The mukbang folks spit the food out.
"Wrestling is fake!"
Well, no. It's not fake, it's choreographed, practiced, and performed by athletes who spend hours in the gym to safely do their part. That's like saying a play isn't real. Is it a MMA fight or boxing match? No, but is every "real" fight legit? How many stories have you heard of a fighter being asked to throw a fight? That goes for every sport. Fixed soccer games, fixed car races, anything that has money bet on it can be swayed one way or the other.
With certain things I can assume reasonable attempts are being made to play the game or perform the challenge authentically. A real fight only lasts a few rounds or seconds. A real eating challenge leaves the winner with a swollen belly and an exhausted expression. If I go see a fight I expect to see some blood and sweat by the end of it. These things are all done with an audience. But some are done with more of the audience in mind.
When the audience is a paying customer, be that from ticket sales, betting, or subscriber tips we have to assume that those putting on the event are making efforts to maximize the audience experience. Folks go to watch their favorite guys bounce a ball around for a few hours, what are some things that will keep them watching the game or whatever? If the viewers are in the stadium they can keep them happy with beer, hotdogs, and exclusive Pokemon cards. But most people can't afford tickets to a live event, they watch it at home or listen to it on the radio or check the app on their phone.
Those people buy merch online during or before the event. Wearing a $150 authentic jersey to the local hot wing restaurant to watch the game on one of a dozen TVs.
Same goes for stuff that is designed purely for entertainment. What happens when a popular franchise's movie comes out? People dress up to see it in the theater. They collect all the bobble head toys. They get tattoos of their OTP's on the back of their calves. They spend thousands to walk around the theme park and get popcorn buckets. Folks spend all day at a convention standing in 1 line to get 1 autograph. Entertaining people is big business.
I bring this up four paragraphs later because yesterday I saw a reddit post about a woman who liked to go hiking in the woods. She and her husband and kid were at a cafe where one of the TV's was playing a youtube video where folks walk around rural Japan for a few hours. The owner said he likes to put those videos on because they are relaxing and the atmosphere of small villages and forests in Japan was on theme with the cafe.
I myself will put those kinds of videos on in the background when doing chores around the house or trying to focus on something. So many videos now are someone doing an advertisement where they review a product and loudly talk about it while doing a variety of quick cuts and fancy shots of the item. But these POV videos are just one person with a insta360 who is slowly walking around the woods or riding a bike through Seoul.
They aren't explaining anything or advertising a restaurant or hiking gear. It's just someone walking around town. Is it an "authentic" form of entertainment? Well, they have to cut once in a while. Either to change places or if too many people are walking around, if someone comes and talks to them or some other public area like the train or crowded street gets crazy. They cut here because the point of the video is a calm relaxing walk, not a hectic commute. Cutting out the bits where the viewer could be dropped out of the immersion is all part of the show.
This morning I saw a bit online where another person doing muckbangs got caught on stream/video doing too aggressive of a cut - implying that they spit out a bunch of the food. If you haven't watched these, it's where one very tiny person will sit at a table of food big enough for a family of 5 and proceed to eat all of it. Just a bunch of slurping and chewing noises for however long it takes. You couldn't get me to sit through that even with the sound off.
But how is it not a given that the muckbang might be rigged for the viewers benefit? The single tiny person eating a 5 gallon bucket of tteokbokki with a dozen eggs in it followed by a tray of Buldak filled corn dogs? Then at the end chug a beer then give the thumbs up? Are you serious? If The Rock threw a folding chair at them mid stream it would look more realistic.
There are legit competitive eating folks out there. I used to watch Matt Stonie eat a bunch of food in 5 minutes back during the pandemic but the difference here is that competitive eaters eat a bunch of food very very quickly. The video is sped up usually, its gross to watch, but they do end up eating all the food. It's when someone is casually sitting there eating the same amount like it's nothing is when things get icky.
I know a chunk of the viewers are adults who like to watch pretty girls eat. Those are the folks doing the tips and asking for request and all that. They do not care if she cuts to spit it out as long as she keep eating. I'm not talking about the fetish folks exactly in this case but they do tend to fund and drive this genre of content.
Just like fans of professional wrestling, I don't think fans care so much if the eating is a performance. They are there for the entertainment. If they actually fought, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant would step out of the ring looking much much worse than they did after their performance. (They do dangerous stunts/throws and do get injured.) The fights wouldn't last long, just like heavyweight boxing matches don't last long.
A tiny girl eating tons of food every week and not gaining any weight is either burning all those calories off camera at the gym or simply not digesting all that food. That's where the whole issue of food waste and disordered eating come into play. Cutting your video because someone comes up to chat on a hike doesn't hurt anyone. Cutting to puke or spit food out into a bucket to be thrown away does. I can only imagine how it would make someone who struggles with weight to see this kind of imagery as well. Especially when likes and hearts and tips go flying.
While nobody is being forced to watch the video the food is still being wasted. Groceries aren't cheap, and we have folks pretending to eat a weeks worth of food in one sitting. It's not a good look.
When I see a fancy cooking video I assume the guy cooking in the semi professional staged kitchen is going to share the end result with the crew filming it. Even home cooks eat the food they are showing. You'll catch those sketchy family channels where they monetize their kids opening toys doing food challenges and those also make me angry. Not so much the "We tried all the chicken nuggets!" cuz come on, they eat those, but the "We filled a kiddie pool with spaghettios!" kinda stuff where food and drinks get thrown around and wasted.
But back to the lady who was looking at doing the hiking video stuff. She went on hikes to relax. But after watching the video at the cafe her husband thought it would be a great idea if she filmed her hikes in a similar way to make some side money. (Other commenters helped her think through the concept because if she didn't want to do it she wouldn't have asked a youtube subreddit if it was a viable thing.) In the end they explained that if she wanted to keep the hikes relaxing and fun she shouldn't turn them into a youtube channel. Because then it stops being fun and becomes a chore/job. But if she has fun doing them it becomes easy income if it does well. Why? Because people like the cafe owner and me need something to put on TV that is relaxing and not the news.
One of her big concerns was that the other POV videos were quiet and simple. She did hikes with her toddler and the dog. She would have to do a lot of edits to cut out when she talked to them or they veered off course. Do you want to be the mom that has to tell the kids "Shhh quiet for mommies video." when you are out for a walk? Absolutely not. Now she would be making cleaned up, idyllic hiking videos that aren't the same as the hike she actually went on.
But the idea of not being authentic grinds at most of us who grew up in the 90's because of the poser status we had drilled into us. Someone who was pretending to do something to get attention. Posers had expensive skate boards and bikes but didn't ride them. They had brand new guitars they couldn't actually play. Today this is how influencers work. Folks look like they go on trips all the time go once and turn it into "content" for months. They do all their cooking videos from a fancy kitchen in an apt they rent just to do videos. What we see isn't reality and in most cases, we don't care.
When I make my short videos for the Noodlist site I film about 5 different ones in one day and post throughout the week. I don't sit outside and wait for 5 tiny teapots of water to boil because that would be a waste of gas. Instead I boil a huge pot of water on my electric kettle in the house and refill the camping teapot between shots. In the video I do boil the first pot of water, and take clips of the water boiling or whatever and add them to the final video in iMovie. The goal is to show the users how to prepare the noodles according to the instructions, not a live stream of every time I cough or a dog barks or I spill something. (And we do eat the ramen. ;))
Is refilling my teapot between shots the same as spitting out food? No.
Is the end result the same for the viewer? Yes.
Does this post have a real point? Maybe?
Have I gone on too long with this one? Yeah.
Something something TL/DR: Videos are edited? Yeah, close enough.
Don't waste food.