why is my freezer steak tweeting nihilism: the steakumm saga

Picture this: it's 2020, you're clinging to sanity, and a frozen steak your mom used to eat after school called SteakUmm is now tweeting in the hopes of turning you into a socialist. But... what? Can one be radicalized by hot dog grade meat? Is what's being sold here an idea or microwaveable meat slop? In our penultimate installment of the Sentient Brands series, Jamie gets into the weeds with the mind behind the SteakUmm account, writer and social media director Nathan Allebach. Spoiler alert: we do, indeed, live in a society.

Follow Nathan here: https://beacons.ai/nathanallebach?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaw8UJ_ctC-xxP2HrkYDPA5-9p2LBtn_w_NQsXsZhvZeBBYwiEzyZ6LooY_aem_Dm_8G9fFWhqyK0YAyD1JzQ

Read Nathan's history of sentient brands: https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/brand-twitter-jokes-history.html

Follow Yedoye Travis: https://www.instagram.com/yedoye_/?hl=en

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also Media Joy.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sixteen sixteen.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look back at the Internet's main characters, talk to
them about how their moment affected them and what that
says about us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus,
and this week we are bravely concluding our series on
sentient brands that occasionally get to horny on social media

(01:15):
Play the Horn. But before we head into the final
installment of this series, I feel the need to slow
us down for a moment because I'll be honest, I
am maybe it's obvious susceptible to the enjoyment that comes
with kind of revisiting this branded goofy moment on social media,

(01:35):
one that we'll discover continues into today at the Teetherer
for Thursday, to the point where I am kind of
worried I haven't been critical enough of this movement, and
that's motivated quite a bit from the fact that the
guests on this series are funny, kind, normal people who
I genuinely like and who I want to like me

(01:57):
many such cases. So I'll repeat that what I'm about
to say isn't a criticism of the guests, but it
is just a little scary that brands were successfully becoming
our friends on the Internet for a while there, right,
I mean, and I know that there are so many
bigger fish to fry at the moment, But I was

(02:20):
scrolling the other day, as I've made it my job
to do so it isn't sad, and I came across
this old subway takes video with the wonderful comic Yudoy Travis.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
And so what's your take?

Speaker 5 (02:33):
A society went down a very dark path by making
commercials funny.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
One hundred percent of great funny commercials downfall civilizations.

Speaker 6 (02:39):
Absolutely, And why.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
So because we've blurred the lines between what's rayl and
what's not. Because as we look at social media, everybody's
now primed to make them palatable to advertisers. So they're
now fabricating a reality.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
That's why, like Oscar Meyer Wieners is like tweeting out ebombings.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Literally, like all these brands are talking to each other
to what is going on.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
Would you prefer for commercials to be boring? Yeah, like
informative like an infomercal. Absolutely, just like here's an Accura,
you can drive it. Yes, you don't appreciate the entertain
at all.

Speaker 5 (03:07):
I would like to buy things based on what they do.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
And yeah, he's completely right, it is weird. And while
this video came out in late twenty twenty three, and
you'll find that Twitter today is a total wasteland for
virtually anything. Now, the sentient brand movement continues and is
alive well and still has some of the smartest and
funniest people in the world behind them. And this has

(03:32):
always been true. The best joke writer I've ever met
got his start writing copy at Groupon because you've got
to live. I mean, this podcast probably just served you
one million ads to join the police and overdose on
diet pills because that's how I have to pay my rent.
It's a mess, and the fact that these jobs, as

(03:54):
our guest Amy Brown pointed out last week, can pay
not great, but certainly better than a public school teacher
is patently ridiculous. I just hope that these same funny
people will be given opportunities they deserve to express that
creative voice as themselves and actually get paid for it,

(04:17):
because no matter how many times I laugh at the
weirdness of a brand today, there is no brand that
deserves that, and there are thousands of really cool creative
people that do so. Shout out to Yadoy for screwing
my head back on correctly, and follow him at the

(04:37):
links in the description He's great. Okay again, if you
haven't heard the first two parts of this series, I
recommend you go back and do so, because this week
we are reaching the climax of sentient brands bringing us
into the present day. So we left off with Amy
Brown and the ever escalating Wendy's Twitter feud culture of

(05:00):
about twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, the peak example of
Internet marketing harnessing the anger and pettiness that was inherent
to the platform, and it certainly didn't hurt that this
also happened at the peak of clickbait culture. But as
with any tack on social media, people are only dazzled
with something for so long, and soon enough the brands

(05:23):
needed to find a new way to keep their audience entertained.
And so, dear listener, a road diverged in a wood.
Stay with me here, everybody, and lo and behold, there
are but two paths to take nihilism and horny. I know,

(05:44):
I know why not both. Well, we'll get there because
there are social media managers who straddle these things, but
our guests this week reached the height of their profession
by choosing one of these divergent paths hard and in
this episode we are exploring path one nihilism. This path

(06:08):
takes advertising any product, any old product, and shocks its listeners,
not only by making the product behave sentiently, but being
aware of the futility of advertising in general. So as
we've discussed where most brands have spent at least half
a decade by the late twenty tens, building out their editorial,

(06:30):
jokey voice and engaging ironically with their followers. These accounts,
the woke brand accounts or the nihilist brand accounts, depending
on what think piece you're reading, got engagement by acknowledging
how pointless and awful it felt to court engagement online.
The two most successful versions of these accounts were moon

(06:52):
Pies the Marshmallow snack Cake. Look around the world's different.

Speaker 6 (07:00):
Now people are overworked.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
Over committed, tired, But the moon is still the moon
still around.

Speaker 6 (07:09):
Still FELDO with Marshmallow.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So here is Moonpie quote tweeting a Hostess Snacks tweet
from twenty seventeen where Hostess Snacks is bragging that Golden
Cupcakes is the official snackcake of the Eclipse.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Moonpie quote tweets Hostess Snacks and writes loll okay, I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
The Moonpie account was run by social media manager Patrick Wells,
and the other successful nihilist Twitter account was the Stakum account,
as run by our guest today Nathan Allapach. And like
any advertising venture, the name of the game was finding
the specific lane your product fell into while still playing

(07:56):
the game everyone else was. For example, Moonpie was just
as sarcastic as other accounts, but their specialty was friendship,
specifically courting friendship with pop Tarts.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Are pop Tarts my friend?

