I didn’t know about “mukbangs”—a portmanteau of the Korean words “meongneun” (eating) and “bangsong” (broadcast)—until Enid Frances appeared on my TikTok account’s explore page. Enid, wearing a pink tank top and bright lipstick, taps on the plastic packaging of a chocolate cake. She’s silent, making intense eye contact with us. She lifts the lid. She gulps milk. Her fork enters. The chewing is exaggerated and loud. Two minutes pass, and a quarter of the cake is consumed. Enid flashes a thumbs up. 

Videos like Enid’s, seemingly innocuous by nature, have managed to incite international controversy. In 2024, sensationalistic reports surfaced about 24-year-old Pan Xiaoting, who supposedly ate herself to death on air. She promised followers she would consume 10kg of food in one sitting, and was said to have eaten until her stomach tore. Though there was skepticism about the veracity of Xiaoting’s story, additional influencers have since allegedly perished. 

China now bans the filming and streaming of mukbangs. The Philippines proposed a similar ban. Meanwhile, in South Korea, a crackdown on public health guidelines to address mukbangs are raising questions about government infringement on freedom of choice. For American viewers, the mukbang is an unregulated and relatively new form of entertainment. 

Despite their health concerns, or perhaps because of them, mukbangs attract a crowd of devoted watchers. Enid, who shared a TikTok account with her friend and University of Texas, Austin classmate Audrey Rose, receives messages from young girls, usually eight to ten years old. They look up to them, but Audrey hopes they won’t begin posting their own mukbangs. “Eating, filming, getting comments back, and looking at yourself every day. It’s a lot.” 

College girls also watch the videos. They post public comments, discussing Enid and Audrey’s bodies. If I ate this, I’d gain twenty pounds. How are they still fit? They can’t be swallowing that food. They’re throwing it up. They’re spitting it out. This is gross. For women who restrict their diets, watching a mukbang might feel close to liberation.

But Enid and Audrey, who have posted every day since 2024, amassing more than 650,000 followers and 55 million likes, do swallow the food. And, every month, they make a killing—over $9,000—placing them comfortably in the U.S. middle class income bracket. 

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Audrey puts half of the money in savings, and the other half covers “fun stuff.” She bought a pair of Adidas Spezial with her first paycheck. Enid, who qualifies for free tuition, saves some and spends the rest paying off spring break trips, sorority dues, and formal dresses. 

The girls posted their first mukbang to Enid’s personal account. They went to four different grocery stores to buy the ingredients for an online trend where mukbangers would eat a pickle stuffed with candy. “We filmed it just because we thought it would be entertaining for our friends,” says Audrey. When they got back to campus, they recorded themselves eating in the movie theater room of Enid’s residence hall. Their friends did love it. “It made us sick, but they thought it was funny,” says Audrey.

When they decided to create a joint account to post more mukbangs, Enid joked, “We’re gonna go viral, and we won’t have to get stupid part-time jobs anymore.” But that’s exactly what happened. The hours were flexible, there was more room for creativity than most entry-level positions, and the pay was better. Audrey would choose mukbanging “definitely over a part-time job,” she says, and “if not already, it’s going to be a normal career path for our generation.”

Indeed, when Jenny Ng, a Harvard sophomore, applied to traditional part-time jobs when she got to campus, she did not hear back from most of them. But, a month after posting herself eating in the dining hall, she’d snagged her first brand deal. Now, she has more than 153,000 followers and 9 million likes on TikTok, works with global companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, and brings home “minimum, four digits a month.” 

“I arguably get paid more, if not the same, than a traditional nine to five job that requires a bachelor’s degree,” says Jenny, “I love choosing my own hours, and I get to be my own boss.” But, she wouldn’t recommend the career to a friend. “This whole thing could disappear. If TikTok were to stop working one day, you’d lose the job.” 

Jenny makes enough money to pay off her tuition, and now she helps her family buy groceries and save for trips. “It’s a global trend,” says Jenny, “So many people now either know a content creator or are trying to be a content creator.” Food brands pay much more than other verticals like fashion or technology, she adds, “Food is just overall the best for brand visibility, engagement, it pays a lot, and it’s easy to make the content, since everyone has to eat.”

Since they’d moved out of their dorms for the summer, Audrey volunteered the basement of her family home as a private location to film. They kept the account secret from Audrey’s family for two months (“I thought they’d think it was really weird,” she says), until a video popped up on her sister’s explore page, and she showed Audrey’s parents. Enid told her family soon after. Her mother was confused when Enid explained mukbanging, but she followed the account and eventually suggested Enid eat foods like birria tacos and nachos next. “She was definitely supportive, my dad too,” says Enid, “especially when we started making money.”

