In Korea, a YouTuber is making millions by weaponizing a Neutral Mask to slaughter the only people left with Skin in the Game — small business owners. This is a Moral Rent-Seeking operation that turns the producer’s survival tactics into a public sin.
1. The Predator: Zero-B (The Merchant of Malice)
(1) Introduction
In Korea, there is a YouTuber who makes millions every month by stripping down the ingredient costs of small restaurants. His name is Zero-B. After struggling as a cooking YouTuber for two years, he pivoted to a more lucrative path: attacking small business owners.
Take his main content for example. He finds a ramen shop that uses factory-made OEM soup bases instead of boiling bones for 24 hours. He then frames it as “The Click” (Ddal-kkak) — an onomatopoeia implying the owner does nothing but a simple mouse click to assemble a bowl while pocketing a 500% margin. And he use the word “Chang-ryeol”. This isn’t just a slang for overpriced. It’s a social branding of shame. When Zero-B calls a small business owner’s product Highway Robbery, he is performing a Linguistic Execution. He strips away the owner’s right to set a price and invites the mob to witness a ‘fair’ lynching. He provides cost breakdowns to point out a lack of sincerity in the production process. (Note: Chang-ryeol = This term originated from a celebrity’s failed food brand)
I must emphasize his use of “Ddal-kkak” as a linguistic trigger. In Korean slang, it implies earning money far too easily. He never explicitly calls the owner a scammer. Instead, he meticulously sets the stage so the mob can scream “Scam!” for him. By using the “Click” metaphor, he subtly nudges the audience while evading legal accountability.
I consider him “Evil” for two reasons. First, he is consumed as an Angel defending consumer rights. Second, as a former cook himself, he knows damn well that food costs are more than just raw ingredients. Yet, he deliberately omits the entire operational process to portray owners as greedy predators overcharging for cheap ingredients.
By global standards, the reaction would be: “Who cares what he charges? That’s the producer’s sovereignty. If it’s too expensive, don’t buy it. He’s not selling poison, so why the hell are you counting his beans?” That is the rational response. But in Korea, where consumer sovereignty has degenerated into collectivistic vigilante under the name of democracy, this demonic act becomes a Sanctified Taboo. This is the core theme of this article.
(2) Why His Content is Ethically Bankrupt
Is “Assembled Food” a Crime?
In the U.S. and Europe, few restaurants cook everything from “A to Z.” To do so, you must drastically limit your menu and produce in “Fordist” batches. But then, you lose menu variety and customers stop coming. The standard is a hybrid: one signature item made from scratch, while the rest are “Heat-to-Serve” from suppliers like Sysco. Because labor costs are so high, survival is impossible without shifting to a capital-intensive model.
When I ran my own German pub, I designed the menu this way. I could sell at a premium for the exotic factor while reducing kitchen labor costs by using Heat-to-Serve items. It was my hybrid solution for Handmade quality via simple assembly. If you make everything by hand, labor costs spike and production drops, forcing you to charge even more. If you can’t do that, assembling is the only realistic choice.
Zero-B’s method of attacking assembly is insidious. He uses the phrase The F*cking Click. He doesn’t say they cook lazily or they just reheat. Once the consumer hears the “Click” metaphor, they naturally tell themselves: “Wow, he’s just ‘clicking’ his way to a 400% margin while I work my ass off?” The key is that the consumer says it, not Zero-B. He exploits the mob’s double standard—demanding sincerity at a cheap price—to brand anyone who can’t meet that impossible paradox as incompetent. It is a brilliant form of malice.
However, if you hate buying OEM products that are simply reheated, then just order from a place that makes food by hand. Failing to distinguish whether it’s handmade or an OEM product—and thus feeling cheated—is merely the incompetence of consumers, myself included; it is not a sin committed by the producer. On the contrary, the producer’s skill in making it taste as though it were crafted from scratch is impressive.
