A village reaches millions with YouTube cooking videos

At the beginning of the video, the water buffalo is still alive and the villagers are tenderly stroking its head. At some point, after a few minutes of video, he lies motionless on the floor. Minutes later, over 300 kilograms of meat are sizzling over the fire, the water buffalo is now cut into bite-sized pieces, which the villagers load onto their plates at the end of the video. “Cooking 650+ pounds of water buffalo meat biryani and sharing it with 4,000 villagers” is the title of the video in typical YouTube staccato style. It has over 6 million views.

The village of Shimulia is located in western Bangladesh, near the city of Khoksha, around six hours from the capital Dhaka. The region is structurally poor, according to official information, most of them live from agriculture. Only one village lives off Youtube. The village of Shimulia has its own channel: AroundMeBD. In total, the videos were clicked almost 1.4 billion times.

Started at the fish market

Liton Ali Khan started the channel. He started uploading videos to YouTube in 2016, first filming his surroundings in Dhaka, small videos of street life, he recently told the portal “Rest of the World”. His first video showed the fish market in Dhaka. Then Khan came up with the idea that would propel his channel to unprecedented success. He wanted to make a video in his home village of Shimulia, showing people cooking and picnicking together. Together with his uncle he started filming. “We never expected these videos to reach millions of viewers in such a short amount of time,” says Khan.

The recipe for success is simple and not entirely new: since mobile internet and smartphones have penetrated even the most rural villages in South Asia, there have been several cooking channels on YouTube dedicated to typical village life. A grandfather cooking traditional dishes over the fire in southern India – via 15 million subscribers. A former Pakistani factory worker who now dedicates himself full-time to typical recipes – 3.5 million subscribers.

What makes the people of Shimulia different is that there is an entire village at the center here. Everyone helps, women and men, and in the end everyone eats together. And there’s plenty to eat: the people of Shimulia have specialized in preparing huge quantities. A water buffalo weighing over 300 kilograms, 50 kilograms heavy tuna, 50 ducks at once or just almost 100 kilograms heavy Cake.

Mesmerizing Videos

Cooking is done outside and on the fire. The videos are not cut short and fast like other Youtube videos. But mostly much too long, blurred and therefore hypnotic. You can watch the women chatting while squatting on a blanket while peeling onions and slicing tomatoes in outrageous quantities. How the men stack wood in freshly dug hearths, stir in huge pots, and spices are thrown over everything not in pinches but in handfuls.

as another Youtuber visited the village, said Liton Ali Khan, he only visits his home village every few months. But in recent years he has built up a kind of YouTube cooking factory. The residents produce around four videos a week, with some directing and others providing the recipes. They take the video material on a memory card by bus to Khan in the capital, Dhaka.

With the money he earns from the videos, he supports his home village, says Khan. Exact numbers are not disclosed. One of the women who cooks in the videos tells “Rest of World” that she receives around $35 a month. She feeds her family with it and can afford the diabetes medication she urgently needs.

In Shimulia, they have big plans. Her channel already has several spin-offs, one of which only shows older men cooking. One shows the young men of the village doing handicrafts. One of the village children at play. It seems like every part of village life, no matter how simple, should now be made into content. So far, however, none of the new channels has been as successful as the original AroundMeBD.

New a tourist attraction

YouTube awareness should also attract tourists in real life. Already now is Shimulia on Google Maps Registered as «Youtube Village», open 24 hours. In the village they have built several attractions that are intended to invite people to take selfies: giant animals and a car made of straw, an oversized heart made of bamboo and a water slide. And it seems to be working: for a few weeks now, there have been photos of young Bangals on Google Maps and Instagram, sitting in front of the selfie spots built for them and looking deliberately cool into the cameras.

Because YouTube awareness is perhaps only fleeting. The village’s last million-click video was a few months ago: “40 goat entrails curry”.