Story at a glance:
- Korean “mukbang” is when influencers post videos of themselves eating a large amount of food.
- Mukbang enables creators to profit from eating food.
- Some users are accused of animal cruelty due to eating raw marine animals, though it is accepted under YouTube and Facebook’s guidelines.
On YouTube and Facebook, Korean “mukbang” is when influencers post videos of themselves eating a large amount of food. Mukbang comes from the Korean words for eating and broadcast.
The trend is considerably unhealthy by some critics, but things get controversial when some users film themselves eating live animals — there have been accusations that popular channels, like Ssoyoung, are engaging in animal cruelty.
The image of the host of Ssoyoung, a Korean YouTube channel, is juxtaposed to live animals, such such as octopuses, mudfishes, squid and eels.
The videos have garnered widespread criticism in the YouTube creator community, including from popular users Jojo Spotlight, Sherliza Moé, and penguinz0.
As Newsweek pointed out, there is also controversy around whether social media platforms should allow mukbang content that some consider to be depicting animal cruelty.
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Like other video trends, mukbang enables creators to profit from eating food. In the case where live animals get their heads bitten off while their tentacles and tails continue to move, is it against Facebook and YouTube’s terms of service?
Facebook, which owns Instagram, does not allow violence against animals unless it happens in certain contexts like consuming or preparing food. Google, which owns YouTube, has a similar policy with an exception that the food has to be “traditional or standard purposes such as hunting or food preparation,” Newsweek reported.
“YouTube has never allowed content that’s violent or abusive toward animals. Our Community Guidelines are designed to account for cultural differences when it comes to consuming animals, and the videos shared with us by Newsweek do not violate our policies,” Ivy Choi, a company spokesperson for YouTube told Newsweek.
Newsweek also contacted Facebook for comment.
Critics say these policies are ambiguous when it comes to eating live marine animals. They also debate the role the videos play, if any, in Asian culture.
“When you bring out your own culture defense, other people will back off and be wary of what they are going to comment on that,” Ssoyoung, whose real name is Han So Young, told Newsweek.
“Eating live marine animals is widespread in Korea, […] but I wouldn’t call this Korean culture, because I believe culture is something that you want to respect and you respect and believe in values and customs that reflect Korean society,” she added.
In fact, Newsweek argues that purposefully gross-out videos “provid[e] fodder for hate speech towards Asian people and cultures.”
Christine Ha — a winner of the show MasterChef and executive chef of Houston-based Vietnamese restaurant The Blind Goat — told Newsweek there is a “fine line to tread” between content on cultural food customs and exploitation of animals for clicks.
“I feel like the person making the video will know in their gut which way they’re going,” said Ha. “And I think if you’re doing a video where you’re just trying to make it very extreme […], you know when you’re exploiting the animal for your own benefit.”
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