devour monumental quantities of meals to qualify as a mukbanger; now, it actually simply means “consuming in entrance of a digicam.” On this new iteration of American mukbang, ideally the meals is messy — dripping with tons of sauce or so juicy that it have to be eaten with latex gloves — and visually compelling, like seafood boils tinged brilliant crimson with tons of chile oil, or a sizzling canine dripping with chili and cheese. There’s much less polish to this era of mukbangs, too: As a substitute of a desk set with utensils and a home made meal, it’s simply somebody shoving supply pizza into their face after dipping it into a large cup of ranch dressing, remnants of sauce nonetheless lingering within the corners of their mouth. Possibly they’re even sitting inside their automobile, a preferred filming website for mukbang movies.
Within the ensuing years since mukbang made its option to the States, the way in which we devour video has modified dramatically. TikTok mum or dad firm ByteDance launched a progenitor in China in 2016; after a merge with Musical.ly the next 12 months, it formally launched within the U.S. as TikTok, emphasizing quick movies, below a minute lengthy, in August 2018. By February 2019, the app hit 1 billion downloads. In the present day, TikTok has greater than 1 billion energetic customers monthly, and now, you don’t should decide to watching a complete 20-minute (or hour-long!) consuming present on YouTube. As a substitute, you’re extra prone to half-watch a three-minute mukbang video on TikTok (or its competitor, Instagram Reels, which launched in 2020) when you’re ready for the subway or doomscrolling on the sofa. The shorter format has made it simpler to purchase into this sort of content material, whether or not you’re the creator making it or the viewer watching it.
As present TikTok feeds present, early mukbang movies proved that there’s a powerful human want to observe (principally) regular individuals do (principally) regular stuff. We now go to Instagram to observe individuals placed on their make-up in wildly standard “Get Prepared With Me” movies, and gawk whereas creators do chores and go to the grocery retailer in “Day within the Life” TikToks. We watch individuals restock the groceries of their fridges and deep-clean their bogs. It is a distinctly mundane sort of voyeurism, however one which I typically discover myself unable to cease participating in, for causes I can’t fairly clarify.
The widespread reputation of mukbang is simply additional proof that mainly every little thing we do for enjoyable — or for sustenance — will be become content material. Social media virality has a method of flattening issues, of drilling down ideas like mukbang into their basest, most simply replicable type. You don’t must prepare dinner a bunch of meals, you simply must swing by way of a drive-thru. You don’t even actually should plan forward, both — you’ll be able to simply throw open the TikTok app and begin consuming.
Once I first reported on the rising reputation of mukbang in 2017, it felt very clear that these movies are, on some degree, a method for many individuals to fight the loneliness that they really feel in an more and more remoted society. Many individuals eat their meals alone at dwelling, and watching another person eat and chat whereas warming up your boring frozen TV dinner creates the phantasm of eating with another person.
We’re arguably much more remoted now than in 2017. The enshittification of social media platforms like X (previously Twitter) and Fb implies that we’re not even seeing content material from our family and friends anymore, simply a continuing onslaught of AI slop and promoting. That makes mukbang movies, with human faces and voices entrance and middle, much more compelling. Many of those movies lean into making a pleasant, intimate connection between creator and viewer, styled to really feel a bit like FaceTime calls. “Hey besties, let’s eat,” one creator cheerily yells as she prepares to dig right into a plate of steak and scallops.
And whereas there’s nothing inherently flawed with wanting to observe somebody eat, I do suppose that there’s a extra sinister factor to the proliferation of mukbang, one which’s intimately linked to our ongoing cultural obsession with the pursuit of thinness. In an period when tens of millions of Individuals are taking weight-loss medicine that severely restrict their skill to eat in any respect, there appears to be one thing uniquely interesting about watching another person eat all of the carbs and fried meals that you simply’re denying your self, whether or not that’s an enormous unfold of quick meals or simply an order of fries. “Both I really feel glad by watching them eat, or I find yourself disgusted by the quantity of meals,” wrote one person on a discussion board for individuals with consuming problems. “Both method I don’t really feel hungry afterwards.”
Whether it is true that we’re all watching mukbangs as a result of we’re lonely and terrified to eat “fattening meals,” that’s simply the clearest reflection of the society that we’re residing in that I’ve ever seen. Everyone seems to be craving consolation and connection and a nonstop dopamine drip, and platforms like TikTok are all too comfortable to supply them. It’s simply that, like watching somebody eat, a simulacrum of emotional connection doesn’t really fill you up.
