AMMAN — A woman on video; the top half of her face is off-camera, but her mouth is in full view. As soon as the video begins, we see her eating an entire goat head and leg. The only sound is her chewing.
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The video, mundane yet also odd, has over a million views on YouTube. It is part of a trend that has gained popularity around the world, in which content creators sit down to eat enormous amounts of food and record the process for hordes of fans.
These trends are known as mukbang and food
ASMR.
Mukbang videos are part of a larger trend of ASMR content. ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response” and describes a unique tingling sensation typically felt on the scalp and spine. Video creators hoping to simulate the sensation through certain sounds have become popular in the past few years.
The YouTube channel that produces local renditions of these videos, called Jordan Arabic ASMR, boasts almost 17 million views, 55.3 thousand YouTube subscribers, and over 67 thousand followers on Instagram.
Content creator, Roro, who runs the channel, makes eight to 12 minute videos, films herself eating an array of meals and cuisines, and on occasion lists the recipes under her videos.
Among her most recent videos are: “Mukbang eating Emirati lamb Majboos” or “Mukbang ASMR eating Jordanian
Mansaf.”
The Jordanian video maker adapts what is known as food ASMR or mukbang, which initially started in Korea in 2010 as “eating shows” and captured people consuming large amounts of food on camera.
The main focus is on the crunching and chewing sounds, which creators choose to magnify by eating closely to the microphone. Mukbang is a mash-up of the Korean words ,meok-neun, meaning eating, and bang-song, meaning broadcast. The genre is very popular in Korea on both YouTube and television, but has also garnered the attention of global audiences.
And while content creators from around the world have recreated and adapted the trend to suit their culture and audience, mukbang has strong cultural roots.
“(In Korea,) we know the food is delicious through chewing sounds,” Lee Jung Ae, a lecturer of Korean at the
University of Jordan, told Jordan News. She explained that eating audibly is a sign of respect and admiration for a cook in Korean culture.
While some Jordanian viewers are simply mesmerized by the colors, textures, and sounds of food being munched, viewers highlighted other reasons behind watching the unusual videos.
“I’m a light eater, so watching these videos encouraged me to eat and actually enjoy the food,” said 23-year-old Sewar Yacoub, a Jordanian who has followed Jordan Arabic ASMR videos for around a year.
Similarly, 21-year old Shaima Ismael “depends on such videos to whet her appetite.” She told Jordan News that she watches the videos less out of fondness for mukbangs or ASMR and more “to just get hungry and eat.”
“Food videos, in general, attract almost everyone since food is an integral part of our lives. People get super curious to see if the (person eating) will eventually finish the massive quantity,” 28-year-old nutritionist Rina Mhaidat told Jordan News.
Having watched food ASMR and mukbang videos for five years, Mhaidat also observed the sensations that accompany the videos. She said that they bring “feelings of relaxation and satisfaction” for some viewers as well as a “pleasurable feeling.”
ASMR generally constitutes “the good feeling of hearing certain sounds, often strange ones, such as browsing a paper book, a brush combing hair, or eating and chewing food,” according to Israa Gharagheer, a psychologist.
Gharagheer told Jordan News that ASMR includes “even non-auditory, visual or sensory aspects, such as applying clothes in a certain way.”
Although the psychologist stressed that no exact psychological explanation has been found for the sensation, she highlighted that the nervous reactions triggered by food ASMR videos “make viewers feel comfortable and excited at the same time, while other people do not get affected by any of such stimuli.”
Physiologically speaking, “experts believe that mechanisms behind this feeling are rooted in the default mode network (DMN), which is the neural network that connects different regions of the brain,” Gharagheer noted.
The psychologist attributed the popularity of ASMR videos to viewers’ desire for stress relief and relaxation.
“People resort to this strange and unique sensory experience to get rid of daily stress at work, reduce attacks of anxiety or fear, relieve headaches, and sleep calmly and naturally without taking any sedative pills or antidepressants,” she explained.
Gharagheer stressed that from a psychological perspective, ASMR and mukbangs should not be criticized or judged. Instead, she only hopes to describe the phenomenon, “showing its effects that may be satisfactory to some but not to others who cannot bear it,” she said.
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