why is my freezer steak tweeting nihilism: the steakumm saga

Summary

Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) Episode Summary

Episode Title: Why is My Freezer Steak Tweeting Nihilism: The Steakumm Saga
Release Date: March 25, 2025
Host: Jamie Loftus
Guest: Nathan Allebach, Social Media Lead at Ramp (formerly Social Media Manager for Steakum)

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Why is My Freezer Steak Tweeting Nihilism: The Steakumm Saga," Jamie Loftus delves into the intriguing case of Steakum, a legacy frozen meat brand that unexpectedly became a viral sensation on Twitter through its sentient and nihilistic online persona. This episode marks the conclusion of the series exploring sentient brands that overstep in their social media engagements.

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Background: Steakum’s Foray into Sentient Branding

Jamie begins by contextualizing Steakum's transformation from a conventional meat brand into an internet mainstay. She highlights the early stages of Steakum's Twitter account, which initially lacked a distinct voice and was barely active until Nathan Allebach was brought on board in 2017.

Notable Quote:

"When it came to Steakum's Twitter presence, unlike brands like Denny's or Wendy's that already had some existing voice, there was just kind of nothing there." — Jamie Loftus [03:28]

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The Rise of Steakum’s Nihilistic Persona

Under Nathan Allebach’s management, Steakum adopted a nihilistic and ironic tone, distinguishing itself from typical brand interactions. This shift was influenced by the broader trend of "sentient brands" aiming to engage audiences with humor and relatability. Nathan utilized Steinamen's platform to post existential rants and sarcastic commentary, which resonated with a segment of Twitter users.

Notable Quote:

"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 that we built." — Nathan Allebach [25:15]

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Community Reactions and Backlash

Steakum’s new approach initially sparked curiosity and engagement. However, as the account gained traction, it also attracted significant backlash from the "Weird Twitter" community. Users began to feel manipulated by Steakum’s ironic stance, leading to increased harassment and negative interactions.

Notable Quote:

"Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention... They went to memes, they go to obscure or absurdist humor, they go to frozen meat companies on Twitter and rant Steakum-less." — Nathan Allebach [20:56]

Despite efforts to build genuine connections, the blurred lines between corporate messaging and personal expression led to confusion and distrust among followers.

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Media Coverage and Public Perception

The episode discusses how Steakum's Twitter strategy garnered widespread media attention, with outlets like Mashable and Vox analyzing the brand’s anti-consumerist rhetoric. Heather Dockray of Mashable commented on the brand’s self-awareness and questioned the authenticity of its messages.

Notable Quote:

"The brand's recent monologue was its most explosive and self-aware yet. If only any of it was real." — Heather Dockray, Mashable [23:16]

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Turning Point During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a pivotal moment for Steakum’s social media presence. In 2020, faced with rampant misinformation, Steakum leveraged its established ironic voice to address serious issues, further complicating its brand identity. This move was both praised for its attempt at responsible messaging and criticized for its inherent contradictions.

Notable Quote:

"In times of uncertainty and misinformation, anecdotes are not data... You can maintain independent critical thinking toward institutions without data dipping into fringe conspiracies that get jump started by individual anecdotes being virally spread as data." — Nathan Allebach [26:18]

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Personal Toll and Departure from Steakum

Nathan Allebach shares the personal challenges of managing a brand persona that consumed his identity and subjected him to online harassment. The emotional and psychological strain culminated in his decision to step away from Steakum’s social media management.

Notable Quote:

"I felt torn. Like I felt bad. I was like, man, people feel bad about this. It was not my intention to like manipulate people or whatever." — Nathan Allebach [48:54]

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Reflections on the Future of Brand Engagement

In the latter part of the episode, Nathan reflects on the evolving landscape of social media marketing. He discusses the diminishing originality in content and the increasing difficulty for brands to maintain authentic connections without appearing contrived or inauthentic.

Notable Quote:

"If you can't, like, be so true to yourself that you can keep it up every day, you know what I mean? To reach people." — Nathan Allebach [70:09]

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Conclusion and Teasers for Future Episodes

Jamie wraps up the episode by emphasizing the complexities faced by brands attempting to navigate sentient social media personas. She previews the next episode, which will explore the "Horny Brand" trend, featuring the infamous Duolingo bird and its creator.

