Nicholas Perry, better known online by his internet personality Nikocado Avocado, shocked the internet when he revealed his dramatic weight loss transformation. In an odd "villain monologue," he explained that he has secretly been losing weight for the past two years while uploading a backlog of old videos to the internet to keep his weight loss secret.
Perry is easily one of the most recognizable mukbang YouTubers. When he first started his channel in 2014, he was vegan and often uploaded videos about his lifestyle. However, in 2016, he released his very first mukbang video. Mukbangs are a trend that began in South Korea, in which individuals stream or record themselves consuming foods. The amounts and types of food vary greatly. While the trend has positives, such as ensuring people don't have to eat alone, offering ASMR effects, or exposing audiences to different types of foods, extreme mukbangers like Perry have made the trend controversial.
Perry is one of many mukbangers who utilize the shock factor to gain views by eating enormous amounts of food on camera. Many of these mukbangers are accused of promoting unhealthy eating habits and catering to those seeking "feeder content." Meanwhile, the mukbangers who manage to maintain thin figures despite their extreme mukbangs often get accused of misleading viewers by spitting out and wasting food. It's well-known that mukbangers can't really win. People want to watch their extreme mukbangs but don't want them to gain weight or falsify the videos. Now, Perry is pushing reactions to mukbangers further into the spotlight.
Nikocado Avocado announces secret weight loss
Perry has been quiet on social media for the past few weeks. However, on September 7, he uploaded two new videos. On his main channel, he posted a video titled "Two Steps Ahead." The channel starts with him wearing a panda head while talking in an ominous tone about how he's always "two steps ahead." He goes on to claim he conducted a "social experiment." While everyone was "calling him fat and sick and boring and irrelevant," he had secretly lost 250 pounds. In another video posted to his second channel, he confirmed that he started his weight loss journey two years ago and uploaded old videos to keep up the ruse.
He called it "alluring" to watch the reactions of people, whom he called the "most messed up creatures on the entire planet," when they thought he was heavy. He watched them consume whatever they were "told to consume" while treating him like a "villain" because he made himself the villain. Yet, from their perspective, he took just one day to transform. They never saw his two full years of progress and chose to believe only what they saw on the screen, with no knowledge whatsoever of what happened behind the scenes.
However, he's not giving up mukbangs. As soon as he finished discussing his social experiment, he pulled out an enormous platter of noodles in black bean sauce to consume. According to him, this was his second time eating the noodles, as he ran into a technical issue the first time. In his second video, he partook in a mukbang with a large portion of cheesy ramen noodles. Perry teased that similar content is on the horizon, saying he needs to keep his appetite up and urging users to subscribe to him.
Is it still a social experiment if no one learns anything?
Perry had the right conditions to conduct a social experiment and observe human behavior. However, his experiment is unlikely to produce any groundbreaking new discoveries in the field of psychology. Perry successfully duped the internet, but now we're left asking, "For what?" He manipulated viewers and observed their behaviors and their cruelty, but does it really mean anything? Probably not.
The main reactions to Perry's videos are either relief or amusement. His comments are filled with jokes about how we "failed" the experiment and how this is a grand moment in YouTube history. Then, there are the ones of feigned concern and relief. All the people who hated him just yesterday are suddenly pretending to be so glad that he's "healthy" again. Are these people really pleased, though? We all know these people loved watching him despite claiming to hate him because he made their own insecurities feel less severe and satiated their intrinsic need to be hateful.
It's also strange how people only need two videos to describe him as "healthy." He literally pulled out two enormous platters of food to keep up the mukbangs that earned him so much hate, but now the hatred has magically disappeared. Why is that? Could it be that no one ever cared if he was healthy and only ever cared that he was "fat"? He could easily still be accused of food waste and promoting dangerous eating habits since he's still in his mukbang era. However, people won't be bothered by these future videos because he's thin now. Then, if he regains the weight, no one will care about his social experiment or what they may not see. They'll care that he's heavy, and the hatred cycle will start all over again.
Perry's social experiment reveals nothing about society we didn't know before. It simply confirms that they're incapable of understanding that someone is human and has a life beyond the videos they post. In fact, it will only reinforce their belief that people on the internet aren't actual humans. They didn't see the effort, pain, and struggle of Perry's weight loss. Instead, he catered to their impossible demands by seemingly magically dropping 250 pounds in a day. Now, every creator will be expected to cater to the internet by giving them this magical, secret transformation without making them uncomfortable by showing their human struggles to lose weight.
The experiment also confirms people are hateful, cruel, and fatphobic to people they don't really know, and they will continue acting in this manner. They will thoughtlessly consume mukbangs and then hate the people who provide them with such entertainment. They will only pretend to care about "health" when someone's big but will pay no heed to any thin person engaging in the most unhealthy lifestyle possible. His social experiment proved that most humans aren't capable of thinking abstractly and that they're insecure, fatphobic, mindless consumers, but we already knew all these things, and no one will be betting money on this experiment changing them.
Comments