Speaker 1: Also Media Joy.
Speaker 2: Sixteen sixteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
Speaker 3: a look back at the Internet's main characters, talk to
Speaker 3: them about how their moment affected them and what that
Speaker 3: says about us and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus,
Speaker 3: and this week we are bravely concluding our series on
Speaker 3: sentient brands that occasionally get to horny on social media
Speaker 3: Play the Horn. But before we head into the final
Speaker 3: installment of this series, I feel the need to slow
Speaker 3: us down for a moment because I'll be honest, I
Speaker 3: am maybe it's obvious susceptible to the enjoyment that comes
Speaker 3: with kind of revisiting this branded goofy moment on social media,
Speaker 3: one that we'll discover continues into today at the Teetherer
Speaker 3: for Thursday, to the point where I am kind of
Speaker 3: worried I haven't been critical enough of this movement, and
Speaker 3: that's motivated quite a bit from the fact that the
Speaker 3: guests on this series are funny, kind, normal people who
Speaker 3: I genuinely like and who I want to like me
Speaker 3: many such cases. So I'll repeat that what I'm about
Speaker 3: to say isn't a criticism of the guests, but it
Speaker 3: is just a little scary that brands were successfully becoming
Speaker 3: our friends on the Internet for a while there, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, and I know that there are so many
Speaker 3: bigger fish to fry at the moment, But I was
Speaker 3: scrolling the other day, as I've made it my job
Speaker 3: to do so it isn't sad, and I came across
Speaker 3: this old subway takes video with the wonderful comic Yudoy Travis.
Speaker 4: And so what's your take?
Speaker 5: A society went down a very dark path by making
Speaker 5: commercials funny.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent of great funny commercials downfall civilizations.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, And why.
Speaker 5: So because we've blurred the lines between what's rayl and
Speaker 5: what's not. Because as we look at social media, everybody's
Speaker 5: now primed to make them palatable to advertisers. So they're
Speaker 5: now fabricating a reality.
Speaker 4: That's why, like Oscar Meyer Wieners is like tweeting out ebombings.
Speaker 5: Literally, like all these brands are talking to each other
Speaker 5: to what is going on.
Speaker 4: Would you prefer for commercials to be boring? Yeah, like
Speaker 4: informative like an infomercal. Absolutely, just like here's an Accura,
Speaker 4: you can drive it. Yes, you don't appreciate the entertain
Speaker 4: at all.
Speaker 5: I would like to buy things based on what they do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he's completely right, it is weird. And while
Speaker 3: this video came out in late twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 3: you'll find that Twitter today is a total wasteland for
Speaker 3: virtually anything. Now, the sentient brand movement continues and is
Speaker 3: alive well and still has some of the smartest and
Speaker 3: funniest people in the world behind them. And this has
Speaker 3: always been true. The best joke writer I've ever met
Speaker 3: got his start writing copy at Groupon because you've got
Speaker 3: to live. I mean, this podcast probably just served you
Speaker 3: one million ads to join the police and overdose on
Speaker 3: diet pills because that's how I have to pay my rent.
Speaker 3: It's a mess, and the fact that these jobs, as
Speaker 3: our guest Amy Brown pointed out last week, can pay
Speaker 3: not great, but certainly better than a public school teacher
Speaker 3: is patently ridiculous. I just hope that these same funny
Speaker 3: people will be given opportunities they deserve to express that
Speaker 3: creative voice as themselves and actually get paid for it,
Speaker 3: because no matter how many times I laugh at the
Speaker 3: weirdness of a brand today, there is no brand that
Speaker 3: deserves that, and there are thousands of really cool creative
Speaker 3: people that do so. Shout out to Yadoy for screwing
Speaker 3: my head back on correctly, and follow him at the
Speaker 3: links in the description He's great. Okay again, if you
Speaker 3: haven't heard the first two parts of this series, I
Speaker 3: recommend you go back and do so, because this week
Speaker 3: we are reaching the climax of sentient brands bringing us
Speaker 3: into the present day. So we left off with Amy
Speaker 3: Brown and the ever escalating Wendy's Twitter feud culture of
Speaker 3: about twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, the peak example of
Speaker 3: Internet marketing harnessing the anger and pettiness that was inherent
Speaker 3: to the platform, and it certainly didn't hurt that this
Speaker 3: also happened at the peak of clickbait culture. But as
Speaker 3: with any tack on social media, people are only dazzled
Speaker 3: with something for so long, and soon enough the brands
Speaker 3: needed to find a new way to keep their audience entertained.
Speaker 3: And so, dear listener, a road diverged in a wood.
