Few American men had attempted to break into the genre when Nikocado, real name Nicholas Perry, became one of the trailblazers in 2016. Numerous controversies, breakdowns, and drastic weight fluctuations later, he has likely scared away some hopefuls from trying their luck in making a living out of eating for an audience, while also establishing himself as a master of social media performance art.
This was only confirmed when, four months ago, fans, haters, and the blissfully ignorant were gifted the conclusion to a narrative arc nearly a decade in the making. The Nikocado story has always been one of grand proclamations, and this viral video was no exception.
Entitled “Two Steps Ahead,” the YouTuber revealed in this video that after tipping the scales at 411lbs (or el-bees, as he has tended to call them), he had spent the past two years secretly committing to a 250-pound weight loss. He insisted that his bizarre behavior had all been a “social experiment” and mocked his audience as “ants on an art farm” in a supervillain-style monologue.
While his content had long been melodramatic enough to call into question the legitimacy of the feelings that he displayed in it, he also appeared to put so much on the line that it is little surprise that viewers found themselves almost as disturbed by this rapid turnaround as they had been by his previous persona.
“Most people, when they think about it, are not willing to destroy their bodies for money,” he said in a 2019 Men’s Health feature about Mukbang YouTubers. “It’s very powerful to have millions of people following your every move… It’s a full-time job. I’m the business.”
This business succeeded in more than just hoovering up staggering quantities of spicy noodles, Takis, and burgers for an audience. Nikocado is as much a brand as a character. For years, his videos were peppered with ads for his merch line, Patreon, and Cameo appearances, and he also ventured into adult content, leaks of which prompted inevitable horrified reactions and memes. All of these were propped up by the dubious lore built across his online presence and, until recently, offered a punchline about the corrosive effects of internet fame.
Things didn’t begin on a manufactured downward spiral. An integral part of the Nikocado story was his drastic switch from cheerfully sharing a health-conscious vegan lifestyle to being an emotionally dysfunctional junk food binge eater. The earliest public video on his main channel is entitled “WHY I’M NO LONGER A VEGAN YOUTUBER.”
Pre-weight loss, his apparent denial of his burgeoning and continually emphasized obesity was a vital plot point in most of his videos, even inspiring entire merch lines blazoned with the declarations that “It’s just water weight” and “I identify as skinny.”
Nonetheless, he capitalized on the health problems that apparently followed from his extreme on-camera diet and resulting weight gain. On and off camera, he experienced “accidental” incontinence to an extent that made some viewers wonder how accidental it was. He also claimed at different points to have had serious heart problems, broken ribs, and to be in need of a CPAP machine, which also offered a useful prop for startling thumbnails and bedbound videos.
He also frequently got involved in feuds with other internet personalities. Sometimes, these were open antagonists who criticized his lifestyle, ranging from big-name YouTuber Cr1TiKaL to conservative commentator Candace Owens. Other times, they were more personal, such as his falling out with former collaborator and fellow Mukbanger Stephanie Soo, who accused him of frightening and manipulative behavior when they worked together several years ago.
A not quite one-man soap opera, all of this performative behavior was aided by his publicly tempestuous relationship with probable ex-husband Orlin Home. First meeting in a Facebook group for vegan men, he and Home’s budding friendship turned into a whirlwind romance that culminated in a 2017 marriage.
Following his husband into Mukbanging, he similarly gained a lot of weight. For a big portion of the Nikocado saga, he became the other primary antagonist alongside his husband’s growing obesity. One archetypal edit of the couple laments, “wish I had a relationship like them 😔😤” as the pair’s sped-up bickering over a tray of Popeyes escalates to Nikocado smearing sauce on the wall and a fight breaking out after Orlin attempts to steal a slider from his foot in retaliation. Orlin has not appeared in any recently filmed videos on Nikocado channels since Two Steps Ahead was posted.
This is only an abridged history, and even then, it is a storyline that could, and has, spent years engaging even the most dopamine receptor-fried screen addict. Ultimately, though, all six of the Nikocado Avocado channels only achieved nearly 10 million subscribers thanks to their compelling centerpiece. Part of the success of the Nikocado character is that he is an amalgamation of every shock-baiting internet personality that came before him, helped along with the most exaggerated parts of Nicholas Perry and his surprisingly sophisticated background.