Notable Quote:

"But at what point are you as a public facing anti capitalist just promoting a dangerously sourced meat brand?" — Jamie Loftus [33:38]

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Key Takeaways

• Sentient Branding Risks: Steakum’s venture into ironic and nihilistic social media engagement illustrates the precarious balance brands must maintain between relatability and authenticity.
• Community Dynamics: Engaging with niche online communities like Weird Twitter can lead to both heightened visibility and significant backlash.
• Personal Impact: Managing a brand’s online persona can have profound personal and professional repercussions for those behind the accounts.
• Evolving Social Media Landscape: The shift towards meme-based, low-effort content makes it challenging for brands to stand out while maintaining genuine connections.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jamie Loftus:
  "When it came to Steakum's Twitter presence, unlike brands like Denny's or Wendy's that already had some existing voice, there was just kind of nothing there." [03:28]
  "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 that we built." [25:15]

• Nathan Allebach:
  "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 that we built." [25:15]
  "Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention... They went to memes, they go to obscure or absurdist humor, they go to frozen meat companies on Twitter and rant Steakum-less." [20:56]
  "If you can't, like, be so true to yourself that you can keep it up every day, you know what I mean? To reach people." [70:09]

• Heather Dockray (Mashable):
  "The brand's recent monologue was its most explosive and self-aware yet. If only any of it was real." [23:16]

• Jamie Loftus:
  "But at what point are you as a public facing anti capitalist just promoting a dangerously sourced meat brand?" [33:38]

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Final Thoughts

The episode offers a comprehensive exploration of Steakum’s unique journey in adopting a nihilistic social media persona, underscoring the intricate interplay between brand messaging, community engagement, and personal well-being. It serves as a thought-provoking case study on the potential and pitfalls of sentient branding in the digital age.

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Stay Tuned:
Join Jamie Loftus next week for the series finale on the "Horny Brand" phenomenon, featuring the infamous Duolingo bird and its mastermind.

Transcript

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[Joe]

Call Zone Media.

[Nathan Allebach]

1.

[Jamie Loftus]

Welcome back to 16th 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 too horny on social media. 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, one that we'll discover continues into today. That's a teaser 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 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.

[Joe]

There's people that are dying.

[Jamie Loftus]

But I was 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 Yadoye Travis.

[Joe]

And so what's your take? Society went down a very dark path.

[Nathan Allebach]

By making commercials funny.

[Joe]

100% agree. Funny. Commercials downfall civilizations. Absolutely. And why so?

[Nathan Allebach]

Because we've blurred the lines between what's real and what's not. Because as we look at social media, everybody's now primed to.

[Joe]

To, like, make them palatable to advertisers. So they're now fabricating a reality. That's why, like, Oscar Meyer wieners is like, tweeting out Ebonics. Literally. Like, all these brands are talking to each other. What is going on? Would you prefer for commercials to be boring?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yes.

[Joe]

Like informative, like an infomercial. Absolutely. Just like, here's an Acura. You can drive it. Yes. You don't appreciate the entertainment at all. I would like to buy things based on what they do.

[Jamie Loftus]

And yeah, he's completely right. It is weird. And while this video came out in late 2023, 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 always been true. The best joke writer I've ever met got his start writing copy at Groupon because you've gotta live. I mean, this podcast probably just served you 1 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 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. 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 Yodoye for screwing my head back on correctly and follow him at the 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 about 2015-2017, 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 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, I know. Why not both well will 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 takes advertising any product, any old product, and shocks its listeners not only by making the product behave sentiently, but 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 2010s building out their editorial 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 Pies, the marshmallow snack cake. Look around, the world's different now.

[Joe]

People are overworked, over, committed, tired.

[Shirley Strawberry]

But the moon is still the moon.

[Jamie Loftus]

Still round, still filled with marshmallow. So here is Moonpie quote tweeting a hostess snacks tweet from 2017 where hostess snacks is bragging that Golden Cupcakes is the official snack cake of the eclipse.

[Nathan Allebach]

MoonPie quote tweets hostess Snacks and writes lol. Okay, I don't know.

[Jamie Loftus]

The moonpie account was run by social media manager Patrick Wells and the other successful nihilist Twitter account was was the Stakem account as run by our guest today, Nathan Allabak. And like any advertising venture, the name of the game was finding the specific lane your product fell into while still playing 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 are.

[Nathan Allebach]

Pop Tarts, my friend.

[Jamie Loftus]

Meanwhile, Pop Tarts was more into a kind of horny bully vibe. This is what they captioned an image of a Pop Tart being used as garnish for a cocktail.