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Meanwhile, pop Tarts was more into a kind of horny
bully vibe. This is what they captioned, an image of
a poptart being used as garnish for a cocktail.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Calm down, it's a virgin like you.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
And I want to reiterate that. Nathan Alibach, who ran
the stake of account, has also basically written the history
of brand Twitter in two pieces in Vulture twenty nineteen's
How Brand Twitter Grew Up and twenty twenty two's when
brands got horny linked in the description and as you
can imagine, as Amy Brown led us in on last Week,

(08:47):
it behooved a lot of these twenty somethings social media
managers of this time to be friendly with one another
in order to strategize these kinds of interactions. And while
no one ever really got harsher with competing brands than
the Wendy's account, the late twenty tens kind of began
this bizarre pattern of social media managers of different brands

(09:08):
basically having their products form parisocial attachments to each other.
No accounting for it. But speaking of Nathan Alibach, he
started at Stakhm in twenty seventeen, and, much like Amy
Brown and Serenity Disco, was in his mid twenties and
it couldn't have been a better time. According to his

(09:29):
twenty nineteen piece in Vulture, this was a moment where
brand memes hadn't quite gone mainstream before.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
From that piece, users talked about brands like they were celebrities,
admired their cleverness, embraced their absurdity, and even wanted to
get roasted for fun. The impact of communities like our
fellow kids dwindled because brands were in on the joke
and intentionally trying to get featured. It was like a

(09:57):
badge of honor. Some brands, like flex Seal were even welcomed.
Many of the top posts went from this brand posted
cringe to this brand actually gets it.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
And going into twenty eighteen, things would continue to get
more experimental. Anyone remember when I hop became I hob.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
I hop as always pancake pancakes, but now where burger
and burgers.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Whoo with Burger's made with all natural black angus be
our seven new ultimate state burgers are so burger and good.
We're even changing our name to I hob Combos starting
at six ninety nine with unlimited fries and a drink
I how Burgers Burger's Burgers, Fries, fries.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Fries presented without comment. But yeah, this was that time.
It's the tail end of BuzzFeed, clickbait aggregate and the
peak of Instagram accounts like the malevolent Fuck Jerry. See
our Disaster Girl episode for more on them. But these
screenshot driven and gage strategies which could be a pain

(11:02):
in the ass for the uncredited joke writer. While Fuck
Jerry made money off of their work. But this was
a boon for brands whose only aim was visibility by
any means, and as things got weirder, social media had
to up the stakes see where I'm going with this

(11:22):
in order to stand out on Twitter. I think my
least favorite example of this that makes my stomach kurdle
to this day is when like local aquariums and petting
zoos were posting pictures of like big animals sexualizing them.
Do you remember this? This is a tweet from the

(11:43):
Monterey Bay Aquarium from late twenty eighteen, posting a picture
of a large otterer. Good luck with this one.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Grant Abby is a thick girl. What an absolute unit
she chunk. Look at the size of this lady. Oh lord,
she coming another internetism.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. But the
Steakum account was a prime target for a weirdo rebrand
of this ilk because Steakham Yeah, they were kind of
a gross looking steak strip from Pennsylvania that you put
in your freezer. They've been around for a long time,
but there wasn't much to say about them.

Speaker 7 (12:26):
Got a minute, then you've got time for a hot
steak sandwich. Keep Steakhum frozen. Til you're ready to eat,
then stick them in the frying pan. Sixty seconds later,
take them off the heat and fix them up. Any Way,
you can try steak them on a roll with cheese
top it. Any Way, you please steak them sandwich steaks.
They're one hundred percent pure beef and nothing else.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Now. I've written a lot analyzing why we view food
defined by class, and I've written a lot about highly
processed meat, arguing for its merits. But steakhum is actually
quite gross looking. I would never buy it. I don't
want it. When a meet can't even photograph appetizingly, what

(13:07):
are we doing? But even Stakham's website seems to understand
what value having this weird internet persona in the twenty
tens added to their brand, because to this day, it
is literally half of their about page on stakom dot com.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
In twenty seventeen, it developed a viral persona on Twitter
that's been described as ironic, existential meta and has earned
media everywhere from The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Vox,
Washington Post, Associated Press, and beyond. This persona has since
expanded to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and seeks to embody

(13:48):
Stakehem's company values as a legacy brand in a strange
new world.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Keep that last sentence in mind, the fact that an
ironic Twitter presence represents Stakham's company values. We'll come back
to that. But when it came to Stakham's Twitter presence,
unlike brands like Denny's or Wendy's that already had some
existing voice, there was just kind of nothing there. Well,

(14:16):
there was something there, but I'm going to let Nathan
Alabach tell you that story in detail in the interview,
because the very logged in at the time that Nathan
took over that account in twenty seventeen would have only
interacted with the Stakehum account in order to cyberbully it.
Stacam did have a previous social media manager, but they

(14:38):
appeared to be thin skinned, defensive, and weirdly into Iinrand,
never a good combination, and all of which made them
perfect fodder for being cyberbullied by Weirdwitter. We can't Weird
Twitter is a short series all its own. Suffice it
to say, weird Twitter was a loosely organized grew group

(15:00):
of Twitter joke writers and comedians, some of whom use
their real names. Others who didn't or tweeted in character
think Drill Drill was doing it the best. I think
we can all agree. But what's important is that most
of this community were pretty squarely anti capitalist, and I
come to you as a humble fan of weird Twitter.
I loved weird Twitter at its peak, and a lot

(15:23):
of the people who were a part of it went
on to become successful comedy writers or performers. A couple
were fucking creeps, but many I consider to be terrific
people and friends. So in this house, we respect weird
Twitter and their various endeavors, except for those few guys. Anyways,
these would be the guys. There are a couple girls,

(15:44):
but let's be honest, these would be the guys that
would absolutely demolish the original stake of social media account
manager and got a kick out of being blocked by
a freezer meat brand, even though they were all well
aware that behind this account was a to this day
unidentified utilitarian weirdo. And this is where Nathan Alibach comes in.

(16:08):
While working for his dad's ad firm in Philadelphia, he
pursued the Pennsylvania based stakehum account because twist Nathan was
a big fan of weird Twitter and seemed to relish
the chance to get to interact with these accounts that
he's been enjoying for years. While it's unlikely that his
favorite joke writers would interact with him a fan, he

(16:31):
knew enough Internet lore to be sure that they would
interact with Stakehum. I know, but this strategy worked really
well at first because Nathan Alibach, in spite of working
in advertising, was working this job as a means to
an end. This is something we've learned in virtually every
interview in this series. So Nathan actually shared the anti

(16:55):
capitalist politics of weird Twitter. But the tricky thing is
he then made his politics the politics of Stakum, and
before he knew it, Stakum was being hailed as the
woke brand on Twitter, even if the build to that
title was slow because it took a while for Nathan
to develop the voice of the account. Here is an

(17:18):
early post he made in late twenty seventeen.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
At some point in your life, you're going to stare
deeply into the eyes of another human being and see
your entire future unfold. At another point in your life,
you're going to stare deeply into a frying pan of
Stakum and get grease splattered in your eye light engagement.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
On this one, the voice isn't quite developed under Nathan's watch.
The Stakum account lightly interacts with Moonpie around this time,
ostensibly trying to interact with other cool brands in the
pursuit of making Stakum a cool brand. But by the
fall of twenty eighteen, the table was fully set, the

(17:58):
freezer was thawed. I'm going to stop. I hate this.
September twenty sixth, twenty eighteen, the stake of Twitter account
under Nathan Alibach goes on a pretty impressive anti capitalist rant,
and so dear listeners performing this monologue is Grant Crater.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Why are so many young people flocking to brands on
social media for love, guidance, and attention.