(3) Why Food Tastes Worse: The Millstone of Taxes, Regulation, and High Labor Costs
In my ongoing series [The 51% Legal Dictatorship], I argue that the core principles of the Democratic Welfare State—Regulation, High Labor Costs, and Taxes—degrade manufacturing competitiveness. A prime example is the Korean-Chinese restaurant. Consumers are right: Jajangmyeon (black bean noodles) doesn’t taste as good as it used to. But it’s not because owners are lazy. It’s because high labor costs, regulatory compliance, and taxes have made it impossible to cook with “Wok-hei” (the breath of the wok).
In the old days, all you needed was an LPG tank, a wok, and an open window. You could freely use lard (pig fat), which provides a much richer flavor than vegetable oil. The cost of a chef who could handle a high-heat wok was low. Immigration enforcement was lax, so many used Chinese cooks. If the food tasted bad or hygiene was poor, the market naturally eliminated them.
Today is different. Using lard and high-heat woks triggers strict fire, water, and hygiene regulations. Even a small shop requires at least $150,000 in facility investment because lard attracts pests and clogs drains. Fire risks are high, and landlords charge more rent for Chinese restaurants. In this climate, you cannot sell a $7 bowl of noodles while paying a chef a $5,000 monthly salary. You either go bust or buy a pre-made sauce pack and “click” it onto the noodles. Even with this “Click Business,” you make less profit than in the old days. To find real taste, you must go to an old shop in the countryside that is exempt from new regulations and has a landlord who doesn’t care about building maintenance. Alternatively, you can go to a Chinese omakase that charges $30 a bowl to experience that nostalgic taste. Expecting your own salary to rise out of thin air while demanding that a Chinese chef, who wrestles with high-powered flames, keeps the price of a bowl of jajangmyeon frozen in time is absurd.
The point is this: Taxes, Regulation, and High Labor Costs have ground the flavor of our food into dust. It’s not because owners want an easy life. Merchants know better than anyone that competing on taste and service alone is the most capital-efficient way to win. But the Democratic Welfare State puts the producer into a millstone and grinds away all profit. To survive, they must sacrifice taste. Flavor didn’t die because of the owner’s laziness. It was murdered by the Millstone of Democracy.
2. How to Become a “Good Devil”
Zero-B is, at his core, a “Wrecker” (Cyber-bully) who thrives by framing others as villains. Yet, consumers worship him as a God who produces sincere and informative content. He has succeeded. This provides a chilling insight into how one can become a Good Devil in the creator economy.
(1) The Myth of Neutrality: “I’m Just Providing Information”
How Image Becomes Narrative
In Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, he analyzes the case of Abbé Pierre, a charity worker who was immensely respected in 1950s France. Barthes argues that when a neutral image is provided in fragments, the public assembles those pieces into an inevitable myth. Barthes focused specifically on appearance:
- The Hair: Cut half-short, devoid of style or artifice. It’s more than a sign; it’s an ideology of rejecting fashion. People see unstyled hair and instinctively believe, “This man is a saint.”
- The Beard: An unkempt beard suggests a wild priest, free from the constraints of the Bishop or the Church. It conveys the ideology of a Priest of the People who refuses to submit to authority.
In France, where aristocratic tradition runs deep, the irony is that anyone who smells of liberation theology can still win the crowd. Barthes warned that such beautiful and moving images might serve as an alibi for the social duties one is actually supposed to fulfill. While I agree with Barth’s framework, I believe that an individual’s only social obligation is to respect the freedom of others. On the contrary, the state frequently oppresses individual liberty. In this regard, Zero-B is an enemy of freedom, obstructing small business owners from engaging in free commerce and consumers from evaluating freely. While posing as a “Neutral Expert” with a smug attitude of “You didn’t know it was this easy to make money, did you?”, they are actually making easy money themselves by denouncing others. The attitude of consumers is equally repulsive. From a consumer’s perspective, if it tasted good when they ate it without knowing, and they were satisfied with the price, that should be the end of it. If they were dissatisfied with something, looking for another shop is the proper way to take responsibility for one’s own life. This means that whether something was made easily or with difficulty is not a criterion for judging utility. This sadistic attitude of demanding, “You must suffer more to earn my money,” is a reversal of the victim mentality that Koreans are steeped in. Seeing people appeal to others to “tell them the truth they don’t know” when they cannot even judge for themselves whether something tastes good or bad, it is only natural that Korea has become the worst kind of populist nation.