[Nathan Allebach]

Calm down, it's a virgin like you.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I want to reiterate that Nathan Allabak, who ran the Stakem account, has also basically written the history of brand Twitter in two pieces in Vulture 2019's How Brand Twitter Grew up and 2022's When Brands Got Horny linked in the description. And as you can imagine, as Amy Brown let us in on last week, it behooved a lot of these 20 something 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 2010s kind of began this bizarre pattern of social media managers of different brands and basically having their products form parasocial attachments to each other. No accounting for it. But speaking of Nathan Allabak, he started at Stakeham in 2017 and much like Amy Brown and Serenity, Disco was in his mid-20s and it couldn't have been a better time. According to his 2019 piece in Vulture, this was a moment where brand memes hadn't quite gone mainstream before.

[Nathan Allebach]

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 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.

[Jamie Loftus]

And going into 2018, things would continue to get more experimental. Anyone remember when IHOP became ihob? IHOP is always pancake pancakes but now.

[Joe]

We'Re burger and burgers. Woo.

[Nathan Allebach]

With burgers made with 100% all natural black Angus.

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[Jamie Loftus]

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[Joe]

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[Jamie Loftus]

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 Jerry. See our Disaster Girl episode for more on them. But these screenshot driven engagement strategies which could be a pain in the ass for the uncredited joke writer while fuckjerry, 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? In order to stand out on Twitter. I think my least favorite example of this that makes my stomach curdle 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 Monterey Bay aquarium from late 2018 posting a picture of a large otter. Good luck with this one Grant.

[Nathan Allebach]

Abby is a thicc girl. What an absolute unit. She chonk. Look at the size of this lady. Oh lord she coming. Another internetism.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh no no no no no no no. But the stakem account was a prime target for a weirdo rebrand of this ilk because steakum. Yeah, they were kind of a gross looking steak strip from Pennsylvania that you put in your freezer. They'd been around for a long time, but there wasn't much to say about them.

[Legends]

Got a minute? Then you've got time for a hot steak sandwich. Keep steak em frozen till you're ready to eat, then stick em in the frying pan 60 seconds later. Take em off the heat and fix em up any way you can. Try steak em on a roll with cheese. Top it any way you please. Steak'em sandwich steaks. They're 100% pure beef and nothing else.

[Jamie Loftus]

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 steak em is actually quite gross looking. I would never buy it. I don't want it when a meat can't even photograph appetizingly what are we doing? But even Steakum's website seems to understand what value you having this weird Internet Persona in the 2000 and tens added to their brand, because to this day it is literally half of their about.

[Nathan Allebach]

Page on stakem.com In 2017 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 Instagra, TikTok and YouTube and seeks to embody Static's company values as a legacy brand in a strange new world.

[Jamie Loftus]

Keep that last sentence in mind. The fact that an ironic Twitter presence represents Steakum's company values. We'll come back to that. But when it came to Stakeham'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, there was something there, but I'm going to let Nathan Allabak tell you that story in detail in the interview, because the very logged in at the time that Nathan took over that account in 2017 would have only interacted with the STACM account in order to cyberbully it. Dacum did have a previous social media manager, but they appeared to be thin skinned, defensive and weirdly into Ayn Rand. Never a good combination, and all of which made them perfect fodder for being cyberbullied by Weird Twitter. We can't Weird Twitter is a short series all its own. Suffice it to say, Weird Twitter was a loosely organized group 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 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, but let's be honest, these would be the guys that would absolutely demolish the original Stakeham 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 Olabak comes in. While working for his dad's ad firm in Philadelphia, he pursued the Pennsylvania based Stakem account because Twist Nathan was a big fan of weird Twitter and seemed to relish the chance to get to interact with 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 knew enough Internet lore to be sure that they would interact with Steakum. I know. But this strategy worked really well at first because Nathan Allebak, 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 capitalist politics of Weird Twitter. But the tricky thing is, he then made his politics the politics of Staticm. And before he knew it, Staticum 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 early post he made in late 2017.

[Nathan Allebach]

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 Steakum and get grease splattered in your eye.

[Jamie Loftus]

Light engagement on this one. The voice isn't quite developed under Nathan's watch. The Stakem account lightly interacts with MoonPie around this time, ostensibly trying to interact with other cool brands in the pursuit of making Stacm a cool brand. But by the fall of 2018, the table was fully set. The freezer was thawed. I'm going to stop. I hate this. September 26, 2018. The stacm Twitter account under Nathan Allabak goes on a pretty impressive anti capitalist rant. And so, dear listeners, performing this monologue is Grant Crater.