Speaker 6 (18:29):
I'll tell you why.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
They're isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate
while barely making ends meet, and are living with unchecked
personal mental health problems. They're crushed by student loan debt,
disenfranchised by past generations, and are dreading the future of
our world every day from mass media, addiction and the

(18:55):
struggle tonight just be happy, but to survive this caseaotic
time with every problem happening at once under a microscope.
They grew up through the dawn of Internet culture and
have had mass advertising drilled into their media consumption, and
now they're being resold their childhoods by remakes, sequels, spinoffs,

(19:19):
and other cheap nostalgia, making them more cynical to growth
or authenticity. They often don't have parents to talk to
because they say stuff like you don't know how good
you have it, and they don't have mentors to talk
to because most of them have no concept for growing
up in this strange time, which perpetuates the feeling of

(19:41):
helplessness loneliness. They have full access to social media and
the information Highway, but they feel more alone and insecure
than ever. Being behind a screen twenty four to seven
has made them numb to everything, anxious and depressed about everything,

(20:04):
and vitriolic are closed off toward anyone different from them.
Young people today have it the best and the worst.
There's so much to process and very few trusted, accessible
outlets to process it all through. They go to memes,
They go to obscure or absurdist humor. They go to

(20:25):
frozen meat companies on Twitter and brand Stakhem.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Bless okay, so this got a big media reaction. Stakham
is using anti consumerism to get you to buy Snooze.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Stakhem's new marketing strategy millennial angst with a side of
meat puns.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Stakhem's social media person sounds like they might need a hug.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Stakum is woke now everything is hell.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
So, as Nathan speaks to in our interview, this thread
got a ton of press, but the reception of the
thread was somewhat mixed. Some culture writers enjoyed the post,
while others found the approach pretty pernicious. This is from
Heather Docray in Mashable. The brand's recent monologue was its

(21:18):
most explosive and self aware, yet if only any of
it was real. Docray then dives into the marketing precedent
for what Nathan is doing here. The idea of anti
advertising touching on everything from VW marketing their bug in
the nineteen forties to emphasize the car's small size in

(21:38):
order to contrast the dick swinging big car ads of
the day, will table the Nazi stuff, and all the
way up to a Sprite commercial with Lebron James and
Liliatti from twenty sixteen, where the big joke is that
Lebron knows how advertising works.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
Let's get one thing straight. I'll never tell you to
drink Sprite. Even if I was in a commercial for Sprite,
which I am, or you were watching it what you are,
I would tell you to drink it, no matter what
that q car says. Proh Man say it no.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
But as you know by this point in listening to
this show, all impressions are good impressions for advertisers, and
the company that Nathan works for, all Abach Communications, was
only benefiting from this. But for what it's worth, Nathan
was consistently singled out as the mind behind the stake
of account and defended his work to outlets at the time.

(22:36):
Here's a quote from him in a piece from Vox
in fall twenty eighteen.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
We're trying to create meaningful content, so we're not just
posting nonsense, he explains. There's some substance to it, but
at the same time, it's really light hearted and it's
centered around the community.

Speaker 7 (22:52):
That we built.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
We're not taking sides or having a specific stance on anything.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
There are a few breakout feathers in the stake of
Twitter cap. This twenty eighteen rant was the first, but
the account got a second massive wave of attention in
the early days of COVID lockdown nearly two years later,
when misinformation which I don't know if you remember misinformation
ran absolutely rampant. That was now five years ago. I

(23:21):
don't want to talk about it, but given the brand
voice that Nathan had developed in this account, tackling misinformation
was a perfect topic for Stakeom to take on and
you really just have to hear it to believe it.
April sixth, twenty twenty, once again, rant.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Greater friendly reminder. In times of uncertainty and misinformation, anecdotes
are not data. Good data is carefully measured and collected
information based on a range of subject dependent factors, including
but not limited to, controlled variables, meta analysis, and randomization.

(24:04):
Outliers attempting to counter global consensus surround this pandemic with
amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. Breaking
news stories that only relay initial findings of an event
are not collecting data. We have to be careful in
our media consumption. It can be difficult to know what

(24:26):
to believe in a time when institutional trust is diminished
and the gatekeepers of information have been dismantled. But it's
more crucial now than ever before to follow a range
of credentialed sources for both breaking news and data collection.
All we currently have are limited and evolving metrics that
experts are deciphering and acting upon immediately to the best

(24:49):
of their ability. This terrain leaves many openings for opportunists
and charismatic manipulators to lead people astray by exploiting what
they want to hear. Breaking news and storytelling will always
be spun with interpretive bias from different media perspectives, but
data is a science that can't be replaced by one

(25:12):
off anecdotes. Try to remember this to avoid fear based
sensationalism or conspiracy theories taking over your mind. You can
maintain independent, critical thinking toward institutions without dipping into fringe
conspiracies that get jump started by individual anecdotes being virally
spread as data. It's not easy, but it's necessary to

(25:36):
keep any semblance of responsible online information flow. We're a
frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people
and generate sales, so this is peak irony, But Hey,
we live in a society, so please make informed decisions
to the best of your ability, and don't let anecdotes

(25:57):
dictate your worldview. Okay, stakehem bless?

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, stakhem bless was the sign off. And if by
this point you're like, wow, Grant is so good at this,
I agree. But if after that you're like, but wait,
is this Pennsylvania meat brand remotely woke outside of this
Twitter account, Well you've come to the right place, because I,
Jamie Loftus, am a literal authority on whether meat brands

(26:24):
such as this are being run remotely ethically, and the
answer is probably not. Back in twenty twelve, food publication
grub Street laid out an ongoing federal court battle between
Stakhum and a South Philly mom and pop shop called
Stakum Up, in which the Stakham founder, Gene Gagliardi, spent

(26:45):
six figures on lawyers in a copyright infringement case that
he would eventually lose.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
From that piece, new lawsuit reveals the world's grossest meat
is probably Stakhum's. In courtroom proceedings, the composition of the
meat came to light. The Daily News reports that the
stuff is chopped and formed emulsified meat product that is
comprised of beef trimmings leftover after an animal is slaughtered
and all the primary cuts such as tenderloin, filet, and

