mukbang (n) a live broadcast during which the host eats copious amounts of food while interacting with an online audience

Lee made roughly $6,000 a month doing her spicy ramen mukbang on Twitch.

In honor of Thanksgiving tomorrow, we wanted to do a food-focused fetish for this week’s sex word. Since we already did feederism, we decided to discuss the pleasure of mukbanging instead. For those of you not familiar with the internet fad, mukbang is inhaling huge amounts of food on a live broadcast platform such as Twitch or YouTube. Mukbang, a portmanteau of the Korean words muk-ja (“let’s eat”) and bang-song (“broadcast”), started growing in popularity as early as 2010.

If you tune in to a video, you’ll likely see someone sitting at a table with a ridiculous smorgasbord and then ravenously consuming everything before them. A mukbang dish can literally be anything: Giant-sized bowls of noodles are a popular choice, as are dumplings, fried chicken, barbecue, shellfish and fast food.

Why do people enjoy watching this? The reasons vary. For some who might be lonely and lacking social interaction, mukbang imitates the feeling of communal dining. For others, yes, duh, of course it’s a sex thing. ASMR, which is basically arousal at specific auditory or visual stimuli, can be trigged by mukbang videos. Although mukbang is not inherently sexual, the loud slurping, exaggerated exhaling and reddened faces can all be turn-ons if your brain is wired a certain way. People will pay good money just for the privilege of watching an attractive person binge-eat their way through a plate of atomic wings.

So when you’re chowing down on Turkey Day, remember that the bird could potentially be paying for itself if you just hit record.