[Nathan Allebach]

Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance and attention. I'll tell you why. 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 struggle to not just be happy, but to survive this chaotic 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 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 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 247 has made them numb to everything, anxious and depressed about everything, and vitriolic or 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 frozen meat companies on Twitter and rant steak embless.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay, so this got a big media reaction. Steakum is using anti consumerism to get you to buy snooze.

[Nathan Allebach]

Steakum's new marketing strategy, millennial angst with a side of meat funds Statum's social.

[Jamie Loftus]

Media person sounds like they might need a hug.

[Nathan Allebach]

Steakum is woke. Now everything is hell.

[Jamie Loftus]

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 Dockray in Mashable. The brand's recent monologue was its most explosive and self aware yet. If only any of it was real. Dockray 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 1940s to emphasize the car's small size in 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 Lil Yachty from 2016, where the big joke is that LeBron knows how advertising works. Quiet and action.

[Joe]

Let's get one thing straight. I never tell you to drink Sprite. Even if I was in a commercial for Sprite, which I am, or you were watching it, which you are, I wouldn't tell you to drink it. No matter what that cute car says.

[Nathan Allebach]

Brah.

[Joe]

Man, say it.

[Jamie Loftus]

No. 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, Alabak Communications, was only benefiting from this. But for what it's worth, Nathan was consistently singled out as the mind behind the stakem account and defended his work to outlets at the time. Here's a quote from him in a piece from VOX in fall 2018 we're.

[Nathan Allebach]

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 that we built. We're not taking sides or having a specific stance on anything.

[Jamie Loftus]

There are a few breakout feathers in the Stakem Twitter cap. This 2018 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 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 stakem to take on, and you really just have to hear it to believe it. April 6, 2020 Once again, Grant Crater.

[Nathan Allebach]

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. Outliers attempting to counter global consensus around 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 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 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 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 data 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 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 dictate your worldview. Okay? Steak embless.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, Steak embless 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 such as this are being run remotely ethically. And the answer is probably not. Back in 2012, food publication Grub street laid out an ongoing federal court battle between Steakum and a South Philly mom and pop shop called Stake Em up, in which the STACM founder Gene Gagliardi spent six figures on lawyers in a copyright infringement case that he would eventually lose.

[Nathan Allebach]

From that piece, New lawsuit reveals the world's grossest meat is probably Steakums. 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 left over after an animal is slaughtered and all the primary cuts such as tenderloin, fillet and ribeye are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a loaf and sliced, frozen and packaged. After learning that a federal judge denied Steakum's claims, their inventor Gene Gagliardi, was quoted as saying he did no justice to the meat world and continued to rant about how the poor quality of meat in cheesesteaks drove him to create his own Sandwich steak. You couldn't serve it to children because the meat was so tough you'd drag it out of the sandwich and choke on it, Gagliardi is quoted as saying. This was definitely a safety feature.

[Jamie Loftus]

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.

[Joe]

So let me be clear.

[Jamie Loftus]

While the description of what is in Steakum sounds pretty gross, this is not demonstrably worse than 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 company's values, as Statham alluded to earlier, do not back that up. So in Statham's defense, from what I can tell, the company isn't technically bullshitting by printing the phrase 100% beef on the front of their box for all these decades. But there are major missing operative words there. Words like byproduct or even 100% processed beef byproduct. You know, the stuff that's left over when the expensive cuts of beef are gone. You know, like a hot dog.

[Joe]

Yes.

[Jamie Loftus]

Now, and because we've covered what I think is almost a disproportionate number of stories about processed 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 Steakum, I had to look into the history of the company. And here are some polls from a 2018 Mental Floss article by Jake Rossen.

[Nathan Allebach]

About that Eugene Gagliardi, patriarch of the Gagliardi meatpacking business, raised the 22 ounce frozen log of beef products that would shortly become known as steak'em and sent it careening into his son's ankle. Nobody's ever gonna buy this shit. He screamed, storming off. Despite his numerous contributions to food service, he still feels slighted by his father, who passed away in 1991 and apparently never acknowledged his son's success. I never got a compliment, he says.

[Jamie Loftus]

Ah, yes, beneath every weird specific business is the story of fathers and sons. So while Steakum 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 Heinz and Quaker Foods, the brand 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 it all, Nathan Olabak.

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[Nathan Allebach]

Hey, everyone.

[Joe]

Welcome back to Bach yout Happy Hour. I'm Joe.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I'm Serena.

