What happened to Kate Yup? The unsettling events leading to the YouTuber’s mysterious disappearance

The anonymous YouTuber who was known for her huge appetite for seafood abruptly dropped off from the platform in late 2019 and has not been seen by the public since. Yup began her short-lived stint as a food content creator on YouTube after posting her first video on April 24, 2018.

Though she originally began as just another ASMR mukbang YouTuber, Yup’s content soon crossed into the unsettling category with her videos getting more and more cryptic as bizarre theories about the nature of her channel emerged. Things came to a head when she disappeared from the platform with no notice and her current state of life of remains a mystery.

Kate Yup’s disappearance from YouTube in 2019 and what we know about her presumed identity

Yup has not been active on YouTube since November 2019 after her last video, where she loses her tooth while eating, was either removed or deleted from YouTube for violating guidelines. It has now been more than two years and Yup has yet to make an appearance on her channel and confirm her wellbeing.

Initially, Yup’s tendency of masking her appearance was seen as nothing out of the ordinary as many simply assumed her to be a content creator who preferred to avoid public recognition. But after she disappeared, her anonymity soon became a source of discussion among her viewers with some taking it on themselves to unmask her true identity.

Although Yup has never confirmed her nationality, people speculated her to be French based on a description written in French under her first video. Also, she was presumed to be an English second language speaker judging by the English captions she wrote on her videos which lacked the proficiency of a native speaker.

Nonetheless, in a November 2018 video, Yup mentioned buying chicken nuggets from a corner shop close to her home in Belgium. This partially explained why she was presumed to be French as it turns out that French is one of the three official languages of Belgium apart from Dutch and German.

One popular conspiracy theory claims that Kate is the then 16-year-old American girl, Karlie Guse, who has been missing since October 13, 2018. The basis for this theory was the apparent resemblance between the facial features of the two girls.

However, the theory holds no ground as the timeline of Guse’s disappearance and Yup’s first appearance on YouTube does not align. Also, as mentioned above, Yup displayed French as her language and appeared to be based in Belgium.

Visible physical injuries and strange happenings in Kate’s videos raised questions about the circumstances under which she filmed

Although Yup was known for her rushed way of eating an unusually large amount of food in a short amount of time, fans became concerned after hearing what they took to be a suspected male voice whispering “hurry up”, “just eat” and “fast” in a video she posted on March 13, 2019.

In another video posted on June 21, 2019, viewers spotted a bruise on Kate’s left arm and a cut on her lower lip. The video, which would later go on to become her most viewed and commented on content, spurred an online discussion about the questionable circumstances under which she filmed.

Apart from the physical injuries, the video was alleged to be containing hidden messages for help. For instance, five minutes into the video, Kate taps her fingers on the bowl which was taken to be morse code for ‘SOS’, spelling out ‘I need help’ as per the comments.

Additionally, towards the end of the video, her captions read ‘The meat is So delicioOuS’ and the random capitalizations spell out ‘SOS’ yet again, leading her fans to believe that Yup was in distress or kidnapped into making videos and sending out cryptic cries for help.

Other strange incidences in the same video included her bowl moving when she was eating and a robotic, barely audible voice allegedly saying ‘Kill, kill, and eat fast’. Thus, people concluded that another person was in the room behind the camera who was coercing her into filming the videos.

Also, in her now-deleted video titled ‘I lose my tooth during this meal’ posted on November 10, 2019, Yup lost two teeth while eating. While as unusual as that was, fans were even more alarmed when she casually disregarded the broken tooth and continued eating, leading them to believe that it was not a one-time occurrence.

Kate addressed and dismissed the claims in a pinned comment and made a community post confirming her wellbeing in August 2019

Since the rumors about her being held captive spiraled out of control, Kate dismissed the allegation, particularly about the morse code signal, in a pinned comment posted under the same video from her account which said;

“It’s not morse code. That isn’t even how morse code works. It is a series of short and long pulses… Assuming she is using one finger for long pulses and one finger for short pulses, she taps three fingers on the bowl. It is just random tapping, there is no correlation between her tapping and morse code, I couldn’t identify a single letter.”