(27:14):
rabbi are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a
loaf and sliced, frozen, and packaged. After learning that a
federal judge denied Stakam's claims, their inventor, Geene Gagliardi, was
quoted as saying he did no justice to the meat
world and continue to rant about how the poor quality
of meat and cheese steaks drove him to create his

(27:35):
own sandwich steak. You couldn't serve it to children because
the meat was so tough. You drag it out of
the sandwich and choke on it. Gagliardi is quoted as
saying this was definitely a safety feature.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Apologies to Philadelphians everywhere for the accent work there. He's
still working on his Boston accent to talk to my uncles.
If nothing else. He did no justice to the meat
world is a great sentence, but to be clear.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
So let me be clear.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
While the description of what is in Stakhum sounds pretty gross,
this is not demonstrably worse than your average grocery store
hot dogs production. How do I know that? Maybe read
Raw Dog paperback out next month. The difference here is
you don't see ballpark franks preaching the gospel of fighting
misinformation and soft socialism, and that's for a reason. Their

(28:28):
company's values, as Stakum alluded to earlier, do not back
that up. So in Stakhem's defense, from what I can tell,
the company isn't technically bullshitting by printing the phrase one
hundred percent beef on the front of their box for
all these decades, But there are major missing operative words there,

(28:49):
words like buy product or even one hundred percent processed beef.
Buy product, you know, the stuff that's left over when
the expensive cuts of beef are gone, you know, like
a hot dog. Just and because we've covered what I
think is almost a disproportionate number of stories about processed

(29:13):
meat and men from Philadelphia on this show, Gene Gagliardi
certainly fits the bill for a big personality Philly guy
and also has the claim to fame of being the
guy who invented KFC popcorn Chicken. So when I found
myself asking what are the company values of Stakhum. I
had to look into the history of the company, and

(29:33):
here are some polls from a twenty eighteen Mental Floss
article by Jake Rowson about.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
That Eugene Gagliardi, patriarch of the Gagliardi meatpacking business, raised
the twenty two ounce frozen log of beef products it
would shortly become known as Stakhum, and sent it careening
into his son's angle. Nobody's ever gonna buy it a shit,
he screamed, storming off. Despite his numerous contributions to food service,
he still feels slided by his father, who passed away

(30:01):
in nineteen ninety one and apparently never acknowledged his son's success.
I never got a compliment, he says.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yes, Beneath every weird specific business is the story of
fathers and sons. So well, Stakham certainly has working class
Philly roots, It has the production integrity of a hot dog,
and the company has been sold to two huge conglomerates
over the years, both Hines and Quaker Foods. The brand

(30:32):
could not conceivably be described as woke. So if a funny,
creative young person is promoting his personal politics and values
on the brand account of a company that appears to
have no politics whatsoever. What does it all fucking mean
when we come back my conversation with the man behind

(30:55):
it all, Nathan Alibach. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm
so burned out on eat the rich, prestige media and

(31:17):
feel completely alone in the world on that front. And
here's my interview with the man who turned washed up
freezer meat brand Stakum into a national phenomenon. Here's Nathan Alibach.

Speaker 8 (31:29):
My name's Nathan Alibach. I'm the current social media lead
at a company called Ramp, which is a fintech company,
but previously most known in the niche internet micro celebrity world.
I suppose for being the social media manager behind the
meat brand Stakum, or the frozen beef sheep brand, as

(31:50):
I once referred to enough Sheep.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I honestly did not know Stakhum existed before you, so
thank you for that.

Speaker 6 (31:57):
It's you're welcome.

Speaker 8 (31:58):
Yeah, Like Steakham was this kind of like legacy frozen
meat product from like the nineteen seventies and eighties that
people like the gen X and Boomer generations were very
familiar with.

Speaker 6 (32:09):
It's like latchkey kids.

Speaker 8 (32:10):
You know. It's like parents, parents were like, you like
leave their kids alone, be like here, make some steak
and it's easy. It takes thirty seconds. It was funny
and strange to kind of like give it a new
life through this Twitter persona where people maybe were familiar
with the name because it's such like a memeable name
like steak. Yeah, it's so ridiculous, but uh yeah, happy

(32:32):
to I guess reintroduce it to the world. I mean,
I grew up in a pretty small suburb just outside
of Philadelphia, and my dad was a small business owner
started an advertising agency around the time that I was born.
Before he did that, like he was like he worked
at like a meat packing facility, Like like looking back,
it was kind of all destined to be. I suppose
like he would work the night shift doing that, and

(32:54):
then you would take classes at u arts to yeah,
for like graphic design and yeah. So I kind of
like grew up in and around like advertising. I remember
a lot of kind of like goofy commercials from the
nineties and the early two thousands. Interesting environment to grow
up in. As I got to be like a teenager,
I never in a million years or of stalled myself

(33:15):
working in advertising. I kind of like rebelled became like
at the times kind of like whatever, aimless anti establishment kid. Yeah,
just like very anti consumers when all that. So, I
was like a songwriter. I grew up in like a
hardcore local music scene. It was weird because like growing up,
like all my friends were in bands, we did a
lot of it was all this kind of like anti

(33:36):
establishment vibe. And then like as I got older and
started to realize like, Okay, I'm probably not going to
make it as a musician, and I was just like
kind of bleeding money working dead end jobs. I decided
to give the family this is a whirl. This has
been twenty fourteen, So this is like when social media
platforms were starting to become more commoditized, with advertising really

(34:00):
like a model for it. So I was just like
lucky enough with the timing to kind of get in
at the ground level when there was opportunity and there
wasn't really rules or like people in place that knew
what the hell was going on. So a guy who
kind of grew up on the Internet with a background
in like local like music, community building and songwriting. So

(34:24):
I had been using Facebook and YouTube and other platforms
to like promote music. So I had this, like I
guess of the platforms to kind of give myself enough
juice to get it off the ground at the at
the agency. But yeah, I kind of hated it for
the first few years. I didn't really know what I
was doing. And then the Stakem stuff happened in twenty seventeen,
and that like basically by honestly just so much by chance,

(34:47):
like basically gave me a career because at that point,
like it became this viral phenomenon over like the following
years that got my name on a bunch of lists
and got my name in the mix of other like
social media marketers and advertising professionals where I don't think
I would in a million years been considered among like
the people I've been considered among just because of this

(35:09):
one account that like kind of blew up early on.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
So do you like strike out on your own? Do
you start working at an agency and then strike out
on your own? What does that process like?

