![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pcxsx1namun1ljpw72henvgf.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/KB-vloggers-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A few weeks before moving from Los Angeles to Seoul, I went to a show at the Downtown Independent put on by Eat Your Kimchi<\/a>. The word \u201cshow\u201d doesn\u2019t quite capture the nature of the event, but then I don\u2019t know quite how to describe Eat Your Kimchi either. The project, the creation of a Canadian married couple called Simon and Martina Stawski, produced years of Youtube videos after brief Youtube videos about<\/a> food in Korea, pop culture in Korea (their biggest hit being a tongue-in-cheek exegesis of \u201cGangnam Style\u201d<\/a>), and life in Korea as a foreigner. When EYK\u2019s popularity blew up in a big way, it afforded its creators the opportunity to crowdfund a real live studio in one of Seoul\u2019s hipper neighborhoods, its logo a beacon to all those expatriates harboring their own dreams of professionalized Korea vlogging.<\/p>\n
If 21st-cetury media endeavors live or die by how well they connect with their fan base, EYK struck me in that moment as one of the halest, heartiest 21st-cetury media endeavors going: they\u2019d almost filled the theater, and while the Downtown Independent isn\u2019t exactly the Hollywood Bowl, I\u2019d never seen a Youtube celebrity of any kind do it before. But then, the Simon and Martina Stawskis of the world have redefined the very nature of celebrity, a word that may once have identified only those known by nothing more than name and face to tens of millions, but has now expanded to cover those known much more intimately (if still indirectly, and even if the economics sucks<\/a>) by thousands or even hundreds.<\/p>\n
It stands to reason, then, that these new kinds of celebrities, making their new forms of entertainment, would require a new form of live performance, or rather live appearance, or rather something else intriguingly in-between. Like many events I\u2019ve attended, EYK\u2019s included a question-and-answer session; unlike any other event I\u2019ve attended, EYK\u2019s began<\/em> with it, and in fact it took up most of the time we all spent there. (I didn\u2019t stay for the post-event fan photo sessions which, for all I know, may well run deep into the night.) Even before Simon and Martina began taking questions, people started lining eagerly up at the microphone, allowing me observe one salient detail of EYK demographic: it\u2019s all women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n