Binge-eating videos exploit familiar brand logos to make excess feel relatable.

Evidence

If she purchases ready-made food, Kinoshita preserves the original food packaging for her opening flat lay, laying one food item at a time on her table in a sped-up, fast-forwarded video sequence. With household famous brand logos such as McDonald’s and Pizza Hut on display, viewers can identify with the everydayness of the foods Kinoshita binge eats. This awareness solicits a sense of relatability in viewers, inviting them to compare their ordinary capacity of consumption with that of Kinoshita’s grotesque intake, as they stare and squirm over stretching the limits of the human body. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 114

Categorization

• SEED: Angles toward an essay on how mukbang merch production uses brand familiarity as the lever for grotesque relatability.
• SHARE: Anecdote for the YouTube-food-culture friend: Kinoshita keeps McDonald’s packaging to trigger relatability before the binge.
• XREF: connects to: Brand recognition in mukbang videos generates relatability that makes excess feel personal — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 114