Speaker 3: Stay with me here, everybody, and lo and behold, there
Speaker 3: are but two paths to take nihilism and horny. I know,
Speaker 3: I know why not both. Well, we'll get there because
Speaker 3: there are social media managers who straddle these things, but
Speaker 3: our guests this week reached the height of their profession
Speaker 3: by choosing one of these divergent paths hard and in
Speaker 3: this episode we are exploring path one nihilism. This path
Speaker 3: takes advertising any product, any old product, and shocks its listeners,
Speaker 3: not only by making the product behave sentiently, but being
Speaker 3: aware of the futility of advertising in general. So as
Speaker 3: we've discussed where most brands have spent at least half
Speaker 3: a decade by the late twenty tens, building out their editorial,
Speaker 3: jokey voice and engaging ironically with their followers. These accounts,
Speaker 3: the woke brand accounts or the nihilist brand accounts, depending
Speaker 3: on what think piece you're reading, got engagement by acknowledging
Speaker 3: how pointless and awful it felt to court engagement online.
Speaker 3: The two most successful versions of these accounts were moon
Speaker 3: Pies the Marshmallow snack Cake. Look around the world's different.
Speaker 6: Now people are overworked.
Speaker 5: Over committed, tired, But the moon is still the moon
Speaker 5: still around.
Speaker 6: Still FELDO with Marshmallow.
Speaker 3: So here is Moonpie quote tweeting a Hostess Snacks tweet
Speaker 3: from twenty seventeen where Hostess Snacks is bragging that Golden
Speaker 3: Cupcakes is the official snackcake of the Eclipse.
Speaker 2: Moonpie quote tweets Hostess Snacks and writes loll okay, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: The Moonpie account was run by social media manager Patrick Wells,
Speaker 3: and the other successful nihilist Twitter account was the Stakum account,
Speaker 3: as run by our guest today Nathan Allapach. And like
Speaker 3: any advertising venture, the name of the game was finding
Speaker 3: the specific lane your product fell into while still playing
Speaker 3: the game everyone else was. For example, Moonpie was just
Speaker 3: as sarcastic as other accounts, but their specialty was friendship,
Speaker 3: specifically courting friendship with pop Tarts.
Speaker 2: Are pop Tarts my friend?
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, pop Tarts was more into a kind of horny
Speaker 3: bully vibe. This is what they captioned, an image of
Speaker 3: a poptart being used as garnish for a cocktail.
Speaker 2: Calm down, it's a virgin like you.
Speaker 3: And I want to reiterate that. Nathan Alibach, who ran
Speaker 3: the stake of account, has also basically written the history
Speaker 3: of brand Twitter in two pieces in Vulture twenty nineteen's
Speaker 3: How Brand Twitter Grew Up and twenty twenty two's when
Speaker 3: brands got horny linked in the description and as you
Speaker 3: can imagine, as Amy Brown led us in on last Week,
Speaker 3: it behooved a lot of these twenty somethings social media
Speaker 3: managers of this time to be friendly with one another
Speaker 3: in order to strategize these kinds of interactions. And while
Speaker 3: no one ever really got harsher with competing brands than
Speaker 3: the Wendy's account, the late twenty tens kind of began
Speaker 3: this bizarre pattern of social media managers of different brands
Speaker 3: basically having their products form parisocial attachments to each other.
Speaker 3: No accounting for it. But speaking of Nathan Alibach, he
Speaker 3: started at Stakhm in twenty seventeen, and, much like Amy
Speaker 3: Brown and Serenity Disco, was in his mid twenties and
Speaker 3: it couldn't have been a better time. According to his
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen piece in Vulture, this was a moment where
Speaker 3: brand memes hadn't quite gone mainstream before.
Speaker 2: From that piece, users talked about brands like they were celebrities,
Speaker 2: admired their cleverness, embraced their absurdity, and even wanted to
Speaker 2: get roasted for fun. The impact of communities like our
Speaker 2: fellow kids dwindled because brands were in on the joke
Speaker 2: and intentionally trying to get featured. It was like a
Speaker 2: badge of honor. Some brands, like flex Seal were even welcomed.
Speaker 2: Many of the top posts went from this brand posted
Speaker 2: cringe to this brand actually gets it.
Speaker 3: And going into twenty eighteen, things would continue to get
Speaker 3: more experimental. Anyone remember when I hop became I hob.
Speaker 5: I hop as always pancake pancakes, but now where burger
Speaker 5: and burgers.
Speaker 2: Whoo with Burger's made with all natural black angus be
Speaker 2: our seven new ultimate state burgers are so burger and good.
Speaker 2: We're even changing our name to I hob Combos starting
Speaker 2: at six ninety nine with unlimited fries and a drink
Speaker 2: I how Burgers Burger's Burgers, Fries, fries.
