Twitch Social Eating Category Launches, Confuses Everyone

Slowly but surely, Twitch has been expanding beyond being just a website where people can stream themselves playing video games. At first, it was channel support for things like gaming talk shows or music, then came the launch of Twitch Creative, which allows users to stream as they do all sorts of creative and artistic things, from cosplay to 3D modelling. Today Twitch is celebrating the launch of a new category, and it's sure to leave some of you befuddled: social eating.

Obviously, a streamer has to eat, and the more serious streamers who do this for a living will often take the time to eat their meals while they play their games, right there on camera for the whole world to see. Now, though, it seems like you don't need to have to any talent as a gamer, broadcaster, artist, or musician to have a reason to stream on Twitch. No, the only talent you need is one for eating, which is a talent many of us – arguably the vast majority of us – excel at.

We're not sure how many streamers will be taking advantage of Twitch's social eating category, but we do know that it's already taken off with some of the site's more open-minded viewers. For example, at the time of this writing, there are about 1,300 viewers watching 20 different channels in the social eating category. Perhaps we're still in social eating's novelty phase and viewership will drop off eventually (the category did only launch last night, after all). Then again, who knows? This could be the next big thing for Twitch.

Social eating taking off on Twitch is at least a passing possibility, thanks to the fad known as "muk-bang," which is popular in South Korea and has people broadcasting themselves eating food while they interact with their audience. We'll keep an eye on Twitch social eating as the category has a little more time to percolate and possibly grow. Maybe – just maybe – it'll evolve into some Fear Factor type of category where streamers eat a range of increasingly gross stuff and everybody loses in the process. We'll see!