What I’ve learned from two years of solo dinners
About the author: Morgan Ome is an associate editor at The Atlantic. Eating alone began as a matter of circumstance. In the spring of 2020, as my world shrunk to the square footage of my apartment, food became a mode of injecting pleasure and delight into an otherwise bleak and lonely period of my life. I frequently ordered pizza from my favorite local spot in Washington, D.C.; I sampled different brands of instant ramen; I baked loaves of banana bread. In some ways, this routine was familiar. In high school, after my parents separated, I would cook dinner for two—my mom and I—but she worked late and I would eat alone before she got home. For much of the pandemic, though, no one came through the front door. As time passed, I wondered when, or if, I’d get to dine with friends and family again. I entered a state of despair. As 2020 went on and my mental health declined, daily tasks became more difficult to complete. My meals soon transformed from an escape into a chore. I resorted to low-effort dishes like scrambled eggs and vegetable curries, for which I had little appetite. I relied on books, Netflix, and even work to distract myself at dinner. Eventually I downloaded TikTok, and then that became my new dining companion. I began seeing myself mirrored on my “For You” page, which served up videos of other people eating alone. In the videos, creators talked to their presumed audiences in animated voices: “I’m so proud of you for eating today,” “No matter what, you deserve to nourish your body,” or “I’m going to take a bite, and then you take one.” Why were these people filming an ordinary, solitary experience and sharing it online? And why were millions of strangers, myself included, watching them every night? On TikTok, the hashtag #eatwithme has more than 3.4 billion views. The category includes foodie tours of Disney World, instructions on how to make cauliflower nachos, and ASMR compilations of people biting into crispy chicken wings. The Korean phenomenon mukbang—a portmanteau of the words for “eating” and “broadcast”—heavily influences the genre, with an emphasis on consuming large portions and highlighting audio elements, such as crunchy texture, through sound. But this is not mindless entertainment: Many of these videos are designed to encourage viewers, especially those with eating disorders or mental-health diagnoses, to eat in tandem with the creator. I never sought these videos out. They found me, in the strange way that the TikTok algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. One account that I visited frequently was @foodwithsoy, run by Soy Nguyen, a food influencer based in Los Angeles. With her signature neon-blue hair and apple-cheeked smile, Nguyen starts every video with the same introduction: “Hey, it’s another ‘eat with me’! If you’re having a hard time eating, feel free to use this video.” The phrasing is intentionally open-ended, she told me, to invite anyone to join her, whether they are mourning the loss of a loved one, recovering from an eating disorder, or feeling homesick. Nguyen started her “eat with me” series in November 2020, when, she told me, she was overwhelmed by uncertainty brought on by the election, living on the opposite coast from her family, and pandemic anxiety. She had been building a career on TikTok by showcasing her favorite local restaurants in Los Angeles, but had been losing the motivation to eat. So Nguyen decided to film herself and post it, in hopes that someone else felt similarly. To date, Nguyen has made more than 40 “eat with me” videos, most of which follow the same blueprint. After the introduction, she launches into a reflection on a chosen topic, while a video montage plays. Take, for example, a video from August 2021, where Nguyen sips ramune soda and samples sushi rolls overflowing with fillings. She describes how reaching an emotional low forced her to take her mental well-being more seriously: “I had a moment this past week where I didn’t feel like I wanted to exist,” she reveals.
