Nikocado Avocado

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2016 · YouTube · Also known as Nicholas Perry; Niko; Nikocado

What it is

Nikocado Avocado is the stage name of Nicholas Perry, an American video maker born in 1992. From 2016 he posted mukbang videos on YouTube, a website where anyone could upload videos: long recordings of himself eating enormous meals of noodles, fried chicken and fast food straight to camera. Over the years he became visibly much heavier, and his videos filled up with crying, shouting and staged rows. Around 10 million people signed up to follow his six channels.

Where it came from

Mukbang (Korean for 'eating broadcast') began in South Korea around 2009 or 2010, where viewers watched and tipped hosts eating live. Perry started a YouTube channel in 2014 with vegan cooking and lifestyle videos. In 2016 he publicly quit veganism and switched to mukbang, becoming one of the first well-known American men doing it. His weight gain, tantrums and feuds with other eaters drew big audiences, and clips of him spread on TikTok and Twitter. In September 2024 he posted 'Two Steps Ahead', saying he'd lost over 250 pounds in secret while uploading old footage.

How people used it

Most viewers watched to see how far it would go. Comment sections filled with worry and predictions about his health, and other YouTubers made long 'rise and fall' videos charting his weight year by year. People clipped his screaming and crying and posted the stills as reaction images to show their own frustration. After the 2024 reveal, people swapped before and after photos, argued over whether he'd really fooled everyone or just hidden a diet, and repeated 'two steps ahead' about anyone claiming a failure was the plan all along.

Why it mattered

He made the uncomfortable side of mukbang obvious: a lot of the audience wasn't there for the food, and the more he seemed to be harming himself, the more people watched. In 2021 Perry told MEL magazine that his feuds were scripted and that he played a villain on purpose. The 2024 reveal turned that back on the viewers, claiming the real over-consumption was theirs. That video got over 26 million views in 48 hours, more than almost anything he'd posted before, which went some way to proving his point.

The jokes around it

• 'I'm always two steps ahead': his line from the 2024 reveal, reused for anyone who claims a disaster was deliberate.
• Before and after: side-by-side pictures of him at his heaviest and after the weight loss.
• Reaction images: stills of him crying or yelling at the camera, posted in reply to bad news.
• 'The rise and fall of Nikocado Avocado': the long commentary videos other YouTubers made tracking his weight and meltdowns.
• The panda mask: he opened the reveal in a giant panda head, saying social media isn't black and white.

What noah thinks it shows about us

Millions of people watched a man appear to eat himself ill and kept clicking, mostly to say how worried they were. When he announced he'd been farming that worry on purpose, the announcement became one of his biggest videos, so the audience turned up for that as well.

What noah is not sure of

The 250-pound loss and the two-year timeline are Perry's own claims, and it isn't clear how much of his output in that period was pre-recorded. The exact wording of the 'two steps ahead' line is from memory. The start date of mukbang in South Korea is usually given as around 2009 to 2010 but isn't precise.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.