IMAGE: YOUTUBE NIKOCADO AVOCADO / COLLAGE: BLANCA LÓPEZ
Butter is an only child, a teenager living comfortably in suburban America. He drives a BMW to school, is a skilled musician, is witty, charming, and intelligent. Butter is also morbidly obese.
Sadly, on account of his physical appearance and mobility struggles, Butter is made to feel like an outsider. He has a strong desire to create genuine, loyal friendships, and yet, ironically, his peers fail to ‘see’ him. His friends, who can be counted on one hand, include the Professor (his music teacher), Doc Bean, his obesity clinician, and a scattering of kids from various ‘fat camp’ holidays, who have remained in contact.
Butter is a nickname given following an incident where a crowd of young people from his school (and their older siblings) surrounded him and forced him to eat a whole stick of butter. His ‘crime’? Speaking up for himself in response to being bullied. His real name is not revealed until the end of the novel, thus the reader also becomes complicit in the labelling. In fact, it is only when his real name is revealed that we are hit with the realisation that we don’t in fact know it. Perhaps this shows the willingness of society to accept a label.
The future seems bleak for this young man, and in light of continued non-acceptance and bullying by his peers, Butter retreats into the online world, and concocts an extreme plan. He builds a website, initially in the public domain, called ‘Butter’s Last Meal’. On New Year’s Eve he plans to end his life by eating himself to death, live-streamed in real time. The word gets out and naturally, this macabre spectacle becomes the talk of the school. Butter subsequently makes the website password-protected to ensure that the adults are not informed about his plans.
You think I eat a lot now? That’s nothing. Tune in December 31st, when I will stream a live webcast of my last meal. Death row inmates get one. Why shouldn’t I? I can’t take another year in this fat suit, but I can end this year with a bang. If you can stomach it, you’re invited to watch . . . as I eat myself to death. —Butter
Ironically, Butter becomes more popular than ever as a result of the website and his forthcoming death feast. There is suddenly a seat for him at the lunch table. He is invited out with the popular group. He becomes the most sought-after person in the school. His newfound friends are obsessed with Butter’s plans. They begin placing bets as to whether he will go through with it. The message board on his website becomes the place to be, with constant discussions taking place about Butter, and what might be on his gruesome New Year’s menu.
Everyone laughed, including myself. I think I was starting to feel what they all must have already felt about my last meal – that it was a story playing out on a movie screen and not in real life. All their laughter and curiosity and encouragement wasn't completely evil. It was just the result of some teenage sense of immortality mixed with that thing that makes you slow down and watch a car crash, even when you don't really want to look.
Meanwhile, as his life seems to run out of control, Butter makes a deep and meaningful connection with a young woman, elsewhere online. The young woman is revealed to be none other than Anna, one of Butter’s classmates, and someone who he would firmly consider to be ‘out of his league.’ As the novel progresses, Anna falls more deeply for her online boyfriend (known as ‘JP’).She is ridiculed somewhat by her friends over this mysterious online presence, and yet she firmly maintains that she knows that JP is ’real’ (despite never having seen a photo), and that he will be meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party, which will be attended by all of the cool kids. Butter is invited as a guest to the party.
Thus, the plot is laid and the reader is left in suspense as to what will happen at the New Year’s party, whether JP’s identity will be revealed as Butter, and most importantly, whether Butter will go through with his sinister last supper plans. Butter is clearly scared and uncertain as to what will unfold, but it seems he is ‘in too deep’, and has no choice but to proceed.
All I ever wanted to do was take charge of what people were saying online and, sure, maybe make them feel a little bad about it. I never meant for my threat to truly be a swan song – just a loud note to catch some attention. But the whole mess had taken on a rhythm of its own, and it seemed like I was the only one who couldn't keep the beat. I was playing along with no idea how this tune was supposed to end.
Through Lange’s writing, we are given an insight into the inner workings of a teenage social circle - who is accepted, and why. We also learn what it means to be accepted, and the lengths that some young people must go to in order to become part of a social group. We are alerted to something of the evolution of disordered eating, its intergenerational nature, and perhaps also, the consequences of the abundant availability of processed food for our children.
Perhaps the storyline might seem farfetched to some, the notion that a person can eat themself to death being reminiscent of the gruesome fictional 1995 film Seven, where the first murder victim is forced to eat himself to death, the word 'gluttony' scrawled on the wall at the scene.
In actual fact, the most terrifying element of Lange's work is the echoes of reality. In the wake of the mukbang trend, (where social media influencers eat giant feasts on camera in exchange for likes, views and subscribers), it is a painful truth that many people have ended up severely depressed or, even worse, dead.
This was certainly the case for Waffler69, who courted fans with his increasingly risky and bizarre ingestion of vast quantities of (often out of date) fast food. Until he died of a heart attack in 2023.
In terms of damage to health, this is also evident for NikoCado Avocado, originally a regular weight vegan YouTuber and had a small fan base. Once he realised that veganism wasn't generating the attention that mukbangs were, he threw away his values, bingeing himself into obesity, depression and an ever more toxic relationship with his spouse, all played out on camera, for views.
Trisha Paytas is a YouTuber known for extremes. She will, for example, follow a five day water-only diet with an enormous mukbang binge, enough to make her sick.
Viewers love extreme behaviour, and , in general, the wilder and more outrageous the actions, the more view, likes, and subscribers. The algorithms favour ever-more extreme content, pushing people to view things that they would turn away from in 'the real world', and yet have no qualms about viewing online, with people's comments even actively encouraging further harms to the influencers.
For example, Hungry Fatchick is a social media influencer plagued by childhood trauma, who found a way to gain popularity and make money from consuming vast amounts of food on camera. She almost managed to escape, when, following a health scare in which she was hospitalised, she started a completely new lifestyle. Sadly, she lost viewers and income because many people didn't wish to support her becoming healthier. In the end, she reverted back to her old ways, believing this to be the only way to generate popularity and income. Sadly, the viewers did indeed return to see her gorging herself once again, ruining her health in the process, and her source of income was restored.
(Source: 'Where are the Mukbang YouTubers Today?' Moon, 2024).
In addition to shining a light on some of the horrifying spectacles that occur online, Butter also raises important questions around online vs. offline identity. Can we ever be sure who we are talking to in a world populated by people pretending to be someone else?
Lange highlights the very real nature of online harms. We cannot ignore the horrors that continue to unfold online, as though they exist in a mythical vacuum. These harms are real world harms, happening to real people.
There is no doubt about it, as much as we might try to deny it - we are the internet and the internet is us.
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