Over the weekend, one anonymous New Yorker made very weird history after hundreds of people (or maybe over a thousand!) flocked to Union Square Park in NYC to watch him publicly devour a full barrel of cheeseballs. Following the well-attended IRL event, the whole ordeal went mega-viral online after millions tuned in to the absolutely wild footage from the gathering.
Before we get into the event itself, there's some important lore to dive into to fully appreciate the gravity of what happened. On March 11, the anonymous cheeseball-eater took to TikTok as @cheeseballman427, donning an orange face mask to conceal his identity, and announced that he would eat an entire jar of cheeseballs on April 27 in Union Square Park.
That first video was viewed over 50,000 times and was followed by a series of videos in which he'd eat one cheeseball for every new follower he gained in the lead-up to the event.
At some point, physical flyers were posted around NYC, complete with QR codes to officially RSVP for the April 27 event.
According to the Partiful link at the other end of the QR code, over 1,100 people RSVP'd "yes" to this past weekend's event.
He even had a flag made!
Here's the play-by-play: After LOTS of enthusiastic cheering and hyping up the crowd, Cheeseballman started by climbing atop a small step stool and shouting, "I am allergic to gluten, and today I will be eating this entire jar of cheeseballs!"
As he ate cheeseballs, smearing his ski mask in a thick layer of cheeseball dust in the process, the crowd could be heard chanting everything from "Eat those balls!" to "Let him cook!" to "Be aggressive, be, be aggressive!" in unison.
At multiple points over the course of the 20-ish minute journey, he appeared to nearly vomit (but didn't!) and even screamed out in...pain? Disgust? Sheer joy? Or perhaps the scream contained a multitude of emotions.
After ingesting the final cheeseball, he triumphantly raised his cheese powder-covered hand and was crowned with a fabric traffic cone hat while the crowd chanted "Cheeseballman!" over and over.
After his victory, he addresses the people: "Uh, my name is Cheeseballman427...why did you guys come here?!" (One person shouts back: "Because you're our god!") He then poses a question to the crowd, shouting, "Same time next year?" So, yep, mark your calendars for 2025, folks!
Reactions to the entire event have been, unsurprisingly, pretty positive! Basically, catching Cheeseballman's IRL mukbang was akin to witnessing history in the making.
The accolades just continue to roll in.
And many people online pointed out how oddly refreshing it was to see something this unapologetically silly, joyful, and ridiculous momentarily grab the attention of millions.
To be 100% fair, the jar of cheeseballs that Cheeseballman ate in Union Square was probably somewhere between 13–18 ounces, which is around half the size of the whopping 32-ounce square barrel he seemingly advertises in his earlier TikTok videos and flyers.
Others claimed that Cheeseballman "ripped off" Alexander Tominsky (aka the "Philadelphia Chicken Man"), who ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days back in 2022 and held a public gathering for fans to watch him devour his final bird.
Lighthearted "fraud" and "copycat" claims aside — if there are 32 cheeseballs in one ounce, that means he probably ate around 500 cheeseballs (minus any he spilled) in ONE SITTING. Or standing. IMO, anyone who accomplishes such a feat is automatically not a fraud.
If you're as sad as I am that you missed the cheeseball-eating event of the year, I can confirm that Cheeseballman's swift announcement of next year's gathering looks pretty legit. On April 27, 2025, he'll consume "two entire jars of cheeseballs." The description for the event is simply, "I will definitely throw up this time."
