Mukbang Culture

My group project is going to study “Mukbang Culture”. But what is “Mukbang”?

Mukbang is a streaming broadcast that having a host who interacts to the audience and eats at the same time.

At the very beginning, Mukbang gets started because the people always eat alone, most of them are single or work far far away from their hometown, they started to think eating alone is so lonely. They want to find a company, so they get on to the streaming platform and interact with the audience while they having a meal. As time goes by, Mukbang become popular, people want to get company while eating or they think watching people finish a huge dinner is satisfying. So, Mukbang is not only on the streaming platform, but we can also find it on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram.

Since the host needs to attract people to watch the video, they will try to eat different food or think some special topic, e.g. a meal with 13018 kcal, eat all meal in McDonald’s.

Food is a culture, different place have different food which represents the place. People are not able to eat all of the food in the world, that is too much that we can know. Mukbang is a chance for us to know more other country food culture. This is the main reason that I started to watch Mukbang. I love watching different country’s Mukbang because watching Mukbang is not only about how much food can they finish but is also about what type of food they eat and is it tastes good. It is very important to have a yummy reaction to the host when they are doing Mukbang, so people are more willing to keep watching. So people may also feel like they want to eat the same food.

Mukbang also becomes a business, a way to earn money. Some sponsor will send the food to the host to let them do Mukbang of that food, it can really help the company to sell more or let more people know their brand.

This is the example of the sponsor of Mukbang. Krispy Kreme releases new flavour of their doughnuts, besides to have a traditional advertisement on the TV, they prefer to find a famous Mukbang youtuber to show the new flavour to the public. It is actually an advertisement on youtube to all over the world, even I am living in Hong Kong I can know what the new flavour is. Actually, I am a doughnuts lover and planning to go to Japan next month, so we can also get some useful information from the Mukbang.

Mukbang culture is all over the world, it keeps changing since the early Mukbang’s purpose is only for those people who eat alone to get a company. As time goes by, the purpose of Mukbang has change or different values are adding up. So we are going to study the culture for our project, look deeper.

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During this week, we also learn about “Autoethnography” by reading the article of Ellis, C. this is my first time to hear about this research method. I think it is kind of fun because it is about experiences. The writer needs to share their own story in the research so it can be more subjective than traditional research. For autoethnography, the writer needs to interview, analysis like the traditional one, the difference is to compare to their own experience, they are allowed to interact with others while doing the research. It is based on the true experience that the writer had, it has higher reliability since the writer must try it by themselves.

 

References:

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: an overview. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 273-290.