[Joe]

And we are here with the iHeart Music Awards and David's Bridal who are.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sponsoring this podcast and we are so grateful to them.

[Nathan Allebach]

Thank you.

[Joe]

Thank you for finishing my sentence. And we are here with our favorites, Dot and Charity.

[Jamie Loftus]

Where were you in bikinis in the snow? Montana. Okay. She flew out and joined you guys. Isn't it cold? No, it was we. Well, yeah. Bikinis in the snow. We risk getting hypothermia for those photos.

[Joe]

Wow.

[Jamie Loftus]

They were sick though.

[Joe]

I don't get bikinis in the snow.

[Jamie Loftus]

Just like an aesthetic. Yeah.

[Joe]

If him and I did that, if we did like speedos in the snow, you guys would be like douchebag bags.

[Jamie Loftus]

I would be like, let's see it. Come on. I would not complain. I like him to do stuff like that. He's like, no. That's going to be the name of this podcast episode. Bachelor Happy Hour. Speedos in the Snow.

[Joe]

David's Bridal. If you're listening, branding a little bit.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sponsored by David's Bridal Bridal Speedos in the Snow.

[Shirley Strawberry]

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[Joe]

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[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, wow, a real person.

[Joe]

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[Jamie Loftus]

Well, I've got a complicated project.

[Joe]

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[Jamie Loftus]

I didn't realize you did that.

[Joe]

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[Jamie Loftus]

I mean, I always thought I needed a designer to come to my home, but scheduling's always a Nightmare.

[Joe]

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[Colgate Palmolive]

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[Jamie Loftus]

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[Shirley Strawberry]

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[Jamie Loftus]

Okay then. So the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over. And I'm thinking of something.

[Shirley Strawberry]

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[Jamie Loftus]

Welcome back to 16th minute. I'm so burnt out on Eat the Rich Prestige media and feel completely alone in the world on that front. And here's my interview with the man who turned washed up freezer meat brand Steakum into. Into a national phenomenon. Here's Nathan Allebach.

[Joe]

My name's Nathan Allebach. 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 Stakem or the frozen beef sheep brand as I once referred to it as.

[Jamie Loftus]

I honestly did not know Stakem existed before you. So thank you for that.

[Joe]

It's. You're welcome. Yeah. Like steak. And was this kind of like legacy frozen meat product from like the 1970s and 80s that people like the Gen X and boomer generations were very familiar with? It's like latchkey kids, you know, it's like parents. Parents were like, leave their kids alone. Be like, here, make some steak. And it's easy. It takes 30 seconds. It was funny and strange to kind of like, give it a new life through this Twitter Persona where people maybe we're familiar with the name because it's such like a memeable name, like steak.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Joe]

It's so ridiculous, but, yeah, happy to, I guess, reintroduce it to the world. I mean, I grew up in a pretty small suburb just outside of Philadelphia. 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 meatpacking facility. Like, like, looking back, it was kind of all destined to be, I suppose. Like, he. You would work the night shift doing that, and then you would take classes at uarts to. Yeah. For like, graphic design and. Yeah. So I kind of like grew up in and around, like, advertising. Like, I remember a lot of kind of like goofy commercials from the 90s and the early 2000s. Interesting environment to grow up in. As I got to be like a teenager, I never in a million years saw myself 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 consumerism and all that. So I was like a songwriter. I grew up in, like a hardcore local music scene. So it was weird because, like, growing up, like, all my friends were in bands and we did a lot of. It was all this kind of like, anti 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 biz a whirl. This has been 2014, so this is like when social media platforms are starting to become more commoditized with advertising. Like, prior to really, 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.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Joe]

A guy who kind of grew up on the Internet with a background in, like, local, like, music, community building and songwriting. So 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, like, didn't really know what I was doing. And then the stake them stuff happened in 2017, and that, like, basically by honestly, just so much by chance, 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 one account that, like, kind of blew up early on.

[Jamie Loftus]

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?

[Joe]

Like, around the time when the stake of 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 HuffPost. And then the first, like, viral story happened in the very. In January of 2018. It was this whole, like, hashtag, verify, stake them, like movement, quote unquote on Twitter. Or like, we were 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.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Joe]

Try to, like, reverse engineer parts of that. Like, like, before the show, you and I are talking a little bit about some of the articles I wrote for Vulture magazine. 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, logging and like, just trying to, like, build a little bit more of a credibility to myself, like, since I just didn't really have a ton of, like, accolades or, like, value, I guess, to my resume. So, yeah, it just became like, okay, I'm the stake them guy, but I'm also like, the guy who sort of writes about weird niche Internet history. By the time the Stakem account was going viral in, like, the end of 2017, early 2018, this brand Twitter stuff had been happening for years, and I was like, for the most part, unaware of all of it.