The Myth of Neutrality in Search of Truth
Watch his videos. He buys ingredients in 10kg bulks just to use 10g. He throws these bulk-purchased ingredients onto the table with exaggerated motions. This subtly communicates the ideology: “I am a crusader who spares no expense to protect the consumer’s right to know.” He carves out a saintly persona, contrasting himself with small business owners who struggle over every cent. Even the process of calculating costs is shown with complex, theatrical gestures—using precision scales and cross-referencing recipes online. The audience is left with the impression of Professionalism. He never says he is neutral or professional. The key is that he makes people feel it through his actions. Ultimately, Zero-B delivers the ideology that small business owners are overcharging. But He avoids mentioning specific names, instead attacking abstract categories. By claiming, “I am only delivering information” or “I am serving the public’s right to know,” he skillfully evades the arrows of criticism.
Why is neutrality a myth in a democratic society? In a democratic society, victims tend to become the judges. This is because victimhood evokes pity and triggers a collective fear of “I might be next.” Once you claim victimhood, people listen, and it becomes difficult to criticize you. Consequently, someone like Zero-B, who spoon-feeds neutrally people reasons why they are “victims,” is easily glorified as a champion of justice. Enlightened by the fury of thinking, “I finally see the Matrix I was blind to!” the masses begin to swing their clubs. You must beware of those who try to drive you into rage, fear, and envy. Traveling with the herd can be exhilarating, but chasing dopamine inside that mob will cost you your reason—the very capacity to endure pain and judge for yourself. This is neither the path to building wealth nor the way to living a free life.
Barthes warned that when an image becomes a myth and the public trusts the messenger, they start to view the message as a universal truth. The public sees Zero-B’s exaggerated actions and imagines a God protecting consumer rights. They trust his message. But he is neither a saint nor a guardian. He is a devil selling ideology for private gain.
When It Comes to Selling His Own Products, He Is Anything but Neutral
Meanwhile, for the products he promotes via corporate sponsorships or his own YouTube shop, he focuses solely on performance and taste. He never discloses the raw material costs, the advertising fees, or his own commissions for those items. Look at this exquisite contradiction! He attacks other people and companies over their cost of production, yet the moment he sells his own goods, he preaches about utility. He actually knows value comes from subjective utility, not Material cost. In a video for a food waste disposer, he went as far as grinding an entire glass soju bottle to show off the machine’s power. The shock value was high (and the advertiser was reportedly thrilled), but why was there no cost-based analysis in this video? By his own logic, he should have exposed that the screws and plastic in that machine cost $0.1 but sell for $100—a 1,000% margin. When he promotes Dubai Chocolate, why does he only talk about how delicious it is? He should be exposing the raw material cost of the cocoa and the commission he pockets. But the public, already under his spell, fails to see this blatant double standard.
He is a classic Populist—using the public’s sensitivity to cost to seize power, arming them with the armband of morality to attack small businesses, all while securing his own rent-seeking profits through “The Click” business leveraged on public trust. Here is the part where I see him as the Devil among Devils.
(2) The Myth that Price Comes from Input
The idea that price is derived from inputs—materials and labor—is the core argument of Marxist Left-wing economics. Because the public accepts this instinctively, Zero-B designs his content around this formula. Consumers harbor a perpetual Victim Mentality, feeling they are always being cheated. When they see a high output relative to input, they explode in anger: “Why are you charging that much for something I could do myself?”
