Who is Kendall Beck, aka “KendalltheBeck”?

Good question.

No bio available

There’s no official bio, and no internet footprint before 2023, just an elusive and enigmatic woman (young, but of indeterminate age) who punches her way through social media with a forward-facing trademark seriousness, but not without implicit humor and an implicit wink. In her videos about Japan, Kendall, who has 455K followers on Instagram and 4.7M likes on TikTok, manages to pull you into a version of the country that feels both wildly specific and strangely intimate. Her lens doesn’t focus on temples or tourist traps. Instead, she’s interested in the things people really care about, little details that tell you much more than you would expect about the psychology behind Japanese culture.

Take fruit. In one video, Kendall announces, “I’m about to do the stupidest thing I’ve done in Japan.” After perusing a store that sells a $200 cantaloupe, fifty-dollar grapes or a fifteen-dollar kiwi, she then sets out to buy the biggest and most expensive strawberry in Japan — a single, massive red jewel that costs twenty-five dollars. The camera lingers on its hugeness, and Kendall’s reaction is somewhere between awe and absurdist glee (without ever actually smiling too terribly much). “How?” she asks. “How can Japan possibly grow them this big?” She eats it on camera, quietly astonished. She admits that it’s the best strawberry she’s ever eaten, “unreal juicy” with a sweet aftertaste. It’s a strange little luxury that says everything about how Japan approaches perfection.

Addictively entertaining videos about Japan

Then there’s the heat. In another segment, Kendall becomes a kind of tour guide for Japan’s summer survival toolkit: neck coolers, wearable air conditioners, frozen towels, sprays that keep your shirt chilly, even products for your dog. It’s part product review, but mostly anthropology. 

And finally, the cuddle cafés. She walks viewers through the logic of a place where people pay simply to be held, not for sex, not for spectacle, but for softness. “If you’ve worked sixty hours this week,” she says, “you might just want an hour of affection.” It’s a line that shows that Kendall’s real superpower lies in spotting the strange, the beautiful, and the gently sad.

That brings us back to the question: who is she? You kind of already know, in a way: she is a gamer, or so she says, who lives in Japan. She is not very tall, or so she tells us. But you also kind of don’t know. Her name probably isn’t really Kendall Beck, because she arrived online with this moniker no earlier than 2023, on YouTube (looking, actually, like a rather different person). 

Kendall Tells Us Who She Is

She has addressed this question, who she is, but only in a way that only creates more questions: “For everyone sliding into my inbox with ‘Tell me more about yourself’-here’s your one-time exclusive, VIP, never-before-seen answer! I’m a traveler, a storyteller, and probably sipping on matcha right now. I explore, I create, and I post for YOU. Now, do me a favor – pin this post so we can retire that question forever.” 

And this, on Facebook: “Okay, let’s clear the air! I get asked a lot about myself, so here’s the deal—I’m Kendall, a solo travel enthusiast who fell head over heels for Japan. I share my journey to inspire your own adventures. But, please, no more ‘Can you tell me more about yourself?’ DMs! I read every message and truly appreciate all the love, but it’s all here in my posts.”

Evasive? A little bit, yes!

Not only do we not know who the real Kendall is, she adopts a different persona depending on the forum. In her TikTok/IG videos, of course, she explores Japan’s obscurities (she would be the perfect contributor for Oblivioni, come to think of it); on Reddit (as “Beckster”), she presents a very different, much more anonymous persona, which is entirely focused on gaming. “Confused about how this patch impacts DPS,” she writes, looking for help. She is on OnlyFans as well, and subscribers say that her OF account is really really great: “Just an FYI,” writes one fan on Reddit. “I was hesitant to sub[scribe] in fear of her being a typical influencer on OF that doesn’t follow through. I’m happy to say I subbed and can guarantee you won’t be disappointed.”

Which KendalltheBeck is for you? Well, I like Kendall’s ironic and deadpan tour guide persona. In the end, Kendall’s Japan isn’t the one you see in guidebooks. It’s the one hidden in vending machines and QR codes. The one you visit for the fruit, but move to for the humanity.

And one more thing….

I’ve been trying to think of how to address chess writer Jon Jacobs’ condescending dismissal of female chess players who have become popular on social media. “I invented the phrase, ‘chess twerker’ …. two months ago,” he wrote in March. “It shimmied into my head from the moment I began following several leading chess influencers’ feeds on X and (especially) Instagram. But more recently I’ve begun questioning my initial feeling that those influencers are doing the chess community a disservice by placing their lifestyles as pretty young women at the center of their content streams.”

In the end, he has decided these women in chess, whom he still insists on disparaging as “twerkers,” may be ok after all. 

“If fashion and makeup and snippets about dating are what floats female viewers’ boats,” he writes, “then perhaps the streamers who I called out as ‘chess-twerkers’ are doing good by getting more women and girls interested in chess.”

This is, of course, all appalling. The women he thought did chess “a disservice” do not twerk, of course, and so calling them chess twerkers is itself a disservice, a nasty lie of a putdown. They have committed no offense other than being “pretty young women” who, along with chess, also post about their lives on social media. Almost everyone, incidentally, posts personal information about their lives on social media. Including Jon Jacobs, pictured below, looking genuinely ravishing in a gorgeous shirt and a gorgeous head of hair. So why should social posts make women into “twerkers” any more than Jacobs himself? Finally, his conclusion that women will be drawn to chess for “fashion and makeup and … dating” is an insult disguised as praise. 

FULL DISCLOSURE: I once had an unpleasant professional interaction with Jacobs, so I don’t like him, and I am perhaps biased. You can factor that into your evaluation of my critique. 

^^^

Kalyee Srithnam, who wrote this article, is at work on a book and a film.