Speaker 8 (35:19):
Around the time when the Stakeum stuff started happening, like
we were getting a lot of calls obviously from like
different media companies like in the beginning, it was like
ad Week and huff Post, and then the first like
viral story happened in the very like in January of
twenty eighteen. It was this whole like hashtag verify stakeum
like movement quote unquote on Twitter or like we were

(35:41):
trying to get the account verified and just got like
a bunch of hype behind it. In the midst of
all that attention, Yeah, like I started to like network
and figure out like, Okay, you know, I'm at this
small agency. I don't really have a history that I
can like I don't know, like lean back on and
be like, oh, yeah, like I had this whole thing
planned out, like I knew exactly what I was doing, right,

(36:01):
try to like reverse engineer parts of that. Like before
the show, you and I were talking a little bit
about some of the articles I wrote for Vulture Magazine,
and like that type of stuff was a big part
of how I started to kind of branch out on
my own a bit with freelance writing and just like okay,
bogging and like just trying to like build a little
bit more of a credibility to myself, like since I

(36:24):
just didn't really have a ton of like accolades or
like value I guess to my resume. So yeah, I
just became like, Okay, I'm a stakeem guy, but I'm
also like the guy who sort of writes about weird
niche internet history. By the time the stake ofm account
was going viral and like the end of twenty seventeen
early twenty eighteen, this brand Twitter stuff had been happening
for years and I was like, for the most part

(36:46):
unaware of like all of it.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
So, yeah, when you're building this identity for sake of
how at this point in time did that work?

Speaker 6 (36:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (36:54):
That not too much structure in the beginning. I mean
it was really so much much chance. Because so I
give you context, Like summer of twenty seventeen is when
I started posting on the account. And the only reason
I was even really given the sort of greenlight and
even like wanted to start doing it was because people

(37:15):
were texting me that I think. It was like right
in the middle of August that Joe Rogan had had
on a guest on his podcast for his one thousandth episodes.
It was like this kind of whatever's moment for the show,
and the guest was telling like ridiculous stories about Stakehem.
So like Stakhem prior to this was not active on

(37:36):
Twitter at all, like rewind a hair, because like yeah,
like up until this moment, there was no like there
was no guardrails, there was no precedent. It was just
kind of like the podcast happened. I asked our account executive,
who then asked the marketing manager at stakem, like if
we could start basically shit posting on the steakhum account
because there's no activity there. They saw it as like

(37:56):
a no stakes platform because like they weren't advertising. There
really is a super small audience.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Oh I just understood you were using the other version
of Steaks. It's like, wait, steak not welcome on that platform. Okay, no,
I see what you're saying.

Speaker 8 (38:10):
I see you're So it was like, okay, I mean
this should be creating some buzz, like hopefully people will
be talking about the brand here, but again there's no
like monitoring or context for the team, So it was
kind of just like a shot in the dark, like, hey,
we have the log, let's get on the account.

Speaker 6 (38:24):
So on getting on the account.

Speaker 8 (38:27):
I realized in like the first few days that steakm
had blocked like well over one hundred and fifty maybe
two hundred or so accounts, and they're all like anonymous
weird Twitter shit posting accounts. I'm like, what happened here?
So I started like doing some digging and unblocking all
of these people and tweeting at them, being like what's

(38:49):
going on here? And they're all kind of like, oh,
it's steak them, like steak COM's back, and I'm like,
what is happening? Because we had the agency had acquired
the account in twenty sixteen, and it turned out this
history with the previous Stake of admin on Twitter was
in twenty fourteen. So okay, story short is that whoever
was running this account, it could have been somebody that

(39:10):
worked at Stake and it could have been somebody at
an agency, like I honestly don't know, but it was
just like tweeting really weird, just weird weird stuff through
the account, Like they're tweeting like ironed rand quotes, just
like really bizarre, like like why is this coming from
a brand account? And I guess like weird Twitter as
a community like it does, It's like people started to

(39:33):
notice this and as kind of like an inside joke,
just kind of like making fun of it, and whoever
the admin was didn't take kindly to that. They started
to block people, and as they blocked people, it became
like a streisand effect where then more people from weird
Twitter like, oh my gosh, if you like, if you
dissstake them or whatever, like they'll block you. It would
be really funny. So everybody started to do this and
it started to pile on. And there's this one weird

(39:55):
Twitter user, but I'm not sure if he's still active anymore.

Speaker 6 (40:00):
Is at Is or was Boner Hitler.

Speaker 8 (40:03):
He basically started like a crusade against Steakham, kind of
like leveraging these weird Twitter accounts where he had this
bit saying that his wife left him and like in
the in the heat of like a fight when they
were she was leaving, he like got mad and he
burned his hand on like a pan and threw steak
of at her or something. It was something like this,

(40:24):
Like it was just like a ridiculous bit. When they
blocked him, he became like the sort of ring leader
of this whole thing and really corralled hundreds of these
accounts to try to harass steak them culminated with steakhem
like they tried to publish a rules thing on their bio,
which again backfirecs like the rules onto like what people
can tweet, and then eventually like the stakem admin just

(40:46):
left the account like abandoned it, stop posting, and the
whole thing died. Without that context from before my time,
everyone had taken off, because in the beginning, when I
unblocked all these people and started engaging them, they were
the initial groundswell of engagement that then I've seeded conversations
with Stake more broadly, So it became kind of like

(41:08):
weird self fulfilling prophecy where to me again not having
context of like what I was even really doing or
like what brands were doing. It was all just a
fun gag for me in the beginning. So I was
like interacting with these weird Twitter people who are all
very almost all very anti capitalists or very kind of
like radical as it was like a bit, and like

(41:29):
they liked me personally, like I was able early on
I kind of like revealed to a few of them
like my personal accounts they kind of like was and
I was trying to be as transparent about the whole
thing as I could be even they all ran to
it like I was in all these group chats with
them and like really interesting time. But then as the
account went viral, then after a few months the end

(41:51):
of the year, little by little the community started to
turn on stake them and just be like they felt duped.
I think because then they felt like, oh, like we
were part of like the reason this corporation now is
getting all this positive press essentially, and there was certainly
like some pockets of them just didn't really give a shit,
like some of them were like who cares, Like we
knew this all along, like it was a company, like

(42:13):
what did you expect? But people felt like genuinely betrayed
the marketing I guess with it. So it was really
difficult to navigate because I did feel like I developed
relationships with a lot of them, like with my personal account,
so I knew these people and I thought it was
like really fun. But then like kind of like coming
to learn the sort of ideological tensions was interesting, like

(42:36):
over like the following years.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
You are lending so much of what makes you cool
to a brand? Did your feelings on that change over time?
Like how did that? How did you process that.

Speaker 8 (42:48):
I feel like I've kind of come full circle on
it a bit, Like in the beginning, I hadn't really
thought about it much at all. Like in the beginning,
like I said, it was all just kind of like
nonsense to me. I did not anticipate it blowing up
the way it did. It was fun like coming up
with dumb stuff and like trying to get people's attention
and kind of like navigating community to community.

