This article was produced in collaboration with The Objective. This piece is a part of its series “The Food Media Reckoning” — a collection of reporting, essays, and criticism about the holes that still exist in food media — and what its future could look like when we look to its past. Read more here.
I’m fascinated by @logagm’s TikTok videos.
The young pink-haired creator has a slim face and large, expressive eyes, which glance seriously into the camera in videos where he makes Korean food from scratch. There’s usually no music, just the sounds of him at work: Napa cabbage leaves tearing, knife striking the chopping block, coarse salt raining thickly from his fingers. Many Koreans have dueted his videos — using a TikTok feature that splits the screen between the original video and a new video with reactions and commentaries — and they typically “ohh” and “ahh” over the way he cooks “just like a Korean ajumma”, using common techniques and ingredients that are commonly found in their own kitchens.
Why such adulation? His videos are well-edited but don’t really stand out from the pack amongst other popular TikTok food content creators, like @menwiththepot, @abir.sag, and @hwoo.lee, all of whose videos often ooze production value and a signature aesthetic. I speculate what makes him special is not his cooking, but the fact that he’s a white guy who makes authentic Korean food, not some bastardized version that’s underseasoned and inexplicably contains raisins.