“Two steps ahead. I’m always two steps ahead. This was the greatest social experiment of my life.”
This marks the return of popular mukbang YouTuber Nikocado Avocado. Mukbangs are videos of someone eating a large meal on camera; the style originated in Korea. Nikocado Avocado, whose real name is Nicholas Perry, has amassed millions of subscribers on YouTube (nearly four million at launch) by documenting himself and his friends eating extravagant meals.
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Perry started out as a vegan YouTuber, but in 2016 he decided to give up his vegan life and started uploading mukbangs. Over time, Perry’s online persona changed. He gained weight, but aside from his appearance, he also behaved erratically and caused “drama” with other YouTubers. In 2021, he told MEL Magazine that he was ready to play “the villain.”
He also claimed to have begun a weight loss journey, culminating in a May 2024 video (on his second YouTube channel titled “Nikocado Avocado 2”) in which he said he had “abandoned his ‘weight loss journey.'”
This was Perry’s last video on YouTube – until two uploads followed last night. Perry uploaded “Two Steps Ahead” (above) on his main channel and “hi.” on his secondary channel, where he revealed that he hadn’t made a video in two years and secretly lost 250 pounds while uploading old content and conducting this “social experiment.”
In less than 12 hours, the two videos have garnered millions of views (over four million for “Two Steps Ahead” and one million for “hi” at the time of publication), as the internet is shocked by Perry’s drastic weight loss.
Perry returned with – what else? – two mukbangs, but first he railed against internet users’ hunger for drama and “stories” in “Two Steps Ahead.”
“So I’m the villain,” Perry then declares, “because I made myself one. And you’re going to keep consuming these stories about me year after year as long as I tell the Internet that I’m the villain.”