Speaker 6 (43:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (43:06):
My feelings on it definitely evolved because like at the beginning, yeah,
I felt after all of the tension started unravel, I
certainly felt torn, Like I felt bad.

Speaker 6 (43:14):
I was like, man, like people feel.

Speaker 8 (43:16):
Bad about this, Like I was not my intention to
like manipulate people or whatever. I was trying to like
do my best to play this like stupid and impossible
dance where I'm like posting through a corporate brand account
while also trying to be sincere and like that. I
think that that thread, that like that tension is the

(43:39):
thing that actually made it go megaviral, and it's also
the thing that I was trying to do to like
solve the solve for the tension, And so it didn't
really solve it basically like made the thing blow.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Up, just amplify it. Yet Yeah, because.

Speaker 8 (43:51):
Then people were like, oh my gosh, this brand's like
super self aware and it's like doing cultural commentary and
also at the same time telling us that it's selling
us a product, Like it became my marketing trope that
hadn't really existed at least in online. Now I'm definitely
a lot more chill about the lines between what marketing

(44:12):
is and like what sort of personal branding is and
journalism is. Like these are lines that have continued to
blur since those early days of stake. I'm not just
within like my world, but like the world more broad
Like what makes like when does a person stop becoming
a person and they become a brand?

Speaker 3 (44:29):
You know, now, in twenty twenty five, it sounds kind
of silly to me to be like, oh, you know,
a smart, thoughtful person feeling betrayed by the stake of
Twitter account. I think that you were at like sort
of the tail end of people not always thinking about
how yeah, obviously there's a person behind thisactly.

Speaker 8 (44:51):
I feel like it was at this kind of weird
precipice of a generational divide, where like when you look
at like say twenty twenty onward, especially like in the
TikTok air with social media and how brands interact with
social media, like zoomers and young millennials like are just
so I don't want to say they're not critical of media,
but like they grew up on like these sort of

(45:12):
smart devices and with Internet culture in a way where
like they are more sort of naive and just like
don't really think as much about this stuff the way
that older millennials and younger Gen X people did. So,
like the way Twitter culture used to be in those
like the like twenty say thirteen to twenty eighteen ish era,
Like it was dominated by people who were millennials and

(45:34):
older who had basically been like online forever, Like people
that were online from like the nineties the early two thousands,
like had grown up through like the forum days, and
like had seen how things had evolved into this new
like advertiser model, which to them like really bastardized, like
what Internet culture used to be. The way Rich Kayanka,
the founder of Something Awful, used to describe this was

(45:57):
like the Internet started to go downhill when people stopped
prioritizing the creation of image macros and started prioritizing memes
because it was like before like memes were really a
thing if you wanted to like stand out and get
laughs online, like you had to create something, like you
had to make your own video, you had to design

(46:18):
your own image, and it became like an original thing.
But then years later maybe became a meme. But at
the time it was like it existed in a time
and place that people latched onto. And then like once
the Internet became accessible to literally everybody, and then you
have like generations growing up just on the Internet. It
memes became like the default because it's the most successible,

(46:39):
low hanging fruit that you can share, and like it's
just it wasn't about, hey, how can I make you know,
the most original, weird piece of art or or like
or media possible. It then just became about like, oh
my gosh, have you seen this thing online? I'm gonna
share it from Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to whatever.
So like that piece of it as well, Like when
you look at the way like audiences engage with brands

(47:03):
on TikTok at large, like go to any brand's profile,
any brands common sections, you're not seeing people being like
silence brand. Like the way the algorithms work now, it's
it's it fire hoses out to people in a way
where back in the day when it was much more
like follower driven, linear driven, these people like these more
like critical sort of like anti brand accounts were able

(47:27):
to early on when brands would post like latch on
to something, share it in the group chat and be like, yo,
let's like harass this brand post because this is like trash,
Like we should discourage like this type of content on
the timeline. Like it's it's such an impossible thing to
do now like that, people just don't really try anymore.

(47:47):
It just feels so futile. I have some battle scars.
I had some crazy crazy people from the weird Twitter
community target maing like come after me over the years,
which you know, I know they're not like like necessarily
representative of the whole group or whatever, but yeah, the
account really went like National National during COVID for like

(48:10):
the commentary on misinformation, like that's what you got like
a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in a bunch
of places. And during that era, I had just some
crazy crazy people targeting me.

Speaker 6 (48:22):
This one account. I'll never forget.

Speaker 8 (48:25):
It was somewhat late in the day logged on, I
saw this account had tagged me in a tweet and
it was an anonymous parody account called White Women posting
their ws. There was women posting their ws and then
women posting their l's and they became.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
These Oh I guess I don't know white women specifically
buzzy their debuts.

Speaker 8 (48:44):
Because this was just like it had no followers, it
was just but it had just made the account and
they tagged me in a tweet and I was like
what is this and like didn't really think anything of it.

Speaker 6 (48:54):
It just looked like a ship poster.

Speaker 8 (48:55):
And then the following morning I went to work and
at like tenants am got to call my wife and
she's like, hey, can you like come home? And I
was like, uh, like like sure, like like what do
you what do you need? And she's like, well, the
secret servicer here and like they want to talk to you.
And so I was like what, like will they like
what what what's going on? She's like they won't explain

(49:17):
anything to me, Like you have to come home to
like talk to them. So these guys are at my
doors to agents and I let them in my house.
They're like, do you know why we're here? And I'm like, no,
like what's going on? And they pulled out this iPad
and uh, all in the iPad pulled up this white
women posting their w's Twitter account And in the bio

(49:38):
of this account, it says run by Nathan Albach and
the top tweet on it is I'm gonna kill Joe
Biden or like I'm gonna kill the president like something
like that, which I triggered something in their nets of like.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Oh, that's what they have the alert on for job guys.

Speaker 6 (49:58):
My name the like we saw this. We went up
in the middle of the night and like you need to.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Threat directly threatened the president under your government name.

Speaker 8 (50:07):
They're like, and I was just like, this isn't my account,
the like put your names on it the way. I
had to explain so much context. They're like, well, why
would somebody do this? And I was like, look, I
run this frozen meat brand account and there's people who
hate me online because of it, and they're just like
their eyes are like glazing over, like what is this
guy talking about. There's just so many things like that

(50:27):
that would just all because of this meat account that
I would not have anticipated at the time.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
We'll be right back with more Nathan Allabach, Welcome back
to sixteenth minute. I need to throw away the carpet

(50:54):
in my office because it smells like dog piss, but
I don't want to throw it away because I can't
find the same car again. And it makes me laugh
because it looks like if you killed Sully from Monsters, Inc.
And turned him into a rug. Anyways, here's the rest
of my interview with Nathan Alibach. When did you sort
of decide I'm done with this specific account.

Speaker 6 (51:13):
I mean I felt it waning right away.

