NE vloggers break social media conventions with every video
NEW DELHI: Anthony Bourdain has been said that while he has “no reservations” about eating anything offered to him as a guest, he draws the line at airport food and cat and dog meat.
Alo K Kemp, also known as The Roving Naga, apparently eats anything you can eat. “Bohut tasty hota hain,” he says of a stag beetle in a recent YouTube Vlog titled “Eating the most expensive food in the world”.
A few frames later, he’s munching on a deep-fried black specimen that, according to some of the comments in the video, we believe is worth Rs 7.5 million a piece. Alo doesn’t bother to elaborate. He’s too busy making a delicious chutney with fiery bhut jolokia out of the remaining stag beetles he collected that day.
The creepy crawlies, he points out, are a tasty accompaniment to his meal of rice, beef and bamboo shoot curry, cow’s brain wrapped in leaves and cooked in embers, and a piece of pork lard. On another occasion, he shows hornet stings all over his body before the camera pans to two plates of hornet larvae and giant woodworms, which he is enjoying with rice.
Bear Grylls’ Man vs Wild may reflect his identity more than Bourdain, but Alo’s approach to traveling through the jungles, mountains and rivers of his native Nagaland often evokes the raw, philosophical spirit of one of the world’s most revered travelers.
“When I go into the jungle, I have to be happy,” he says in an interview in a vlog called My Dad’s Office. “When I was young, my dad would take me hunting and say, ‘You can eat these things and you can’t eat those.’ Those lessons have stayed with me.”
While he survives on whatever he has, Alo is aware of and respects the sensibilities of his viewers, mentioning that many people do not eat beef for religious and other reasons, while as a Christian he is allowed to “eat anything”.
With over 1.2 lakh subscribers at last count, The Roving Naga is a pioneer for Vlogger from the region.
There are numerous similar reports on YouTube about camping, hunting, cooking and eating at the end of the world, somewhere in the NortheastSome belong to the genre of mukbang, an online trend originating in South Korea in which the vlog host bites into large quantities of all kinds of food while staring at the camera from close up.
There are also silent Japanese-style vlogs like Asha Cooks and Camp, which currently has 35,000 subscribers. The drama of survival in the wilderness or hunting for the strangest edibles like The Roving Naga is not her thing. And she doesn’t speak a word either. Instead, the viewer is treated to a captivating audiovisual symphony of nature and its sounds as the young woman calmly prepares a rustic meal.
Sometimes there are fried grasshoppers, pork curry and roasted corn. When she feels like it, she can be a little more adventurous with her choices, for example pork with snail and mushrooms.
Toni Ventures describes himself as a “solo rural vlogger” from Arunachal Pradesh and has amassed 75,200 subscribers with his gritty video stories of catching a giant eel after months of trying, discovering a rare wild fruit, hunting mountain crabs or even building what he calls a “traditional pig hut”.
“I don’t try to do anything different. My vlogs show how I grew up in a village surrounded by jungle,” says Toni during a question and answer session with his subscribers.
The Mom’s Vlog, a channel run by a mother of five from Nagaland, continues the trend of documenting ethnic lifestyles without pretense. With 60.2k subscribers, her everyday stories find an audience that finds her so captivating that they come back every time she posts a new video.
Her latest vlog is about “how a village mother copes with 5 kids”. The woman talks about how she is so fed up with taking care of everything and yet she keeps having to drag herself to the kheti (farm) that she hasn’t tended in days. It’s like she’s having a conversation with herself. But the comments below suggest that everyone is part of her journey. The power of projection.
In Meghalaya, Russian Marina-Kyntiew Kbani documents life and learning with her Khasi husband and in-laws from a foreigner’s perspective. The content ranges from “Khasi mother scolds unemployed son” to “Feeding pigs for the first time – life in an Indian village”. Marina’s 164 videos have already earned her 230,000 subscribers.