[Jamie Loftus]

So, yeah, when you're building this identity for SACub, how at this point in time, did that work?

[Joe]

Yeah, not too much Structure in the beginning. I mean, it was really so much chance because to give you context, like summer of 2017 is when I started posting on the account. And the only reason I was even really given the. The sort of green light and even like wanted to start doing it was because people 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 1000th episode. So it was like this kind of whatever's moment for the show and the guest was telling like ridiculous stories about Stakem. So like Stake Them prior to this was not active on 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. The marketing manager at Stake. I'm like, if we could start basically shit posting on the Stake Them account because there's no activity there. They saw it as like a no stakes platform because like they weren't advertising. There really is super small audience.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, I just understood you were, you were using the other version of Stakes. It's like, wait, we're stick. Was Steak not welcome on that platform? Okay, no, I see what you're saying. I see what you're.

[Joe]

The hope was like, okay, I mean this, this should be creating some buzz. Like, hopefully people will be talking about the brand here. But again, there was 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 login. Let's, let's get on the account. So getting on the account, I realized in like the first few days that Stake Them had blocked like well over 150, maybe 200 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, what's going on here? And they're all kind of like, oh, it's stake. I'm like, stake them back. And I'm like, what is happening? Because we had. The agency had acquired the account in 2016 and it turned out this history with the previous Stake Them admin on Twitter was in 2014. So. Okay, story short is that whoever was running this account, it could have been somebody that 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 Ayn 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 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. So 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 dis stake them or whatever, like they'll block you and it'll be really funny. So everybody started to do this and it started to pile on. And there was this one weird Twitter user who I'm not sure if he's still active anymore. His AT is or was Boner Hitler. He basically started like a crusade against Stake. I'm kind of like leveraging these weird Twitter accounts where he had this 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 a matter or something. It was something like this like it was just like a ridiculous bit. When they blocked him, he became like the sort of ringleader of this whole thing and really corralled hundreds of these accounts to try to harass stake them. Culminated with stake them. Like they tried to publish a rules thing on their bio which again backfire like the rules on Twitter, what people can tweet. And then eventually like the stake them admin just left the account like abandoned it, stopped posting and the whole thing died. Without that context from before my time, the account never would have 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 and more broadly. So like 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 it's like interacting with these weird Twitter people who are all very, almost all very anti capitalist or very kind of like radical as it was like a bit. And like 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 was. And I was trying to be as transparent about the whole thing as I could be.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right, right.

[Joe]

They all ran with 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 at the end 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. 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, what did you expect? But other people felt like genuinely betrayed by market. Yeah, like 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 like 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 over like the following years, you.

[Jamie Loftus]

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?

[Joe]

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. I don't know, my feelings on it definitely evolved because like in the beginning, yeah, I felt after all the tension started to unravel. I certainly felt torn. Like I felt bad. I was like, man, people feel bad about this. Like I. It 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 think that that thread that like, that tension is the thing that actually made it go mega viral. 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 up, just amplified it.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

Because 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 marketing trope that hadn't really existed, at least in online. Now I'm definitely a lot more chill about it. The lines between what. What marketing 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 broadly. Like, like, what makes, like, when does a person stop becoming a person and they become a brand?

[Jamie Loftus]

You know, now, in 2025, it sounds kind of silly to me to be like, oh, a, you know, a smart, thoughtful person feeling betrayed by the Stakem 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 this.

[Joe]

I feel like it was at this kind of weird precipice of a generational divide where, like, when you look at, like, say, 2020 onward, especially, like, in the TikTok era 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 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, yeah, like, 20, say, 13 to 2018 ish era, it was dominated by people who were millennials and older who had basically been, like, online forever. Like, people that were online from, like, the 90s, the early 2000s, like, had grown up through, like, the Forum days and, like, had seen how things had evolved into this new advertiser model, which to them really bastardized what Internet culture used to be. The way Rich Kayanka, the founder of Something Awful, used to describe this was 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 memes were really a thing. If you wanted to stand out and get laughs online, you had to create something. Like, you had to make your own video, you had to design your own image, and it became like an original thing that 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 means became like the default because it's the most accessible low hanging fruit that you can share. And like it just, it wasn't about hey how can I make you know, the most original weird piece of art or like, or media possible. It then just became about like oh my gosh, have you seen this thing online? I'm going to 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 on TikTok by and large like go to any brand's profile, any brands comment 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 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 we, this is like trash. Like we should discourage like this type of content on the timeline. Like it's such an impossible thing to do now. Like the people just don't really try anymore. It just feels so futile. I have some battle scars. I had some crazy, crazy people from the weird Twitter community target me and 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 they're. The account really went like national, national during COVID for like the commentary on misinformation. Like that's got like in Wall Street Journal and Washington Post and a bunch of places. And during that era I had just some crazy, crazy people targeting me. This one, one account I'll never forget 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 W's. There was women posting their W's and then women posting their Ls and they.

