Table 3.

Examples of complete user comments (i.e., comments have not been shortened or otherwise edited) from a participant perspective

Category	Examples of user comments
Participant perspective
1. Limits eating	I love watching mukbangs when I’m restricting. It brings me a satisfaction that they’re inhaling the calories and I’m not but also extreme jealousy and my mouth literally waters when I watch them sometimes. The high cal mukbangs are the best lol
	He eats I loose weight
	I'm eating through you lol
	to curb my appetite and stop myself from digging into a tub of ice cream… I genuinely feel sorry for them, but it also motivates me… a visualization of how I don't want to end up
	Makes me feel sick, but mainly when they're noisy about it. But it's enough to get rid of the craving I had. Lol, kind of like the house cleaning/hoarding shows make me immediately start cleaning my own home, even if it's not that dirty. Gives me that motivation
	It honestly might be kind of strange but watching them eat it is kind of cathartic and calms the urge to eat myself. It does make me hungry but for some reason it subdues the actual intention of going out and getting binge food
	I haven't eaten a real meal in 3 days so this is what I “eat”
2. Increases eating	Mukbangs made me binge more food in larger amounts it normalized it for me so I stopped watching them literally block the channels that come up in my recommended feed
	Funny that you mention this, after two years in recovery, watching mukbangs triggered me to relapse
	Great video, i'm trying to eat snacks from every country on Earth as a way to overcome my eating disorder, i've been underweight my entire life and am using youtube as a fun way to document my journey
	Your videos are so good for boosting appetite, helpful for me as I can' t eat when I should
3. Ambivalence	Mukbangs are hit and miss for me. Some days it inspires me to eat more, some days it makes me feel like restricting
	I think it does two things for me: 1. I get a vicarious satisfaction out of it (like, they're eating, so I don't have to), and 2. It more or less normalizes eating for me– I have a lot of weird shame around eating, like many people with eating disorders, and seeing other people eat without serious concern is vaguely validating. Idk. I still can't really fathom how people put up videos like that, though– just having people watch me eat normally is difficult, let alone binging haha
	I always feel kinda bad when I watch these videos. Maybe hypocritical is the right feeling. But at the same time it really does help me because it reminds me of what I could be.I feel sad for the people in those videos, too. Because I know now that they're struggling with an addiction
	It comforts my cravings while simultaneously makes me feel terrible about myself
	Lol do you have any recommendations to overweight mukbangers? i only see skinny korean girls doing this stuff and it makes me feel like shit lmao
4. Reduces loneliness	I totally get what you mean about the familiarity and closeness feeling, though. Mukbangs can definitely make you feel less lonely if it's done by someone whose personality you enjoy
	Feels like I'm having dinner with someone.:)
	I heard one person say that they watched people eat online because they used to eat family meals but his kids had grown up and his wife had left him. I thought that was a sweet reason to watch others eat
5. Reduces guilt about own eating	This is a relief, honestly! Youtube started recommending these videos a couple days ago, and maybe I'm trying (subconsciously I guess?) to normalize eating like a "normal" person. Sometimes I wonder how many calories are they eating or how do they burn that off, but most of them just carry on with their lives and that kinda brush off all the previous thoughts. Thanks!
	I'd do this exact same thing while I was recovering from anorexia! I'd watch "10,000 cal challenges" and other videos like this. They were my guilty pleasure while I was recovering. I think I watched them because I wasn't comfortable with eating that much food, so I'd just watch other people do it. I thought I was so weird for doing this, and I'd feel kinda ashamed afterwards. But it would help satisfy an urge ig, and these videos kinda helped normalize eating for me
	I watch these videos to feel better about the amount of food I eat
6. Obsessive and self-destructive	Meeeeeee omg I keep scrolling through it and watching mukbangs. Something I’ve never done before fasting
	When I discovered mukbang! The first channel I got into, I watched straight through an entire night literally laying there under the covers. It was pretty much like a binge, just…by proxy? I found it giving me this satisfaction without the suffering (aside from my eyeballs burning). I was into it for a while before I left to travel, where the habit followed but I at least had broken away from some detrimental factors like being home and bored etc. with a kitchen and privacy. At that point, mukbang sort of reminded me of darker times, so I phased it out