With her signature neon-blue hair and apple-cheeked smile, Nguyen starts every video with the same introduction: “Hey, it’s another ‘eat with me’! If you’re having a hard time eating, feel free to use this video.” The phrasing is intentionally open-ended, she told me, to invite anyone to join her, whether they are mourning the loss of a loved one, recovering from an eating disorder, or feeling homesick. One account that I visited frequently was run by Soy Nguyen, a food influencer based in Los Angeles. They found me, in the strange way that the TikTok algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. But this is not mindless entertainment: Many of these videos are designed to encourage viewers, especially those with eating disorders or mental-health diagnoses, to eat in tandem with the creator. The Korean phenomenon mukbang-a portmanteau of the words for “eating” and “broadcast”-heavily influences the genre, with an emphasis on consuming large portions and highlighting audio elements, such as crunchy texture, through sound.
#Never read alone how to#
The category includes foodie tours of Disney World, instructions on how to make cauliflower nachos, and ASMR compilations of people biting into crispy chicken wings. O n TikTok, the hashtag #eatwithme has more than 3.4 billion views. In the videos, creators talked to their presumed audiences in animated voices: “I’m so proud of you for eating today,” “No matter what, you deserve to nourish your body,” or “I’m going to take a bite, and then you take one.” Why were these people filming an ordinary, solitary experience and sharing it online? And why were millions of strangers, myself included, watching them every night? I began seeing myself mirrored on my “For You” page, which served up videos of other people eating alone. Read: Something is changing in the way people eat at home Eventually I downloaded TikTok, and then that became my new dining companion. I relied on books, Netflix, and even work to distract myself at dinner. I resorted to low-effort dishes like scrambled eggs and vegetable curries, for which I had little appetite. My meals soon transformed from an escape into a chore. As 2020 went on and my mental health declined, daily tasks became more difficult to complete. For much of the pandemic, though, no one came through the front door.Īs time passed, I wondered when, or if, I’d get to dine with friends and family again. In high school, after my parents separated, I would cook dinner for two-my mom and me-but she worked late and I would eat alone before she got home. I sampled different brands of instant ramen I baked loaves of banana bread. I frequently ordered pizza from my favorite local spot in Washington, D.C.
In the spring of 2020, as my world shrunk to the square footage of my apartment, food became a mode of injecting pleasure and delight into an otherwise bleak and lonely period of my life. ET on June 12, 2022.Į ating alone began as a matter of circumstance. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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