In contrast, the Austrian School sees it differently. Even if you use a 10-cent ingredient, if there is subjective utility, there is no problem charging $10 or $100. Apple excels at this. However, from a Leftist perspective, this is an unpardonable scam. This is why Apple-haters in Korea attack Apple’s marketing as vibe-chasing. Before I used their products, I also thought they were just items for hipster poseurs. However, after actually using the product, I could accept Apple selling a phone for $1,000 or $2,000—even if it’s made from silicon derived from sand and $100 worth of plastic—because the utility it provided was real.
The belief that price comes from input stems from the Marxist ideology of shifting Entitlement to the workers. If you applied this exact same logic to the general public and told them, “The cost of your labor is just your grocery bills and minimum wage. We cannot evaluate you based on the added value or utility you create for the company. Therefore, we are cutting your salary,” they would absolutely lose their minds. They would scream, “Do you have any idea how much money I’ve made for this company?!” Why does this very same logic suddenly mutate into a test of “the sincerity of labor” when applied to small business owners and producers? If you are dissatisfied with a specific shop, that is a problem unique to that shop alone; the entire industry should not be dragged under fire.
The reason salaried employees receive high salaries is not due to their pure labor, but because capitalists have built a complex chain of Roundabout Production—encompassing brand value, client networks, production technologies, and manufacturing processes. The capitalist takes on the risk of potentially losing their entire capital. This is why individuals with the exact same accounting skills or document-drafting abilities command market values that differ by dozens of times when working for a local mom-and-pop shop versus working for Samsung or Google.
Capitalists are not exploiting workers; rather, they are benefactors who enable those workers to earn salaries they could never possibly achieve on their own. Is the labor productivity of Americans the highest in the world because every single American is a genius? Of course not. It is because America is home to numerous corporations with high capital investment efficiency and superior productivity. If an employee’s labor alone could generate enough added value to match their current salary, they should step out into the field and start their own business right now—a path that offers a far more liberated life. Failing to do so, while remaining trapped in the frame that “capitalists are exploiting me” while staying employed, is nothing but cognitive dissonance and a self-confession of one’s own incompetence.
Thus, the idea that price comes from input has nothing to do with the truth of capitalism. According to that logic, one inevitably thinks, “The workers do all the work, so what do entrepreneurs do besides providing money?” This makes it difficult to understand that Entitlement belongs to the person who created the system where wealth is generated. Capital and systems are not “Manna” that suddenly dropped from the sky when we woke up one morning. To establish the chronological order of existence first, You need a firm to hire workers; having workers alone does not create a firm. Yet, Korea has become a society that defends Communist pricing theories under the guise of democracy. For further critique of the labor theory of value, please refer to the following article.
(3) Abstracted Targeting: Predating on the Defenseless
A YouTuber who targets a specific mega-corporation or a single famous restaurant risks a counter-offensive. Content like “Eating McDonald’s for 30 days” or exposing food ingredients can lead to bankruptcy if the claims aren’t backed by ironclad evidence.
This is why Zero-B targets small business owners who are too busy surviving to afford a legal team. He abstracts his enemy. Instead of naming a specific shop, he attacks an entire category—say, all Japanese ramen shops. Since the law doesn’t grant the right to sue to those without specific individual interest, these owners have no way to appeal, even if they are wronged. It is the consumer’s role to direct that anger toward the ramen shop in their own neighborhood. This maximizes the destructive power while granting Zero-B legal immunity.
When he once attacked a major snack brand (Poca-chip), claiming it contained too little potato, he faced a fierce rebuttal and the risk of a lawsuit. Since then, he has stayed away from corporate giants. He also avoids hipster hotspots like London Bagel Museum, which have the resources to fight back. In those shops, a bagel with a raw material cost of $0.40 is sold at 8 to 10 times that price (often using factory-made OEM dough). Zero-B avoids them like the plague.
Instead, he obliterates the value of the local ramen shop’s marketing, delivery fees, and labor, deepening the negative perception: “Why is this so expensive if it’s from a factory?” This damage is invisible.
