Popular YouTuber Nikocado Avocado, known for his mukbanger content–videos of excessive food consumption–once walked the halls of Lower Dauphin High School and, yes, even ate in our very own cafeteria.
Today, Nikocado Avocado, better known to some longer-serving members of the LDHS staff as Nicholas Perry, is grabbing the attention of not only his former high school, but fans around the world.
Perry began his early adult life as an aspiring violinist. His adoptive family lives in Pennsylvania, where he attended music school, earning a degree with a preference for violin. In 2016, he then switched to creating food-related content, focusing on food that worked for his vegan lifestyle. After being diagnosed with a vitamin B12 deficiency, hypoglycemia, and a rotting tooth, he decided that veganism wasn’t for him.
Perry was one of the first creators to indulge in the excessive-eating trend, which is now popular for influencers of all kinds. For instance, Kylie Jenner, skincare and makeup connoisseur, posted a video eating a box of Crumbl cookies.
Due to his career, Perry has, of course, gained more than quite a few pounds. Viewers have expressed their concern with Perry’s lifestyle often, and earlier this year, rumors began circulating that Perry was experiencing medical problems due to his weight–specifically, ones that affected his heart. Some even speculated that Perry was dead when he posted “Two Steps Ahead”, a video with a shock value that garnered the attention of millions of people outside of Perry’s following.
In the video, Perry appears wearing the head of a panda costume. After a few minutes, he removes the mask and shows his weight loss of hundreds of pounds. Reading a Batman-esque monologue, Perry delivered a disturbing message: that his career had been the greatest social experiment of his life, and that he was watching the online community as if the people were simple ants. He then spends the rest of his video doing similar mukbang content with noodles, alongside his parrot, Mr. Noodle.
However, some viewers saw some red flags with this video. First: this isn’t the first time Perry has given a speech of this type. In fact, Perry released a hauntingly similar video a few years ago with a villainous monologue much alike this one. Secondly, in 2019, Perry announced news over which he was heartbroken: the loss of his bird, Mr. Noodle. In that same video, he told viewers that he had a practice of prerecording videos, hinting that more Mr. Noodle videos would be released despite the bird’s absence in his life.
Now, Perry is claiming that he’s lost weight and reunited with his bird in a scheme that shocked viewers around the world. He has posted multiple videos after “losing weight”, including one depicting him doing the “Apple” dance, a recent TikTok trend that couldn’t have been prerecorded by many years.
“I know that he lost the weight,” says Srishti Gleeson, junior. “I think it was a really good social experiment, honestly…that was really cool.”
“He did lose weight, because he did the ‘Apple’ dance, and that’s trending now, not back then,” says sophomore Hope Millar.
“I think he thought ahead of time on how to get better before it got worse, and when that did happen for him, he knew a way to lose his weight,” says junior Mel Lerch.
Whatever the truth is, Perry has certainly gotten his place in the spotlight secured for now, leaving millions of puzzled viewers in his wake.
