Ah, vomiting. After all these millennia, it remains one of the funniest things a person can do with food. The sights, the sounds, the smells. Regurgitation has it all. And who, at the conclusion of a long, difficult day, doesn’t occasionally like to sit back and watch some random, T-shirt-wearing gamer spew his guts out on a webcam? Doesn’t that just sound like heaven?
In the past, finding this kind of specialized entertainment was tricky and involved some truly embarrassing Google searches. No more. Last week, the video game streaming site Twitch launched its “Social Eating” channel, where users could film themselves eating. According to this investigation by Leif Johnson at Motherboard, the apparent idea was for Twitch to have its own version of the popular mukbang eating videos that have emerged from South Korea. But Twitch’s users had other, considerably more disgusting ideas in store for the channel. They didn’t want to eat; they wanted to hurl.
Perhaps having not thought this all the way through, Twitch has released an extensive FAQ detailing what is not acceptable on the nascent “Social Eating” channel:
Primarily eating junk food, such as candy, condiments, or energy food.
Primarily drinking alcoholic beverages, such as taking shots, drinking games, binge drinking, or drinking parties.
Eating items or food not meant for human consumption, such as pet food, toxic substances, bodily fluids, refuse, or inedible objects.
Eating foods or in a manner that might inflict harm upon yourself or lead to vomiting.
Eating food or in a manner intended to disgust, shock, or offend others.
Food challenges or contests, such as chugging, snorting, or binge/speed eating.
Hungry yet, America? This is what it’s come to after only about a week. So far, the “Social Eating” is not in wide use. “At the time of writing,” Johnson writes, “I can find only 14 streams active in the channel, and many of those have viewers numbering in the single digits.” But perhaps these are only the humble origins of what will eventually become a gross-out empire. For now, Johnson describes it as “boring” and “sad.”
