AroundMeBD’s extravagant and oddly satisfying videos have created a lucrative cooking empire.

The YouTube village is a prominent example of a niche but is also part of a growing online trend across South Asia: As the internet reaches villages, rural societies are finding ways to showcase and monetize their unique food cultures to audiences across the world, using platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Villagers who previously had little presence in media are now using these platforms to take ownership of the way their culture is portrayed — and building businesses that support dozens, and occasionally hundreds, of individuals.

The story won the South Asian Journalism Association’s 2023 award for outstanding culture reporting. “The narrative opens with a journey that takes the reader into a specific world, and is well-sourced on the impact of this blend of tradition and technology on this one village as well as on the wider picture,” the jury cited.

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