South Korea’s Latest Internet Trend Is Dinner Porn And It's Not What You Think
If you thought food porn amounted to posting a photo of your eggs Benedict on Instagram, think again. In South Korea, it's just taken on a whole new form.
By Sadho Ram — 19 Dec 2013, 02:43 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
Young people in South Korea have a new hobby: It's live-streaming themselves gorging on enormous, sumptuous dinner feasts.
Combine the elements of competitive food eating, voyeurism and online porn and you turn the banal act of eating into marathon live-streamed video that has become a growing trend out of South Korea.
Toss in a small-boned, attractive woman with a bottomless pit of a stomach and the appetite of a football quarterback and you get “mok-bang”, the latest online fad to hit the web in South Korea, in which viewers tune in to regular people eating obscene amounts of food for hours.
themalaysianinsider.com
"Mok-bang" is a portmanteau of the Korean words for eating and broadcast, and young folks in South Korea are totally into it.
One of the most popular mok-bang broadcast jockeys is known as The Diva. By day, she works at a consulting agency. By night? She eats. A lot.
The Diva streams daily starting between 8pm and 9pm, with her broadcasts going on for hours. As with many mok-bang streams, it's a seemingly endless parade of delicious food, whether that's yummy Korean food, pizza, pasta, steak, you name it.
kotaku.com
In one sitting, she’ll throw back 35 eggs, a box of crab legs, or five packs of instant noodles.
And when she’s really hungry, she’ll pack down 12 hamburger beef patties, 12 fried eggs, three servings of spicy kimchi stew, and a green salad – for a balanced meal.
themalaysianinsider.com
In an article with The Kyunghyang Shinmun (via Sang), The Diva says she began live-streaming her meals because she felt bored and needed a hobby. That hobby, it seems, is consuming thousands of calories in one sitting!
thestar.com.myThe Diva now spends the equivalent of about $3,000 a month on food. In the past, when she was eating more expensive and gourmet meals, her food bill was between $5,000 and $6,000. Gluttony is expensive.
Since beginning her show, The Diva says she’s put on 9kg – minimal given the thousands of calories consumed every night. Her marathon eating sessions will begin at around 8pm and last for around two hours.
Since there were rumors that she was upchucking her meal—that her huge appetite was simply a stunt—she usually sticks around to chat on her stream for a couple hours after eating.
This probably also helps with digestion. But this also means The Diva ends up streaming over four hours on a nightly basis to thousands of viewers.
kotaku.com
Sometimes in an evening, The Diva will scarf down two medium pizzas. Other nights, it's thirty fried eggs and a box of crab legs or five packets of instant noodles. Then, there was the night she ate twelve beef patties, twelve fried eggs, three servings of spicy pork kimchi soup and a salad.
themalaysianinsider.com
The Diva eats and after she finishes, she talks with her viewers, answering questions about her dinner and whatnot.
Sometimes a small white dog sits on her lap and receives scraps. Sometimes she dances in her chair. And in every video, there is a blue and white stuffed cat that sits awkwardly in a chair, watching the entire thing.
kotaku.com
She is not naked. She wears sweaters, shirts, over-sized headbands and hats. and she doesn't make any gestures that might imply a sexual invitation.
Basically, watching The Diva's broadcasts is a bit like going to dinner with someone—and bringing the entire internet. It's fascinating voyeurism and total food porn. Delicious.
kotaku.com
And all this is streamed on a peer-to-peer online video network called Afreeca TV
According to Ultralab, what makes Afreeca TV different from, say, YouTube is that viewers give the Afreeca TV live-streamers, aka "Broadcast Jockeys," virtual currency called Star Balloons as a way to show thanks.
kotaku.com
The virtual currency is sold in denominations ranging from $1 to $50, and through them, broadcast jockeys can earn real-world money—up to thousands of dollars each broadcast. One popular broadcast jockey even earned $1,000 in Star Balloons from a single video!
And thanks to Afreeca TV, mok-bang has made burgeoning internet celebrities out of some mok-bang streamers. As Korean site Dailian points out, the popularity of these eating shows might be due to people's desire not to eat alone.
kotaku.com
That might have something to do with it, but their popularity might also be due to folks' love of food and chatting.P
And sometimes it can be funny watching people eat spicy or hot food!
nymag.com