Who Is Responsible for TikTok's Feeder Fetish?

People are accusing TikTok mukbang creators of making fetish content. Are their own reasons for watching any better?

Food-related content has long dominated the Internet. From cooking videos to reviews to budget hacks to trending restaurants, you’re unlikely to escape it entirely. One specific corner of food videos, called mukbangs, is devoted specifically to watching people eat. On TikTok, people are especially fascinated by videos of young women eating large fast food orders. These are distinct from reviews — often, the people eating don’t even say a word. The food itself has something to do with it, many of the most popular videos featuring head-sized burritos doused in queso, family portions of Raising Cane’s tenders paired with 32oz cups of sauce and whole boxes of donuts. It’s fun, I’d guess, to watch people eat in a way most of us both calorically and economically can’t afford (at least not every day, several times a day), to do something so mundanely hedonistic. There is a pleasure in watching consumption in its flattest form.

But for some, the pleasure is specifically in watching a person grow in size. The fetish of feederism describes this phenomenon. Feeders derive sexual pleasure from not only the process of seeing a person eat tons of food, but also seeing said person’s body transform. In the most extreme cases, some feeders enjoy seeing a person undergo severe health consequences as a result of their weight gain, to the point of physical incapacitation or even death. There are obvious overlaps between feederism and the general fetishization of larger bodies, but the two are not synonymous. The sexualization of plus-size people without a feeder component is far more common, and most within the plus-size community (admirers or members, themselves) view feeders as often abusive and to be avoided. There are many feeders who do not even sexualize fatness in a way we’d traditionally expect, the eroticism hinging not on the curves or the softness but specifically on the transformation, one that shapes not only body but mind. It isn’t simply about making someone bigger, but making someone both physically and mentally bend to your will.

@user6145102680723#jellybeansweets #tiktok #foryou

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Witnessing the consumption of food is a critical component of a feeder fetish, as the name suggests. Mukbangs and similar food videos on YouTube and TikTok are therefore likely objects of sexualization in this regard. There are thousands upon thousands of hours of content of people eating, catered to just about every niche one might be looking for: people eating messily, thin women eating, plus size men eating, people eating in public, people eating in bed. That someone would fetishize this is not a mystery, because again, people manage to fetishize nearly anything. What’s more confusing is that many of these videos have millions of views. They aren’t simply niche fetish content. They’re enjoyed by a massive swath of people who perceive no outward eroticism to what they’re viewing at all.

Tons of viral videos fit this dynamic. You’ve probably seen them on Facebook: cooking videos where everything is made from an oozing waffle iron, a woman shaves her arms as it heats, a plastic cockroach sits off to the side. They’re made to catch eyeballs and to generate freaked out comments, which in turn grows the engagement further. Always, though, there are those who insist this is fetish content. As of late, I’ve seen a renewed surge in this type of argument toward mukbangs, specifically. Of course, in the case of both mukbangs and bizarre cooking videos, there are people who fetishize them. There are people who fetishize anything. But because some people fetishize them, there’s a belief that this is their overall purpose.

One major example comes from the creator Jelly Bean Sweets, who has over 1.2 million on TikTok (when I started writing this essay late last week, she had under 900,000). A year ago, she was known as a petite girl who made videos of herself playing the video game Just Dance. Today, the 20-year-old’s content focuses entirely on fast food mukbangs, of which she routinely posts several times a day. Her body has grown, and her videos have become increasingly indulgent. She slurps down her drinks as if she’s felt thirst for days; she drowns her meals in condiments that on their own would amount to more than a dinner’s worth of sustenance. With this, the accusations that she is either making videos to target feeders or otherwise being influenced by the feederism fetish have mounted, too.