CINCINNATI — Most of us can probably agree that eating food is more enjoyable than watching someone else eat food. For one, it’s a basic human need. It also tastes good a lot of the time. Not to mention, people can be pretty gross when they eat, especially when they do so in over-the-top, finger-licking fashion.

Still, hundreds of thousands of people tune in each week to watch Bethany Gaskin binge-eat shellfish on YouTube.

Mrs. Gaskin, 44, has capitalized on the popularity of a food-video genre known as mukbang, which involves scarfing down, on camera, more grub than should rightly be consumed in a single sitting.

On her two YouTube channels, Bloveslife and BlovesASMR Eating Her Way, Mrs. Gaskin chats up her audience while eating king crab legs, mussels, lobster tails, hard-boiled eggs and roasted red potatoes. The videos, produced in her Cincinnati home, have made her a millionaire, she said. But getting into the business wasn’t about money; mukbang was more of a calling than a vocation.