Until my sister Kath sent over a link to a New York Times article on Bethany Gaskin, I’d never heard of her or the way she makes a pretty hefty living for herself.
Gaskin is a practitioner of mukbang, a “food video genre”:
…which involves scarfing down, on camera, more grub than should rightly be consumed in a single sitting. (Source: NY Times)
On her two YouTube channels, Bloveslife and BlovesASMR Eating Her Way, Mrs. Gaskin chats up her audience while eating king crab legs, mussels, lobster tails, hard-boiled eggs and roasted red potatoes. The videos, produced in her Cincinnati home, have made her a millionaire, she said.
Gaskin, a run of the mill foodie YouTuber before she stumbled upon mukbang, has 1.8 million subscribers to her YouTube channels, and is nearing the 900K follower level on Insta.
It’s absolutely amazing to me that there are 1.8 million folks out there in Internet land who want to watch someone plow through an enormous pile of food, accompanied by all sorts of lip smacking and damn, this is good sound effects. So I went and took a look for myself. And there she was, Bethany Gaskin in all her glory, sitting in her kitchen in front of a 
Not surprisingly, I am not about to become subscriber 1,800,001. The video I took a peek at runs on for over 30 minutes. I made it through 2, giving up few seconds after dipping sauce started running down her chin.
We have South Korea to thank for the binge eating genre.
Korean live-streamers often schedule their mukbang videos to align with dinnertime hours, so their viewers eating alone at home feel like they’re sharing a meal with a friend.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m sharing a meal with a friend, ain’t no one slurping and chawing their noisy way through mounds of food. (Maybe an occasional hmmm or teensy-tiny moan if something is particularly wonderful.) Nor do I make a lot of noise when I’m eating on my own. (Not even an occasional hmmm or teensy-tiny moan if something is particularly wonderful. Noise making while eating is definitely for sharing.)
Not that I don’t like to eat. I have very much been known to tuck in. Still, I don’t get making a big show about eating. And I don’t want to watch anyone else do it, either.
Mukbang, I guess, is just not ever going to be my thing.
I’m not into A.S.M.R., either.
Not that I’d ever heard of it before reading the Times article, but if you’re into A.S.M.R.(autonomous sensory meridian response), through which:
…viewers derive pleasure from the sounds created by extra-loud crunching, slurping and lip smacking.
I think I’m quoting my sister Trish here when I say W.T.A.F.
…people who enjoy A.S.M.R. experience a sensation of “sparkling brain tingles” while viewing “trigger” videos.
While nodding, she said, “Yup, umm hmm y’all, this is good.” She used slurping noises to indicate that something was juicy, followed by more head nods and “yup” utterances, as well as some vaguely orgasmic sounds. Dr. Richard [Craig Richard, 49, a professor of physiology at Shenandoah University and the creator of a website dedicated to the study of A.S.M.R.] said that these “mouth sounds,” in combination with Mrs. Gaskin’s “kind and positive disposition” and the abundance of the food, are textbook A.S.M.R. triggers.
Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
I’m happy for Bethany Gaskin that she’s found a way to make an excellent living for herself. Her husband has even been able to quit his job as a manager with G.E. to manage what’s become their family enterprise.
But if these are the jobs that the digital economy is creating, all I can say is that the world has gone lip-smacking, orgasmic-slurping mad.
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A shout out to Kath for sending this one my way. And the next time I’m scarfing down a lobster roll at her place in Wellfleet, I promise to do so quietly.
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