The strange thing about the comment was that it was in quotations and written in the third person. While it might be possible that she copied and pasted a viewer’s comment and posted it from her own account, the question of why she simply did not address the claims herself remains.

“Also, the bowl moves (so what?) because her other hand is resting on it. It moves perfectly with the rest of her body. Finally, her lip does not look busted, it’s either a cold sore (which would explain it showing up more than once) or a bad blemish,” she further wrote.

As to what the origin of the threatening voices was, YouTuber Leon Lush discredited the claims in his video about Yup and stated that those alleged voices were her own which were picked up by her microphone.

“I’ve watched through them all multiple times and it seems so obvious to me that it’s just mouth noises being picked up by a super-compressed microphone. You can even see her mouth move in congruence with the sound and yet thousands of people think that it’s her captors telling her what to do or threatening her,” Lush said.

He also clarified that her pinned comment was in quotations because she copied the comment from a Reddit post and “used the quotes to insinuate that it was someone else who wrote it”.

Besides, Yup also made a community post on her channel which once again dispelled the rumors as she wrote;

“Hello, everyone. It’s urgent to clarify my situation. Everything is ok for me. Nobody forcing me to eat and I have any health problem. These marks on my arms are caused by the sun, just like this wound on my lip, usually called herpes labialis. I love what I do, be sure.”

A more reasonable observation about Kate suffering from bulimia was overshadowed by the infamous kidnapping conspiracies

Despite Yup’s dismissal of the unfounded rumors, many remained convinced that Kate’s captors were speaking through her and dived further into their conspiracy theories. Her channel also received an influx of views and subscribers when the rumors were aflame.

However, Yup looked to be displeased with the amount of negative attention she received. People attempted to call the police on her and dox her identity online and it went on to such an extent that she called out her audience in a caption written for a video posted on October 5, 2019, writing;

“For several weeks now, there is a polemic about myself. As you can notice, I am happy, nobody is torturing me. Oh no…I’m lying. In fact, there is people torturing me every day without even knowing it… all those who are continuing to spread the rumor.”

Though the kidnapping conspiracy consumes most of the discussions about Yup’s wellbeing, another plausible explanation about her actions being a result of an eating disorder has emerged, albeit it is not as widely known as the other theory.

Yup’s skinny frame despite her binging on a huge amount of food in her videos caused some viewers to believe that she was suffering from an eating disorder, possibly bulimia.

Moreover, Yup was seen with a toothbrush strapped on her right arm on more than one occasion in her videos. This gave credence to the conjecture about her being bulimic as bulimic patients commonly use a toothbrush to induce vomiting and brush their teeth afterward.

It was also likely that Yup’s weak or rotten teeth which fell off in her video with no blood were a result of tooth-erosion caused by self-induced vomiting. In a Reddit forum, a user wrote;

“She is clearly bulimic. She eats very, very fast. Her lips are dry, cracked, peeled. She bruises regularly. On one of her last mukbangs, she had a toothbrush strapped to her arm (and I bet the purge bucket was under the table).”

Contrary to circulating reports on Facebook and Twitter, Kate Yup’s death is not confirmed

On May 14, 2020, an article about Yup’s death and obituary circulated on Facebook and Twitter. But it soon became apparent that the report about her death was a hoax and did not come from a reliable outlet.

However, though it has not been confirmed, some believe Yup to be deceased owing to her complete disappearance from the public view and a majority of her viewers still express concern about her welfare and urge her to make a public appearance or post a video on her channel.

On the other hand, Yup may have left YouTube due to the overwhelming amount of rumors created on her behalf and the attention she received from the internet for being a ‘captive YouTuber’ who was coerced by her kidnappers into eating an obscene amount of food and filming it as a form of torture.

While the conspiracy around Yup could seem far-fetched and bizarre to the skeptics, the concern among her viewers regarding her disappearance after a series of unsettling incidences captured on her video is understandable.