Speaker 8 (51:15):
Honestly, after the first year, after that Millennial throat and viral,
I was like, Okay, I've had enough, just because it
was so mentally taxing, like with the way people harass me,
I think, and I hate this even say that because
it's it sounds so like menial, But there really was
like a significant amount of people that came after me
at the time, and I had to grow really thick skin.

(51:35):
It's kind of just like eyed off my back and
like keep working on it, especially because it's just such
a strange thing to like target somebody over. I was like,
there's so many like things happening in the world, and
there was like this dedicated group of people that really.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Part of your job is to behave like but like
a person, but don't react like a person. Like it
just it feels very that of course that's the mostly taxing.

Speaker 8 (52:01):
Yeah, you learned to take it on the chin in
like ninety plus percent of cases. I think the fact
that my personal name and like brand quote unquote, like
my Twitter account was so closely attached to this thing,
it just became like more of a target than I
had I had hoped. It was like the double edged short,
you know, because I was getting all of these accolades
and like public attention from the account. It would go viral,

(52:23):
get a ton of followers, get a ton of business,
like people wanting to work with me on stuff. On
the flip side, was just like a constant wave of
people sending me death threats and like just crazy like yeah,
and sending the secret service to my house.

Speaker 6 (52:36):
I don't know, like I've been.

Speaker 8 (52:37):
Doing it for like four years at that point, very
sick of frozen beef sheet puns and uh yeah, like
I ended up we ended up getting off the account.

Speaker 6 (52:47):
I think later that year like that.

Speaker 8 (52:49):
That December then was the end of the It was
like a six year or seven year relationship with that
client being the end of it and I moved on
to other things. But yeah, it was definitely a tough
time because it was like to think about the landscape
of brands at that point, like I'd been writing about
like the horny brand trend like yes, you're too prior,
and like it was just weird to look at what

(53:12):
was going viral and like what was becoming popular and
trying to think like in terms of a career, like
how can I be part of this and like do
something that's different and do something that's not just like
circling the drain of it. A lot of this which
like no again, no hate like the individual social media
managers like everything's an attention to economy and I get it,

(53:33):
but it definitely like put into perspective like Okay, I've
been doing this for so many years now, like what
is the next step for someone in my shoes? Like
how can you keep doing a career of being online?
Like you just keep getting crazier. So yeah, I don't know.
That was definitely a turning point, I would say, And
how I think about it.

Speaker 6 (53:50):
So how do you.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Move forward from that? How did you sort of keep
things interesting and more balanced for yourself after put in
a post stake of world.

Speaker 8 (54:00):
It's just such a I just love this conversation. Thank you,
Jamie hilarious. Yeah, it's a great question. Like I think
for me, the through line of this whole ordeal or
this whole like whatever like career trajectory has been just
like making sure that I have an identity outside of
this thing. Amy talks about this a lot, just kind

(54:21):
of like making sure that your job isn't your identity
isn't your work.

Speaker 6 (54:25):
Essentially.

Speaker 8 (54:26):
I struggle with that because, like whatever I do, I
want to put my all into it, Like I want
to be noticed for my work internally, like I want
to get paid well, Like I want to grow in
my career. So there's like always a tension there between,
like how much of your life do you want to?
Like when I started this whole thing back in like
twenty seventeen, it was kind of I mentioned this earlier.

Speaker 6 (54:46):
It is kind of coming to the.

Speaker 8 (54:47):
Tail end of my like non career as a songwriter
and a musician, Like I was in a bunch of
bands and like I was, I really wanted to do
songwriting to some extent, like what I didn't really have
any like this illusionment that I was going to make
like a living full.

Speaker 6 (55:02):
Time doing it.

Speaker 8 (55:03):
But I always imagined myself doing it at least part
time on the side, and like trying to make it
like a big part of me makes it always had
been in your entire And as time went on with
the work, like I realized that was just not possible,
because like the way to get really good, especially as
you work with other companies and organizations, like you have

(55:24):
to commit so much time to learning how they operate.
You know, when I'm not posting about this, like I
don't have the creative energy to be like doing writing
in my free time now, or like making the talks
in my free time, Like I have done the work
and now I'm tired. So like that's certainly been the
biggest shift I think in the past five or seven years,

(55:46):
is like I have less and less of that artistic identity.
Like I don't write as much. I journal, but I
don't like publish writing as much anymore. I don't do
music anymore. Once in a while I'll play like an
open mic with some friends just to kind of like
blow some steam off and get.

Speaker 6 (56:03):
Out of the house.

Speaker 8 (56:03):
And I have other hobbies like a garden, a landscape,
like I do a lot, and I got two kids. Now,
not like not like all all is lost by any means,
but certainly like in the context of those past years,
like thinking about trying to kind of like spread your
eggs a bit and not have everything in one basket,
Like that's not a lot more feasible than it does now.
Like now it's like, Okay, getting older, it's harder to

(56:25):
be online all the time. I have to kind of
like consolidate my energy around singular topics, singular platforms, and
it's just hard to establish those boundaries and like maintain
that sense of self outside of work when your work
is so just like dominant, when your job is to
be online for like eight or even many maybe twelve

(56:46):
or fourteen hours a day, like you really do just
like commit so much of your sort of like spiritual
sense of self to the internet, and like it's like
the meme online like people talk about like irony poison,
like you break your brain, and like it really does
become so difficult to establish boundaries and like to figure
out like how to I don't know, like be like

(57:09):
a healthy person outside of that. That's why, like I've
figured out, like they do. They really do try to
like become like I don't know, like they go to
the gym a lot, or like they become like people
that hike a lot. Like you're always trying to kind
of counterbalance all the insane amount of hours you spend
staring at a phone every every week.

Speaker 6 (57:27):
You know, there's like.

Speaker 8 (57:28):
These fake jobs like like YouTuber, social media manager, podcasts
or whatever, and like, sure they're nothing like the strain
of like a like a laborist nine to five, but
there is something spiritually demanding about them that I think
most people maybe don't fully understand.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Yeah, I'm like I look forward to reading someone's thesis
paper on it in like fifteen years.

Speaker 8 (57:52):
But a lot of it's, like, you know, it's like
your privileged to the extent that you know you're to
do this, like you're put out there, you're building a
personal brand, like most people don't have those options in
the first place. It becomes again contextually, it's difficult to
talk about, but it's interesting. It certainly has its repercussions that,
like you said, we'll learn about in time.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
So yeah, this is the exact conversation I wanted to
have with the STAKM guys. So this works great.