Adopted into a Pennsylvanian family from Ukraine in the early 90s, he trained as a classical violinist in college and even performed at Carnegie Hall for some time, aspiring to make this his professional career before choosing YouTube instead. He gave up music, feeling he “was just a small, little fish in a huge sea,” as he told Trisha Paytas on her podcast Just Trish in 2019, before their (inevitable) falling out. This did not stop him from taking out the instrument on occasion at the height of his 400lb fame, usually while poorly dressed and surrounded by piles of semi-demolished junk food, as well as bringing it back to embellish his Two Steps Ahead era.
There are undeniable parallels between his persona and that of Paytas, another high-profile and controversial YouTube personality who made a name for herself in part by posting a great deal of emotionally volatile content, often while eating at the same time. It’s only fitting that Nikocado also claimed in a conversation with her that “Junk food has made me crazy… I’m like a tornado.”
However, the drama of his internet career cannot be put down to the mysterious side effects of additives and seed oils alone. No matter what outward appearances may suggest, it requires strategy, and as with anybody who falls into the broad category of ‘content creator,’ the emphasis is on quantity over quality. A “stop feeding the cats” moment can only be earned through toiling away at the coalface of developing a character in front of a willingly gullible audience.
Much of his content has tended towards being repetitive in its extremity, whether that be related to meltdowns, Orlin arguments, or loose bowels—all a gift to enterprising cringe compilation posters. “This wholes mans [sic] life is a funniest moments moment,” reads one comment on an “ultimate Nikocado cringe compilation” with over a million views.
Motifs include a litany of catchphrases, almost 50 of which are listed on the Nikocado Avocado Wiki. These include aforementioned skinny/water-weight obesity gags and frequent expressions of exasperation in the form of “jeepers creepers,” “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” or even a simple, aggressive “Shhhh,” ideally hissed under the breath while making exaggerated hand gestures.
The Karen-esque proclamations of “I’m calling corporate/I’m calling the police” and a tendency to call other people “peasants” cannot be forgotten either, used in reaction to everything from a takeout order being wrong to Siri misunderstanding one of his many demands. These aren’t the only targets of disapproval when we take the often viewer-directed accusation of “It’s your fault!” into consideration, most commonly used in reference to weight gain, health problems, or simple bad moods.
There is also the question of costuming. Nikocado, at his heaviest, could almost always be seen in basketball shorts, sliders, and a t-shirt, almost always several sizes too small for his stomach, with the shirt occasionally coming off for the likes of bed mukbangs or dancing on TikTok.
Loyal viewers began to associate his red shirt, likely purchased on one of his mobility scooter-aided trips to Walmart or Target, with videos in which he would behave in an especially outrageous manner. It is perhaps no coincidence that his hair was usually styled to expose his widow’s peak that suspiciously resembles the McDonald’s M.
In theory, a viral moment can happen to anyone, but a notorious character requires more than simple luck. The infamy of the Nikocado brand became as if the abject art of John Waters met the algorithm-courting uncanny valley of MrBeast, desensitizing the viewer to their repulsion by using it as fuel for an ongoing dramatic arc.
For several years, Nikocado Avocado has been a bountiful subject for the cottage industry of deep dives and video essays with creators decrying his downfall for views mere weeks before his weight loss reveal. Arguably, one of the most insightful looks into how his performance fitted into the social media ecosystem was his 2022 collaboration with reaction YouTuber Oompaville, at which point he had already secretly begun to lose weight.
His interviewer confidently introduced him as “the most hated and publicly insane person on the internet” and admitted to making him the subject of numerous one-sided videos because of the amount of attention that they received. In response, Nikocado diligently stuck to the persona the audience had come to expect, complete with slogans and an elaborate routine of ordering drive-thru Taco Bell on a mobility scooter.
Much of the exposure that Nikocado Avocado has received up until a couple of months ago involved a good proportion of his audience being unable to believe in a self-aware LOLcow, i.e. a person with an online presence that can be milked for humor and entertainment value.
“It was very easy for me to blur that boundary between fact and fiction because I was physically so unwell,” he mused in a video a month after his weight loss reveal on his ‘More Nikocado’ channel while claiming that stunts like food fights with Orlin were influenced by the slapstick “theatrical comedy” of Dumb and Dumber and The Three Stooges. “You see this person… you might feel better about your own life.” This supposed act of altruism earned him the highest of lowbrow honors to be bestowed in the 21st century: that of internet legend.
It takes an insatiable desire for attention to consistently fall apart in the public eye for a living, and also a certain level of discipline. No matter how disingenuous the most impactful iteration of Nikocado Avocado may have been, he required a creative command that could only come with true dedication. Nicholas Perry was never two steps ahead, but rather in perfect sync with the boom and bust of web 2.0 celebrity.
