YouTuber Nicholas Perry‒more commonly known as Nikocado Avocado‒shocked the internet with his sudden 250-pound weight loss. 

Perry grew to fame from his mukbangs, a genre of videos where people eat various amounts of food. As a result, his following began to grow when he started doing collaborations with other well-known YouTubers, still doing mukbangs and eating videos. Over the years, people became concerned with his health, considering the food he ate wasn’t particularly healthy. Perry became inactive on YouTube for a 7-month period, but fans were not expecting this drastic change. On Sept. 6, Perry released a YouTube video titled “Two Steps Ahead”, which now has over 46 million views, becoming his most-viewed video to date. In this video, Perry completely transformed from his larger unhealthier self to a thin (presumably healthy) version. 

“I honestly didn’t see it coming,” senior Josie Hussussian said. “It’s kind of hard to lose all that weight just like that.” 

Fans have come to the conclusion that Perry has been posting old videos over the course of 2 years while he was losing weight. Although it may seem difficult to lose 250 pounds in what seems like the 7-month period he was inactive on YouTube, it’s not entirely impossible. 

“I think anything is possible if you [have] a ton of self-discipline,” the Foods and Nutrition teacher, Ms. Olson said. “So if he has no job and his whole life is focused on losing weight and he has all the healthy foods that he possibly could want or need at his disposal because he probably has the money, [then he could].” 

This still leaves room for speculation that Perry may have used Ozempic in order to lose this weight. If he were posting old videos throughout the time he was actively losing weight, it wouldn’t be a surprise that he did use this medication. 

“Ozempic kind of triggers your full feeling faster than it normally would,” Olson said. “[It] would cause you to feel full very quickly [and] basically forces you to eat a lot less.” 

This medicine, however, is not a “get out jail free card” to continue eating poorly, as Perry does online. “Two Steps Ahead” is still a mukbang, just like his other videos. However, the only difference with this video is that it has been taken as menacing. Perry claims that his weight gain was a social experiment and paints himself as a villain who was able to make his audience believe anything they saw. 

“No matter what he does and no matter how he labels it, the fact that he has so many eyeballs tuned in makes it a successful social experiment,” Psychology and English teacher, Ms. Zargar said. “You could argue that all social media, in a way, is a kind of social experiment.” 

Perry dealt his cards carefully and was strategic in the way he had his audience fooled for these 2 years, and has yet to address the speculations people have. 

“I think this whole thing of posting diets and posting things having to do with weight is the popular way of getting followers and getting viral,” said Zargar.