- The Visible: Exaggerated gestures, calculators, consumer rights.
- The Invisible: Market principles, producer sovereignty, taxes.
In a degenerate democracy, using the Visible to crush the Invisible is considered justified violence. This is because democracy has an asymmetric preference for the short-term and the visible. This is the very logic pointed out by scholar like Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat believed that legislative power should not be granted to the masses, as they are incapable of calculating or understanding “what is unseen.”
3. Degenerate Democracy Turns Consumers into Gods: Digital Jacobinism
From a global perspective, two things are shocking. First, that such a Devil YouTuber exists. Second, and more importantly, that this behavior is socially celebrated.
Why does Zero-B reign as a God of consumer rights while selling a partisan political ideology that frames producers as exploiters? It is because Korea’s democracy has degraded to an extreme where the Consumer wields absolute power. Most people don’t realize the horror of this until they themselves stand in the dock as a producer.
This reminds me of the Jacobin Club during the French Reign of Terror. They plundered producers and executed aristocrats, merchants, and landowners under the guise of neutrality and the public good. Zero-B is the Robespierre of 21st-century Korea. Instead of a blade, he holds a calculator; instead of a guillotine, he uses YouTube Shorts.
(1) The Public Reaction: Addicted to the Dopamine of the Digital Guillotine
In a truly liberal or republican worldview, the reaction should be: “If it’s too expensive, don’t buy it. Why are you harassing a private business?” But Zero-B makes millions a month because the public’s reaction is overwhelmingly positive. The mob is divided into three categories:
- 33% Executioners: They live in a binary world where the producer is Evil and the consumer is Good. To them, a $5 bowl of soup sold by someone working 12 hours is real food, while a $20 pasta sold by someone working 5 hour is a scam. Just not going to the restaurant is never an option for them. They mask their envy for the successful with the morality of the crowd.
- 33% Hypocritical Bystanders: They send donations and encouragement, asking him to keep fighting for the public good. They seek valuable information as consumers while selectively ignoring the inconvenient truth that prices include invisible costs like rent, taxes, and regulation.
- 33% Dopamine Addicts: They comment, “Do the pizza place next!” or “Expose the chicken shop!” They want to consume the raw material costs—which anyone could find via GPT—through Zero-B’s exaggerated Justice-porn. They are no different from the Roman crowds turning their thumbs down as gladiators died in the Colosseum. They demand more blood for their daily fix.
(2) Why Do Korean Consumers Attack Producers Instead of Just Not Buying?
As consumers cheer for Wreckers like Zero-B and deny the subjective utility created by producers, the only things that will remain are soulless mega-franchises and fleeting trends like Dubai Chocolate. Dogmatic consumer movements are ruthless toward small business owners they know they can defeat, yet fail to dismantle the corporate giants and franchises that are stronger than them. This oppresses the freedom of production and deprives the market of the opportunity for diverse products to compete, which would otherwise generate greater economic welfare and GDP. If the market is left only with products from producers that Zero-B cannot analyze, those very producers will jack up their prices even higher. I see here the Sanctification of Evil, which goes beyond the Banality of Evil.
Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann vs. Robespierre and the Digital Jacobins
Hannah Arendt, in discussing the Banality of Evil, focused on the coldness of Adolf Eichmann. He didn’t make his decisions because he believed he was Good. He had simply outsourced his moral judgment to the bureaucracy. It was a mechanical diligence devoid of humanity—that is the “Banality of Evil.”
But Robespierre and the Digital Jacobins are different. They sanctify evil. They haven’t stopped thinking; rather, they have defined the Visible as Good and the Invisible as Evil, believing themselves to be Crusaders of Justice. Based on a single piece of fragmented info (raw costs), they treat the “Invisible”—entrepreneurial risk and regulatory compliance costs—as $0. This is far more dangerous than Arendt’s banality. Telling someone who believes they are Good that they are actually Evil triggers a far more violent emotional backlash.