[Jamie Loftus]

Became these, oh I guess I don't know. White women specifically posting their W's wouldn't.

[Joe]

Because this was just like it had no followers. It was just made the account and they tagged me in a tweet. I was like what is this? And like didn't really think anything of it. It just looked like a shit poster. And then the following morning I Went to work and at like 10am Got a call from my wife and she's like, hey, can you like come home? And I was like, like, like, sure. Like, like, what do you. What do you need? And she was like, well, the secret service are 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 anything to me. Like, you have to come home to like talk to them. So these guys are at my door, these two 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 on the iPad pulled up this white women posting their W's Twitter account. And in the bio of this account it says run by Nathan Alabak. And the top tweet on it is, I'm going to kill Joe Biden. Or like I'm going to kill the president. Like something like that. Which I guess triggered something in their nets of like, oh, that's what they.

[Jamie Loftus]

Have the alert on for. Good job, guys.

[Joe]

My name. Just like, they're like, look, we saw this. We went up in the middle of the night and like you threatened, directly.

[Jamie Loftus]

Threatened the president under your government name. They're like.

[Joe]

And I was just like, this isn't my account but your names on it. Where 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 there is like, their eyes are like glazing over. Like, what is this guy talking about? There's so many things like that that would just. All because of this meat account that I would not have anticipated at the time, you know.

[Jamie Loftus]

We'll be right back with more Nathan Alabak.

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[Joe]

Hey everyone, welcome back to Bachelor happy hour. I'm Joe.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I'm Serena and we are Here.

[Joe]

With the Iheart Music Awards and David.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sprydle who are sponsoring this podcast, and we are so grateful to them.

[Joe]

Thank you. Thank you for finishing my sentence. And we are here with our favorites, Dot and Charity.

[Jamie Loftus]

Where were you in bikinis in the snow? Montana. Okay. She flew out and joined you guys. Isn't it cold? No, it was. We. Well, yeah. Bikinis in the snow.

[Joe]

Wow.

[Jamie Loftus]

They were sick, though.

[Joe]

I don't get bikinis in the snow.

[Jamie Loftus]

Just like an aesthetic.

[Joe]

Yeah. I don't know if him and I did that. If we did like Speedos in the snow, you guys would be like douchebag.

[Jamie Loftus]

Bags in the snow would be. I would be like, let's see it. Come on. I would not complain to do stuff like that. He's like, no. That's going to be the name of this podcast episode. Bachelor Happy Hour. Speedos in the snow.

[Joe]

David's Bridal. If you're listening, branding a little bit.

[Jamie Loftus]

Sponsored by David Bridal, Speedos in the snow.

[Shirley Strawberry]

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[Jamie Loftus]

Welcome back to 16th Minute. I need to throw away the carpet 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 carpet 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 Alipak. When did you sort of decide I'm done with this specific account?

[Joe]

I mean, I felt it waning right away, honestly, after the first, after the first year after that Millennial thread went viral, I was like, okay, I've had enough. Just because it was so mentally taxing, like with the way people would harass me. And I hate to even say that because 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, just kind of just like light off my back and like keep working on it. Especially because it was 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.

[Jamie Loftus]

That really 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 emotionally taxing.

[Joe]

Yeah, you learn to take it on the chin in like 90 plus percent of cases. But 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 sword, you know, because I was getting all of these accolades and like public attention from the account, it would go viral, get a ton of Followers get a ton of business. Like, people wanting to work with me on stuff. The flip side was just like a constant wave of people sending me death threats and like, just crazy and like. Yeah. And sending the Secret Service to my house. I don't know. Like, I've been doing it for like four years at that point. Very sick of, of frozen beef, sheep puns. And yeah, like, I, I ended up, we ended up getting off the account I think later that year. Like that, that December then was the end of the. There's 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 had been writing about like the horny brand trend.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yes.

