Nikocado Avocado and His New Look

Nicholas Perry, more known as Nikocado Avocado is a famous YouTuber with over 4 million subscribers. You might know of him from his unappetizing mukbangs or involuntarily seeing his less PG moments on your Twitter timeline. But you most likely discovered or re-discovered him from a recent video that went viral named “Two Steps Ahead, which currently sits at 47 million views. 

In this extremely uncanny video, he starts dressed in a panda mask, with a monologue that appears both unsettling and off-putting and calls the video the greatest social experiment of his life. He then weirdly compares internet consumers to ants. He finally presents a new and drastically different look under his giant panda mask, revealing that he not only lost 250 pounds but also shaved his head. He refers to the last eight years of his life as all a “bad dream” and that after losing all that weight, he finally woke up. 

If you are an avid watcher of Niko, you may have noticed that in recent videos, before the reveal, he is still quite overweight. Niko discloses that he has been putting out old, pre-recorded content for the past two years. While the audience still perceived  Niko as obese and eating immense amounts of food for content, he was secretly working on his weight loss. Niko managed to keep his weight loss journey a complete secret while pushing out YouTube videos.  

Critics are starting to question how he possibly lost so much weight, so fast. Is it really all from working out and building a healthier lifestyle? Is it Ozempic? It’s the drug that all the pop girlies seem to be using now. We can debate all we want, but we may never know until Niko reveals his seemingly miraculous methods. 

This new look shows how disconnected we are from YouTubers. Even though we believe we understand how these creators are, they could be drastically different behind the scenes. Parasocial relationships have only gotten worse with more influencers and pop stars. A parasocial relationship is when a person, or a fan, puts in a lot of energy and time towards someone, in this case, the celebrity, all while the other person has no idea who they are. 

A recent case of an extreme parasocial relationship is with Chapell Roan, a singer whose popularity has recently skyrocketed. She recently posted a Tiktok in distress, calling out fans for their parasocial relationship with her. She critiques them for feeling like they are entitled to take photos with her,  and for sharing personal information about not only her but her family as well. Whether you agree with her stance or not, it is undeniable that parasocial relationships do exist and are only getting worse with social media. 

For the past two years, we have seen a version of Niko that he carefully curated for us to see, not knowing the massive changes he created for himself behind the scenes. These parasocial relationships of feeling like we know influencers personally are indeed proven through the Niko situation, as we realized that in reality, we do not know these creators behind the scenes.

• #youtubers
• entertainment
• food
• mukbang