The scariest part? Democracy anonymizes this demonic nature by dividing it by 1/N. No matter how wrong an action is, if everyone does it together, the guilt evaporates instantly. In revolutionary France, the Public Opinion served as a shield, allowing Robespierre to execute producers in the name of the public good with no one taking individual responsibility.
In such a society, criticizing this behavior as Demonic is a terrifying task. To criticize someone’s morality under your real name carries heavy responsibility. I myself am now relegated to writing this on an English blog after being lynched for leaving a critical comment on Zero-B’s channel. Arendt’s devil was colorless and odorless. But Zero-B’s devils are drunk on Chocolate—the cheap sense of justice and moral superiority granted by a degenerate democracy. It is the most evolved form of violence: the sublimation of evil into entertainment.
The Anatomy of Evil: A Comparison
| Category | Banality of Evil (Arendt/Eichmann) | Sanctification of Evil (Digital Jacobins/Zero-B) |
| Psychology of the Aggressor | “I’m just a clerk following orders.” | “I am a hero manifesting justice.” (Narcissism) |
| Key Figure | Adolf Eichmann | Robespierre, Zero-B |
| Pretext for Attack | System efficiency, State mandates | Moral Binary, Consumer’s Right to Know |
| Position of the Victim | A number in a ledger to be erased | A fraud to be mocked and humiliated |
| Revenue Model | Salary and promotion | Views, Donations, Affiliate links |
| Cold Conclusion | Evil through the absence of thought. | Evil through the absolute conviction of one’s own righteousness. |
4. Conclusion — The Age of the Digital Guillotine: Where is the Producer’s Sovereignty?
Most Cyber-wreckers who fuel their engines with public outrage eventually collapse under their own weight. This downfall usually happens via two paths:
- The Trap of Hypocrisy: The moment their mask of neutrality slips—revealing that they call others’ margins plunder while laundering their own as “information fees”—the glass facade shatters into a million pieces.
- Stimulus Inflation: The mob always demands more blood. Eventually, the wrecker targets a titan they cannot handle—a mega-corporation, the government, or a massive fandom—and is slaughtered by the very real physical force of a massive lawsuit.
However, for creators, small business owners, and intellectual producers, the real lesson isn’t in their eventual downfall. It is the cold, hard formula they discovered for printing money in this degenerate era.
If you wish to survive (or thrive) in a corrupted democratic market, memorize this formula:
- Select Your Target: Pick a producer who lacks the resources for a legal defense and is easy to frame as an object of public envy.
- Castrate the Context: Delete all mention of subjective value and risk costs. Throw only fragmented, naked facts. Let the consumers handle the outrage; you just handle the directing.
- Launder with Morality: Hide your pursuit of private profit behind the sanctuary of Consumer Sovereignty(Morality) and Neutral Information.
This is not an invitation to become a devil. It is a sovereign defense mechanism to ensure you do not become prey in a battlefield infested with demons.
- Escape the Input Trap: The moment you agree that your price is derived solely from material costs and labor hours, you place yourself under the calculator of devils like Zero-B. Boldly declare that price is derived only from the subjective value and scarcity you provide.
- Build Antifragile Branding: Don’t just sell a product. Sell a narrative and a philosophy that a wrecker can neither replicate nor analyze. They can strip down your raw costs, but they can never strip down your Sovereignty. This is why no one judges an iPhone by its material cost—it is armored by the myth of Steve Jobs and the fortress of Apple’s design philosophy. (I will analyze this romantic myth in our Democratic Citizen’s Brain series.)
- Face the “51% Dictatorship”: Democracy wants to view your profit as a communal resource. They may call you a friendly owner today, but they are ready to send you to the guillotine tomorrow based on a single 60-second clip from a wrecker like Zero-B. Only when we pierce through the contradictory demands of consumers and workers can we begin to devise a way to escape from their tyranny of the majority.
“Don’t be the Victim, be the Sovereign.”
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