There’s Something Called “Social Eating” And It’s The Strangest Thing We’ve Heard All Week

Twitch, which was bought by Amazon.com for roughly $1 billion, recently launched a new channel called “Social Eating”. Where people can watch other people eat food live. This is literally taking food porn to the next level.

But don’t be too shocked by this concept, because it’s a real thing and very popular in South Korea. Known as “Mokbang” in Koean, social eating is an internet phenomenon that is earning people lots and lots of money every night just by live-streaming themselves eating food. Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear isn’t a big ‘social eating viewer’, but because of how popular it is in Korea and the fact that Twitch is growing in the country, he’s decided to create a separate channel.

But South Korea isn’t the only market now. Even users in America and Europe are starting to tune in and embrace the concept. Recently at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference, Shear said, “We’ve actually seen a surprising amount of uptick in usage in the US and in Europe which I wouldn’t have predicted.”

A Twitch user named Hacklyn was eating a bowl of soup on Wednesday and about 20 people were watching live. She was eating while listening to music and chatting with people about relationships.

The whole purpose of Twitch was to give gamers a chance to watch others play games of their choice, making the experience interactive and fun. Obviously if that works, then so will anything else. Plus, there has been an increase in demand for other kind of content as well, which explains why Twitch recently live-streamed the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Would you want to have people watching you eat or watch other people eat? Let us know in the comments.