[Joe]

Year or two prior and like, it was just weird to look at what 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 a lot of this which, like, again, no, hate to like the individual social media managers, like, everything's an attention economy and I get it. 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, things 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.

[Jamie Loftus]

So how do you move forward from that? How did you sort of keep things interesting and more balanced for yourself after in a post? Stake in World.

[Joe]

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 of like making sure that your job isn't or your identity isn't your work, essentially. I struggle with that because 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 2017, it was kind of. I mentioned this earlier. It's kind of coming to the 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 whether I didn't really have any like disillusionment that I was going to make like a living full time doing it, 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 because it always had been in your. And as time went on with, 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 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 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 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 locally with some friends just to kind of like blow some steam off and get out of the house. And I have other hobbies. Like I garden, I landscape. Like I, 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 felt a lot more feasible than it does now. Like now it's like okay, getting older. It's harder to be online all the time. I have to kind of like consolidate my energy around singular topics, singular platforms. And it is, it's just hard to establish those boundaries and like maintain that sense of self outside of work when, when your work is so just like dominant when your job is to be online for like 8 to 10 or even many, maybe 12 or 14 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, it's like the meme online. Like people talk about like irony poison. Like you break your brain. 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 a healthy person outside of that. That's why, like, have it 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. You know, there's like these fake jobs like, like YouTuber, social media manager, podcast or whatever. And like, sure, they're nothing like the strain of like a, like a laborist 9 to 5, but there is something spiritually demanding about them that I think most people maybe don't fully understand.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, I'm like, I look forward to reading someone's thesis paper on it in like 15 years.

[Joe]

But a lot of it's like, you know, it's like you're privileged to the extent that, you know, you're able to do this. Like, you have your totally out there. You're building a personal brand. Like, most people don't have those options in the first place. So 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, we'll learn about in time.

[Jamie Loftus]

So, yeah, this is the exact conversation I wanted to have with the Stake Home guys. So this works great.

[Joe]

I remember when I wrote that Vulture piece, I had 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 be considered taboo for brands like religion, politics, drugs. 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, say, say pot or whatever. Like, it's one of those areas where, like, it's just such high risk for a brand that I think it's not worth it. Yeah, touching. So like, and I also just don't know, 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 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 a couple of brands, really, that have stuck to their guns with this. Like, one is classically Ben and Jerry's, and 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, like, a moment pops up in the zeitgeist. Like, it's just an opportunity. 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, like, the communication side of it of, like, what are the repercussions if we don't. You know, there's kind of like we. We need to maybe reevaluate our policy or reevaluate, like, how we're positioning our 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 standpoint.

[Jamie Loftus]

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.

[Joe]

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, 10 or so years of trends, like, talk 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 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 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 inauthenticity 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 up every day, you know what I mean? To reach people. So at least that's. 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, because if I can't, like, it just feels so contrived and, like, I won't have the energy to keep it up over months or years. You know, the personification, like, it's. It's part of who we are at a certain point, which makes the work feel, again, like those blurred lines makes it feel very sticky for all of us in. In. 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 down so heavily and, like, not really going anywhere, but, like, when I think about how I used to. How 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 shilling myself for a brand. And, like, even if some of that is still true, like, obviously it's. Again, like, 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 a 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. And, you know, I think where I'm at now, 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 where it just felt, like, all consuming and I don't know, like, it was just, like, messing with me mentally. Like, 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. To think too much about it anymore. Who knows? For a lot of this, I always 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, much easier time kind 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, you know, where your sense of self is derived from outside of your work so you don't go too crazy as a personified brand, you know.

[Jamie Loftus]

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 is obviously a very funny and thoughtful guy and I totally understand why it hurt that the comedy writers he'd kind of taken over the STACM 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 Nathan 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 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 in that thorny divergent wood. The Horny brand A look at the social media history that leads us to the murdered piss soaked duolingo bird and the brilliant mind behind it. We'll see you then. 16th Minute is a production of Poolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson my cats Flea and Casper and my pet Rock Bird who will outlive us all. Bye.

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[Jamie Loftus]

Hey, Jenice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We're the hosts of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories produced by Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks.

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Catch up on seasons one and two.

[Jamie Loftus]

And join us for a brand new season of the podcast as we talk to small business owners about how they manage and grow their businesses with the help of platforms like Intuit QuickBooks.

[Nathan Allebach]

Listen to mind the Business Small Business.

[Joe]

Success Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nathan Allebach]

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