Disgusting cooking videos spoil the appetite – and are still a huge success

rage bait
Disgusting cooking videos flood Tiktok and Instagram – there is a simple logic behind it

Again and again we come across cooking videos on social networks that make you spit away. Peppered with the most disgusting combinations, questionable preparation or other oddities, they only leave one question unanswered: who should eat it? The answer is usually: nobody.

It starts with a banana. The good-looking cook pulls out the inside with a plastic tube and then fills the fruit with chocolate syrup. Then comes the next step: two pieces of dough are fished out of a tin with ready-to-bake croissaints and the banana is placed in them. After draping some chocolate chips, marshmallows and crushed biscuits around it, the creation is rolled up and placed in the oven. At the end, the unsavory result is proudly presented to the speechless audience.

Videos like this one from the Tiktok account “Mchasfun” have been flooding social networks in recent months. Recipes in video format have long been a nice suggestion to try a new, delicious recipe, but this new type has one thing in common: nobody has an appetite afterwards. There is a simple reason why we still see them all the time: instead of addressing our desire to eat, the videos trigger other, much stronger feelings in us – and thus encourage us to spread them even further.

The main thing is emotional

At least you can’t blame the clips for not being creative. The “cooks” use bags of chips as kitchen utensils, mix the most absurd flavor constellations or simply pour tons of cheese and bacon over every meal. The main thing is that the audience reacts. With anger, amazement or disgust. And then has an urgent need to forward this completely insane video to friends and family. The videos are often referred to as “rage-bait” – anger bait.

In a noticeably large number of the clips, the result of the “efforts” is never eaten, or at most nibbled on the side in embarrassment. The comments are usually also unanimous: the chefs are declared crazy, the viewers mainly express their disgust. This is also helpful for the creators: Because many want to see the end despite being dismayed and then comment, the algorithms of Tiktok, Instagram and Co. rate them as particularly popular. And then even more people flushed into the feed.

The business of disgust

One of the most obvious provocateurs is Eli Betchik. He noticed early on that he didn’t mind eating even the most disgusting things, the 23-year-old just reported to “The Verge”. “I did it to entertain friends. Sucked on packets of ketchup, ate a whole block of parmesan. And the more I did it, the more I realized I could do it online, too.”

Meanwhile, 200,000 followers watch Eli on his Tiktok account when he makes drinking chocolate from sausage water, frys mayonnaise or boils chips into mashed potatoes. To the particular disgust of his viewers, he gets the cooking water from the dirty bathtub instead of from the kitchen. And: He eats his disgusting dishes in front of the camera every time.

With other disgusting influencers, the intention is not so clearly negative. She just wanted to try strange recipes, explains “Janebrain”. So she cooked about half a chicken in a pumpkin. “But I always try to try. I think that’s only fair.” The Packagedfoodgourmet couple just wanted to explore the extremes of internet recipes, they told The Verge. And has become known for recreating the lowest rated recipes on major websites.

Is there a fetish behind it?

However, some of the cooking videos can no longer be explained with the food itself, claims Lena Rae. She specializes in videos that explain why some of the videos are more related to sexual fetishes than food. “These hand movements, that’s conscious, these are very well-known fetish gestures. She almost caresses them,” does it on a clip, for example, in which a woman in a wedding dress spills paint on a cake. “It’s definitely a food and hand fetish.”

Regardless of whether they continue to watch out of amazement, disgust or anger, the viewers ultimately have only one thing left to master the flood of videos: to recognize that the videos primarily want to manipulate them emotionally in order to be distributed even more widely. And then just deny them that attention.

Sources: tiktok, TheVerge