I love Food TikTok. I just wish it would give my ears a break.
I spend way too much time on the app — just like most people. Cooking is my favorite hobby, which means TikTok’s famously accurate algorithm serves me a smorgasbord of food content. In other words, FoodTok has me in a chokehold.
Normally that would be fine, but I have developed a love-hate relationship with my voracious FYP. I what I think is misophonia, which is when certain sounds spark a sense of discomfort. It can manifest as anger, anxiety, disgust, or some other feeling. For me, certain food sounds — like loud chewing, lip smacking, or even scraping and clanking — cause an acute sense of discomfort and anxiety. It feels like an itch you can’t scratch. My entire body tenses up.
To be clear, this is undiagnosed, and it’s not debilitating. I’ve lived like this forever, and it’s mostly fine. But it’s why I have such a bittersweet relationship with FoodTok. Foodies on TikTok are obsessed with high-intensity food sounds, like slurps, crunches, and the incessant scraping to show off the crispiness of the food the creator just made. Through my love of cooking, I’ve unexpectedly locked myself into some weird, low-grade purgatory. Yes, I could just stop watching TikTok; I get that. But could I, really? Have you used TikTok? That shit is addictive. It’s also a great resource for finding recipes, new ingredients, and new methods of cooking.
If you’re not a part of FoodTok, you need to understand that sound is a huge part of the community. TikTok is obsessed with crispy, fried food — which means after someone fries a chicken wing, they run the back of the knife against the skin to prove how crispy it is. Or the creator tastes the food, and the mic picks up every crunch and greasy chew.
If you’re not a part of FoodTok, you need to understand that sound is a huge part of the community.
Here’s a quick sample of some of the distressing sounds I’ve heard on my FYP lately. There’s @keith_lee125 critiquing a delicious-looking plate of food — and doing a fine job — but with the mic picking up their chewing sounds the entire time. Or there’s @mr.cilantro’s fantastic recipe for pozole verde that ends with…slurping and crunching that sends a shiver down my spine. Or there’s this gorgeous pork shoulder from @meatdad that starts off with a knife scraping crispy pig skin. All these sounds give me basically the opposite of an ASMR tingle.
It’s even worse if I’m wearing my noise-canceling headphones. For instance, I just rewatched those distressing TikToks while wearing my headphones, and it felt like the sound was shooting straight through my ears into my brain, and I was then hit with daggers of anxiety and discomfort. (At least my iPhone speaker is far away and not as visceral.)
I know this is a me problem. Though, studies have shown a significant number of people have some form of misophonia, so I’m not alone. (While I’ve never been formally diagnosed with actual misophonia, I do notice similarities in myself to a Mashable video on the subject.) However, I want to reiterate that the creators on FoodTok are awesome. The food looks great, and tons of people actually love these sounds.
And you want to know something funny? I contribute to my own problem. I do a video series called AirFryDay at Mashable where I air-fry things on camera. The finished product quite often features me eating and chewing. Aside from the embarrassment of seeing myself on screen, my aversion to food sounds is a huge part of the reason why I don’t really like watching my own videos.
There’s no fixing the problem for me, beyond just admitting it’s there and dealing with it. I’m not giving up TikTok anytime soon, and I know that as long as I’m on the platform, it’s going to barrage me food content.
So I’ll just keep scrolling and cringing. Maybe with headphones off.
