The public has freely published videos on YouTube since its creation in 2005. Since then, videos of almost everything someone could think of have been uploaded, including hundreds of trends, content types, and communities that have emerged in the last two decades. One of the communities that has been created on YouTube surrounds a genre of video called a “mukbang.” The word mukbang, also sometimes seen as “meokbang”, is a Korean abbreviation meaning “eating show.” It comes from the South Korean words for “eating” which is “meokneun”, and “broadcast,” which is “bangsong” (Kircaburun, Harris, Calado, and Griffiths 2021). This genre of video became popular in South Korea in 2014, where creators sit in front of their cameras and record themselves eating a large amount of food for their viewers to watch. Soon after, the trend spread to the United States and Canada, and only gained more and more popularity worldwide. The nature of mukbang as an eating show means that creators often eat an excessive amount of food on-screen, sometimes even several times a week. As a result, many mukbang YouTubers end up being overweight. However, due to the popularity of the videos and the love for food that most of these creators have, they continue to eat these portions for each video, only growing larger over time.
As a result of large calorie consumption and weight gain, many YouTube influencers experience weight stigma in the United States. Obesity and weight gain are surrounded by negative commentary in the United States constantly in the media and person. Obesity stigma stems from things like prejudice, stereotypes, and discriminatory views and actions toward people with obesity, often coming from ideas concerning the causes of obesity (Westbury, Oyebode, van Rens, and Barber 2023). YouTube influencers who show their body on camera to the world often deal with comments that talk about their body in different ways, these ways being positive or negative. With mukbang YouTubers specifically, the presence of large amounts of food encourages people to fat shame creators since they are showing that they eat large amounts of food during these mukbang videos. This inspired me to look at how perceived host weight affects audience reaction to mukbang YouTubers during the prime of when these videos were popular in North America, 2016-2019.