Speaker 3: Fries presented without comment. But yeah, this was that time.
Speaker 3: It's the tail end of BuzzFeed, clickbait aggregate and the
Speaker 3: peak of Instagram accounts like the malevolent Fuck Jerry. See
Speaker 3: our Disaster Girl episode for more on them. But these
Speaker 3: screenshot driven and gage strategies which could be a pain
Speaker 3: in the ass for the uncredited joke writer. While Fuck
Speaker 3: Jerry made money off of their work. But this was
Speaker 3: a boon for brands whose only aim was visibility by
Speaker 3: any means, and as things got weirder, social media had
Speaker 3: to up the stakes see where I'm going with this
Speaker 3: in order to stand out on Twitter. I think my
Speaker 3: least favorite example of this that makes my stomach kurdle
Speaker 3: to this day is when like local aquariums and petting
Speaker 3: zoos were posting pictures of like big animals sexualizing them.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this? This is a tweet from the
Speaker 3: Monterey Bay Aquarium from late twenty eighteen, posting a picture
Speaker 3: of a large otterer. Good luck with this one.
Speaker 2: Grant Abby is a thick girl. What an absolute unit
Speaker 2: she chunk. Look at the size of this lady. Oh lord,
Speaker 2: she coming another internetism.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. But the
Speaker 3: Steakum account was a prime target for a weirdo rebrand
Speaker 3: of this ilk because Steakham Yeah, they were kind of
Speaker 3: a gross looking steak strip from Pennsylvania that you put
Speaker 3: in your freezer. They've been around for a long time,
Speaker 3: but there wasn't much to say about them.
Speaker 7: Got a minute, then you've got time for a hot
Speaker 7: steak sandwich. Keep Steakhum frozen. Til you're ready to eat,
Speaker 7: then stick them in the frying pan. Sixty seconds later,
Speaker 7: take them off the heat and fix them up. Any Way,
Speaker 7: you can try steak them on a roll with cheese
Speaker 7: top it. Any Way, you please steak them sandwich steaks.
Speaker 7: They're one hundred percent pure beef and nothing else.
Speaker 3: Now. I've written a lot analyzing why we view food
Speaker 3: defined by class, and I've written a lot about highly
Speaker 3: processed meat, arguing for its merits. But steakhum is actually
Speaker 3: quite gross looking. I would never buy it. I don't
Speaker 3: want it. When a meet can't even photograph appetizingly, what
Speaker 3: are we doing? But even Stakham's website seems to understand
Speaker 3: what value having this weird internet persona in the twenty
Speaker 3: tens added to their brand, because to this day, it
Speaker 3: is literally half of their about page on stakom dot com.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, it developed a viral persona on Twitter
Speaker 2: that's been described as ironic, existential meta and has earned
Speaker 2: media everywhere from The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Vox,
Speaker 2: Washington Post, Associated Press, and beyond. This persona has since
Speaker 2: expanded to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and seeks to embody
Speaker 2: Stakehem's company values as a legacy brand in a strange
Speaker 2: new world.
Speaker 3: Keep that last sentence in mind, the fact that an
Speaker 3: ironic Twitter presence represents Stakham's company values. We'll come back
Speaker 3: to that. But when it came to Stakham's Twitter presence,
Speaker 3: unlike brands like Denny's or Wendy's that already had some
Speaker 3: existing voice, there was just kind of nothing there. Well,
Speaker 3: there was something there, but I'm going to let Nathan
Speaker 3: Alabach tell you that story in detail in the interview,
Speaker 3: because the very logged in at the time that Nathan
Speaker 3: took over that account in twenty seventeen would have only
Speaker 3: interacted with the Stakehum account in order to cyberbully it.
Speaker 3: Stacam did have a previous social media manager, but they
Speaker 3: appeared to be thin skinned, defensive, and weirdly into Iinrand,
Speaker 3: never a good combination, and all of which made them
Speaker 3: perfect fodder for being cyberbullied by Weirdwitter. We can't Weird
Speaker 3: Twitter is a short series all its own. Suffice it
Speaker 3: to say, weird Twitter was a loosely organized grew group
Speaker 3: of Twitter joke writers and comedians, some of whom use
Speaker 3: their real names. Others who didn't or tweeted in character
Speaker 3: think Drill Drill was doing it the best. I think
Speaker 3: we can all agree. But what's important is that most
Speaker 3: of this community were pretty squarely anti capitalist, and I
Speaker 3: come to you as a humble fan of weird Twitter.
