Tanned, blonde, muscular Californian Erik Lamkin is what you might imagine to be the platonic ideal of a YouTube fitness influencer. But the content that’s brought him legions of fans, a line of merchandise and 3.1 million subscribers on the platform doesn’t focus on the gym; it focuses on feats of gargantuan eating.
In one of Lamkin’s most popular videos, with more than 17 million views, the 30-year-old consumes 100,000 calories over the course of 100 hours. He is one of the biggest names in the world of online competitive eating, an uncanny valley of online sideshows where creators push themselves – and their stomach capacities – to obscene physical limits in the name of content.