Speaker 8 (58:17):
I remember when I wrote that culture piece. I've been
chatting with a ton of fellow social media marketers and
just online friends about it, and everybody kind of had
the same response, which is just like, yeah, where do
we go from here? Like it doesn't really seem to
be a clear path for brands, Like the areas that
would you would could be considered taboo for brands, like religion, politics, drugs,

(58:41):
Like there's some obvious, obvious third rails there, Like you know,
the vast majority of brands will never touch religion as
like a topic. They'll never touch drugs even when drugs
are legalized, Like it's say, say pot or whatever, Like
it's one of the where Like it's just such high
risk for a brand that I think it's not worth that. Yeah,
not worth touching. So like and I also just don't know,

(59:04):
like from like an ideological standpoint, the politics stuff really
only resonates when it's safe. Now, you don't you wouldn't
see like anytime an issue becomes act like there's actual
again stakes don't mind my pun. Like, when there's an
any kind of issue with actual like skin in the game,
when there's actually like a polarizing element to it, brands
almost never touch it. Like the only brand there's only

(59:26):
a couple brands really that have stuck to their guns
with this, Like one is classically Ben and Jerry's, and
like those are the ones that, like because they have
such credibility baked into like their mission and how they
talk about it, it makes sense that they would stick
to their guns. But for the vast majority of brands,
like anything, anytime something like that hot like a moment
pops up in the zeitgeist, like it's just an opportunity

(59:47):
and it's I'm not even saying that like fully cynically,
because like there is like the cynical side of it
of like, hey, let's make money doing this. But then
there's also like the com like the communication side of
it of like what are the repercussions if we don't,
you know, there's kind of like we need to maybe
reevaluate our policy or reevaluate like how we're positioning our

(01:00:09):
team and our company and how we hire people or whatever.
So like it's not all fully cynical, but like the
way it's presented in like the medium of social media
content is just very strange from an ideological standpoints.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Where is there left to go? But there's always somewhere.
I'm curious what you if you have any predictions of
where you see things going next.

Speaker 8 (01:00:31):
Yeah, Like it's it's kind of weird and in some
ways sad to say, but like, I think we've treaded
most of the original ground here, so at this point,
everything's just getting retreaded. That's been really weird to see
as somebody especially I can't even imagine for like Amy
or Serenity, who have been doing this for longer than
I have. It's like when I think back over the
past like ten or so years of trends, like talk

(01:00:54):
about these vulture pieces, like how the different dynamics of
content have evolved and devolved over the years. In the
past four or five years, I would say, we've just
seen repeats of most of what was happening earlier. A
lot of the stuff that felt novel ten years ago
is starting to feel a novel again. As long as
like people feel a genuine connection to you, like how
you talk to them verbally and in written form. I

(01:01:18):
think that is always going to be like the thing
that people have to like really figure out for themselves
because people just sniff out in authenticity so quick nowadays.
So you either have to go so like personified and
absurd that you're clearly putting on a character, or be
like so true to yourself that you can keep it

(01:01:40):
up every day, you know what I mean to reach people.
So at least that's how I feel like right now,
I'm like whatever I make, like, I want to be
able to feel like I can put myself into it comfortably.

Speaker 6 (01:01:52):
Because if I can't, like it just feels.

Speaker 8 (01:01:53):
So contrived and like I won't have the energy to
keep it up over months or years.

Speaker 6 (01:01:59):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:02:00):
Personification like it's it's part of who we are as
certain makes the work feel again like there's blurred lines,
makes it feel very sticky for all of us in
our own ways, I think. But yeah, but it's a
cool part of what we get to do. Again, It's
like it's easy to hate on like again, like I've
kind of come out of my more like cynical years
on this, I think, just because it was weighing me

(01:02:21):
down so heavily and like not really going anywhere. But
like when I think about how I used to I
think about how I used to think about this, it
was like I don't know, like this is unhealthy and
like I can't keep doing this whatever, Like it's I'm
chilling myself for a brand, and like even if some
of that is still true, like obviously it's again like

(01:02:41):
it's not not very different if I was a songwriter,
except I'm doing this for a company versus myself. It's
like you have to put on our performance, like you
have to put on some kind of facade, whether it's
a light facade or a heavy facade, to like really
put an image and a message out there for people
to resonate with.

Speaker 6 (01:03:00):
And you know, I think where I'm at now.

Speaker 8 (01:03:03):
Like I tried just to be at peace with knowing
there's like a separation there and let people kind of
let the chips fall where they are, let people interpret
it how they will, but not like get too crazy
about it like I did the seven or eight years ago,
or it just felt like all consuming and I don't know,
like it was just like messing with me mentally, Like

(01:03:23):
it's just not that deep anymore to me. But maybe
that's just because I'm getting older and I don't have
time to think too much about it anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:03:29):
Who knows. For a lot of this, I always.

Speaker 8 (01:03:31):
Wish I had like clear answers for people, but so
much of it is just this kind of like weird,
hazy world where like from a creative standpoint, if you
are somebody in marketing and you want to get into
this world, like I tell us to young people all
the time, like if you want to be a writer,
like a copywriter, or like a graphic designer or something
of that nature, may do a much easier time kind

(01:03:53):
of like separating your work from like your personal life.
But yeah, social media management is certainly a harder game
for doing that. Like you're just you're always putting a
piece of yourself on the Internet, And I think it's
good to know going into it like that, that's what
you have to expect and you have to kind of
wrestle with that tension like we're talking about here, like
figuring out how to compartmentalize and draw boundaries and figure out,

(01:04:17):
you know, where your sense of self is derived from
outside of your work, so you don't get too crazy
as a personified brand, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Thank you so much to Nathan for his time, and
you can learn more about his work at the links
in the description. So much of this interview really stuck
with me in the days after, and I really want
to again thank Nathan for his good sense of humor
and candor about everything. He's obviously a very funny and
thoughtful guy, and I totally understand why it hurt that

(01:04:47):
the comedy writers he'd kind of taken over the stakehum
account in order to befriend eventually turned on him. But
I also understand the other side of that. It's fine
to be friends with Nate, and it's great when Nathan
is doing well at work, But at what point are you,
as a public facing anti capitalist, just promoting a dangerously

(01:05:10):
sourced meat brand. It's kind of an impossible thing to navigate,
and as long as young creatives are still getting pulled
into advertising, we'll probably never be fully out of it.
Much to consider, and in our grand finale to the
Sentient Brand series this Thursday, I'm going to bring you
right up to the present moment, onto that second road,

(01:05:31):
in that thorny divergent wood, the Horny Brand, a look
at the social media history that leads us to the murdered, pissoaked,
Duo Lingo Bird and the brilliant mind behind it. We'll
see you then. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Whole
Zone Media and iHeart Rodous. It is written, posted, and

(01:05:55):
produced by me Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie
Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our
supervising producer and our editor.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Our theme song.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Brant Crater
and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my
Kat's flee and Casper and my pet Rockbert, who will
outlive us all. Bye.