Their followers responded well to their personal idiosyncrasies: Audrey ate snacks,  Enid ate  meals and desserts. Audrey spoke, Enid ate in silence. After class, Audrey would walk around the grocery store, considering What’s good ASMR? What’s nice to look at? What will people want to eat? She says viewers seem to especially enjoy it when she eats an ingredient itself like the newest Funfetti icing with sprinkles on top, which she knew would be a hit.

The video of Audrey eating from a can of blue Funfetti now has 14.5 million views. It snowballed into an internet trend — other mukbangers posted themselves eating icing. Pillsbury sent every icing flavor to Audrey’s apartment. 

Since middle school, both girls followed infamous mukbangers like @JellyBeanSweets and @NikocadoAvocado. Enid watched the videos when she was hungry, and Audrey found them comforting. Popular mukbangers follow a common trajectory—moving from chatty food reviews to extreme, often pornographic videos. Enid and Audrey’s favorite accounts are no exception. @JellyBeanSweets would pour three containers of sauce on a burrito, letting it drip around her fingers and mouth. @NikocadoAvocado would eventually take his shirt off to slurp blended McDonalds food. 

Enid and Audrey’s account inbox is full of direct messages from old men. They send compliments and offer money. The girls’ personal social media pages are flooded with private messages and public comments. Enid brushes it off. “It’s not something you can escape as a woman on social media, mukbang account or not,” she says. Audrey agrees. Videos of the girls eating phallic shaped foods with cream-colored sauces perform well.

There’s also an audience that extends identity markers of age and gender, and it’s the fastest growing: people who seek out Enid and Audrey’s videos when they’re eating or bored alone, often late at night. Loneliness is the connective tissue of the mukbang’s market. Unlike any viral video, mukbangs are about eating, and eating is a kind of comfort. 

Our epidemic of loneliness means mukbanging may offer more job stability than traditional work. Companies predict 2026 will be the worst college graduate job market in five years as layoffs increase and artificial intelligence replaces entry-level positions. Meanwhile, tuition has doubled, and college-related costs like the price of joining a sorority climbs. 

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill student Gill Chase, who has accrued over 175,000 followers and 19 million likes from recording herself eating in her college dining hall and dorm, explains, “With traditional jobs, you clock out and you’re done. With content creation, you’re never really done. I always feel like I need to be doing more.” 

I asked if she ever felt too full to do more, and Gill told me, “You normally eat at least three times a day, so that’s already three videos you could post a day.” It’s the editing of more than 500 video drafts in her phone that’s difficult to balance with classes and homework. She puts the money into her law school fund and spends the rest on textbooks, groceries, and studying abroad. 

Gill was surprised by how many hate comments an eating video could receive. “I bit my fork in a video, and next thing you know there were hundreds of people commenting, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a fork biter.’ I didn’t even know that I did that. Now I’m insecure about it,” she laughs. But she doesn’t plan to stop posting any time soon, “If I was making enough to sustain myself on a social media salary,” says Gill, who hopes to become an immigration lawyer, “Then maybe I would work purely pro bono.” 

I asked Audrey how she pushes herself to mukbang, even when she doesn’t want to eat or be on camera. “Just getting it over with. Getting it all set up and done quickly,” Audrey says, “If I really don’t want to film a video, I give myself a day and then film two the next morning.” The work is draining. Enid would get home from class and sorority meetings around 10pm. Then she’d put on makeup, style her hair, prepare the food, and film. She was tired. If friends made plans, she was busy. 

Over lobster mac and cheese at a seafood restaurant with her family, she announced she was quitting. Her mother was surprised, and immediately said, “You need to find a real job then.” Enid explained that she couldn’t keep up with the content. The money did make her second-guess this decision—it’s what kept her going for so long. But quitting was the right decision for her, Enid says, “I wanted to feel like I had control of what I was doing again.” 

This news made Audrey nervous, “I realized I need to create 50 times more content.” She’s since hired a publicist to manage brand deals and hopes the account will become a full-time job after graduation. 

A few months ago, Audrey posted a video eating chocolate cake with two sets of candles—21 and 500—to celebrate her birthday and 500,000 followers. Wearing a tiara, pink lip gloss, and a shiny dress with a cut out near her chest, Audrey sits alone in the bedroom of her college apartment, blowing out the candles. The comments read: Happy birthday gorgeous! Me if calories didn’t exist. You are so pretty. She clearly hates it, genuinely look at her face. My dream.