Mukbang Videos…Really it’s a thing on the internet…Safe for Work

Bethany Gaskin really (and I mean really) loves seafood.

She loves seafood so much, in fact, that she films herself destroying and eating crab legs, lobster tails, and mussels.

None of that is weird…But then, every week, millions of YouTube viewers watch her do it.

Her most popular “mukbang” 36 minutes and 34 seconds of crab-cracking, lip-smacking, napkin-lacking wonder — has 11.7m views.

The one I posted here…a mere 1.3 million.

Gaskin’s viral videos have earned her more than $1m, 1.8m subscribers, and the chance to quit her job according to The New York Times.

Mukbang, is a combination of the Korean words for “eating” and “broadcasting,”

It came up in Korea on a little corner of the web a decade ago.

Now the science…The reason people watch…it’s ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response).

ASMR videos — mindless, soothing sights and sounds that trigger the lovely chemical factories in your brain — calm frayed nerves and withered attention spans.

“I think of mukbanging as a ministry,” Gaskin told the NYT. “I knew this was it, and I quit [my job] by faith.”

Indeed, it only took a few muks to start bringing in the bucks:

Gaskin’s wildly engaged audience enabled her to quit her job.

She’s a Mukbang Millionaire…Anybody want to see me eat a whole cake?  A bucket of wings?