What is Food Porn? It is the love of food and watching videos of food presented in such a way that one will spend countless hours watching. It is a pun on pornography as it has similar characteristics.
Over the years, we have had book authors that concentrate only on food. Then the authors and celebrity chefs did the next big leap to TV. Anthony Bourdain was one such person and he still remains as one of my favourites. He constantly shoots his mouth off but he provides new and fresh perspectives of different destinations that introduce viewers to brand new experiences. His latest episode (S10E01) even featured my home country. It was refreshing to see an outsider’s thoughts of who we are.
As part of my usual diet of YouTube videos, I am never short of new food porn stuff to watch. The evolution of social media means that anyone can publish their own content to show to the world. Viewers are appreciative that they can have an armchair approach to being transported to different parts of the world to see new foods and cultural experiences on a first-hand basis. It’s like having a personal tour guide to share the food with you, except that you cannot taste the food and it always makes you hungry…
There are a number of rising stars that have achieved more than 1 million subscribers over the last few years. They have effectively made this their full-time profession, traveling all over to record their food eating experience to share with their fans while creating a sustainable revenue stream (via merchandise, patronage or advertisement revenue).
As I am based in Asia, I naturally prefer the ones that are closer to home. 2 of my favourites are based in Chengdu (China) and Bangkok (Thailand).
Because of my previous job, I had gotten to know Chengdu and acquired a taste for mala cuisine. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a Canadian based there with a love of Chinese culture and posting food videos. The story of Trevor James, the Food Ranger is pretty amazing. How he arrived in China because he had to take an elective in uni and chose Chinese language, then fell in love with it and took a one-way ticket to experience it first hand. He is probably more Chinese than me now, showing fans the many varieties of food in Asia and China in particular. http://www.thefoodranger.com/about-me/
The other guy that I follow is Mark Wiens of Migrationology ( http://markwiens.me/about/ ). He fell in love with Asia, got married in Bangkok and decided not to teach English anymore, but be a full-time food blogger, traveling the world in search of new food experiences.
I believe that less than 1% of all of us really love our jobs, but these 2 have really transformed themselves to dive deep into their passion for food as a career. My admiration goes to them for their courage to venture into the new unknown and wherever the journey takes them.
They have also linked up with fellow food bloggers from all over the world. This is an interesting strategy to broaden their fan base and introducing themselves to each other’s fans. In the meantime, we fans continue to feast on our daily armchair adventures in food gastronomy, courtesy of YouTube.
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