In many parts of India, people may still ask questions like, “Can you see China from Kohima?” or “Is Assam hilly?”, but vloggers from India’s glorious northeast are changing that perception with each video.
Alo K Kemp, also known as The Roving Naga, apparently eats anything you can eat. “Bohut tasty hota hain,” he says of a stag beetle in a recent YouTube Vlog titled “Eating the most expensive food in the world”.
A few frames later, he’s munching on a deep-fried black specimen that, according to some of the comments in the video, we believe is worth Rs 7.5 million a piece. Alo doesn’t bother to elaborate. He’s too busy making a delicious chutney with fiery bhut jolokia out of the remaining stag beetles he collected that day.
The creepy crawlies, he points out, are a tasty accompaniment to his meal of rice, beef and bamboo shoot curry, cow’s brain wrapped in leaves and cooked in embers, and a piece of pork lard. On another occasion, he shows hornet stings all over his body before the camera pans to two plates of hornet larvae and giant woodworms, which he is enjoying with rice.
Bear Grylls’ Man vs Wild may reflect his identity more than Bourdain, but Alo’s approach to traveling through the jungles, mountains and rivers of his native Nagaland often evokes the raw, philosophical spirit of one of the world’s most revered travelers.
“When I go into the jungle, I have to be happy,” he says in an interview in a vlog called My Dad’s Office. “When I was young, my dad would take me hunting and say, ‘You can eat these things and you can’t eat those.’ Those lessons have stayed with me.”
While he survives on whatever he has, Alo is aware of and respects the sensibilities of his viewers, mentioning that many people do not eat beef for religious and other reasons, while as a Christian he is allowed to “eat anything”.
With over 1.2 lakh subscribers at last count, The Roving Naga is a pioneer for Vlogger from the region.
There are numerous similar reports on YouTube about camping, hunting, cooking and eating at the end of the world, somewhere in the NortheastSome belong to the genre of mukbang, an online trend originating in South Korea in which the vlog host bites into large quantities of all kinds of food while staring at the camera from close up.
There are also silent Japanese-style vlogs like Asha Cooks and Camp, which currently has 35,000 subscribers. The drama of survival in the wilderness or hunting for the strangest edibles like The Roving Naga is not her thing. And she doesn’t speak a word either. Instead, the viewer is treated to a captivating audiovisual symphony of nature and its sounds as the young woman calmly prepares a rustic meal.
Sometimes there are fried grasshoppers, pork curry and roasted corn. When she feels like it, she can be a little more adventurous with her choices, for example pork with snail and mushrooms.
Toni Ventures describes himself as a “solo rural vlogger” from Arunachal Pradesh and has amassed 75,200 subscribers with his gritty video stories of catching a giant eel after months of trying, discovering a rare wild fruit, hunting mountain crabs or even building what he calls a “traditional pig hut”.
“I don’t try to do anything different. My vlogs show how I grew up in a village surrounded by jungle,” says Toni during a question and answer session with his subscribers.
The Mom’s Vlog, a channel run by a mother of five from Nagaland, continues the trend of documenting ethnic lifestyles without pretense. With 60.2k subscribers, her everyday stories find an audience that finds her so captivating that they come back every time she posts a new video.
Her latest vlog is about “how a village mother copes with 5 kids”. The woman talks about how she is so fed up with taking care of everything and yet she keeps having to drag herself to the kheti (farm) that she hasn’t tended in days. It’s like she’s having a conversation with herself. But the comments below suggest that everyone is part of her journey. The power of projection.
In Meghalaya, Russian Marina-Kyntiew Kbani documents life and learning with her Khasi husband and in-laws from a foreigner’s perspective. The content ranges from “Khasi mother scolds unemployed son” to “Feeding pigs for the first time – life in an Indian village”. Marina’s 164 videos have already earned her 230,000 subscribers.
In many parts of India, people may still ask questions like, “Can you see China from Kohima?” or “Is Assam hilly?”, but vloggers from India’s glorious northeast are changing that perception with each video.