Speaker 3: I loved weird Twitter at its peak, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the people who were a part of it went
Speaker 3: on to become successful comedy writers or performers. A couple
Speaker 3: were fucking creeps, but many I consider to be terrific
Speaker 3: people and friends. So in this house, we respect weird
Speaker 3: Twitter and their various endeavors, except for those few guys. Anyways,
Speaker 3: these would be the guys. There are a couple girls,
Speaker 3: but let's be honest, these would be the guys that
Speaker 3: would absolutely demolish the original stake of social media account
Speaker 3: manager and got a kick out of being blocked by
Speaker 3: a freezer meat brand, even though they were all well
Speaker 3: aware that behind this account was a to this day
Speaker 3: unidentified utilitarian weirdo. And this is where Nathan Alibach comes in.
Speaker 3: While working for his dad's ad firm in Philadelphia, he
Speaker 3: pursued the Pennsylvania based stakehum account because twist Nathan was
Speaker 3: a big fan of weird Twitter and seemed to relish
Speaker 3: the chance to get to interact with these accounts that
Speaker 3: he's been enjoying for years. While it's unlikely that his
Speaker 3: favorite joke writers would interact with him a fan, he
Speaker 3: knew enough Internet lore to be sure that they would
Speaker 3: interact with Stakehum. I know, but this strategy worked really
Speaker 3: well at first because Nathan Alibach, in spite of working
Speaker 3: in advertising, was working this job as a means to
Speaker 3: an end. This is something we've learned in virtually every
Speaker 3: interview in this series. So Nathan actually shared the anti
Speaker 3: capitalist politics of weird Twitter. But the tricky thing is
Speaker 3: he then made his politics the politics of Stakum, and
Speaker 3: before he knew it, Stakum was being hailed as the
Speaker 3: woke brand on Twitter, even if the build to that
Speaker 3: title was slow because it took a while for Nathan
Speaker 3: to develop the voice of the account. Here is an
Speaker 3: early post he made in late twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: At some point in your life, you're going to stare
Speaker 2: deeply into the eyes of another human being and see
Speaker 2: your entire future unfold. At another point in your life,
Speaker 2: you're going to stare deeply into a frying pan of
Speaker 2: Stakum and get grease splattered in your eye light engagement.
Speaker 3: On this one, the voice isn't quite developed under Nathan's watch.
Speaker 3: The Stakum account lightly interacts with Moonpie around this time,
Speaker 3: ostensibly trying to interact with other cool brands in the
Speaker 3: pursuit of making Stakum a cool brand. But by the
Speaker 3: fall of twenty eighteen, the table was fully set, the
Speaker 3: freezer was thawed. I'm going to stop. I hate this.
Speaker 3: September twenty sixth, twenty eighteen, the stake of Twitter account
Speaker 3: under Nathan Alibach goes on a pretty impressive anti capitalist rant,
Speaker 3: and so dear listeners performing this monologue is Grant Crater.
Speaker 2: Why are so many young people flocking to brands on
Speaker 2: social media for love, guidance, and attention.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: They're isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate
Speaker 2: while barely making ends meet, and are living with unchecked
Speaker 2: personal mental health problems. They're crushed by student loan debt,
Speaker 2: disenfranchised by past generations, and are dreading the future of
Speaker 2: our world every day from mass media, addiction and the
Speaker 2: struggle tonight just be happy, but to survive this caseaotic
Speaker 2: time with every problem happening at once under a microscope.
Speaker 2: They grew up through the dawn of Internet culture and
Speaker 2: have had mass advertising drilled into their media consumption, and
Speaker 2: now they're being resold their childhoods by remakes, sequels, spinoffs,
Speaker 2: and other cheap nostalgia, making them more cynical to growth
Speaker 2: or authenticity. They often don't have parents to talk to
Speaker 2: because they say stuff like you don't know how good
Speaker 2: you have it, and they don't have mentors to talk
Speaker 2: to because most of them have no concept for growing
Speaker 2: up in this strange time, which perpetuates the feeling of
Speaker 2: helplessness loneliness. They have full access to social media and
Speaker 2: the information Highway, but they feel more alone and insecure
Speaker 2: than ever. Being behind a screen twenty four to seven
Speaker 2: has made them numb to everything, anxious and depressed about everything,
Speaker 2: and vitriolic are closed off toward anyone different from them.
Speaker 2: Young people today have it the best and the worst.
Speaker 2: There's so much to process and very few trusted, accessible
Speaker 2: outlets to process it all through. They go to memes,
Speaker 2: They go to obscure or absurdist humor. They go to
Speaker 2: frozen meat companies on Twitter and brand Stakhem.
Speaker 3: Bless okay, so this got a big media reaction. Stakham
Speaker 3: is using anti consumerism to get you to buy Snooze.
Speaker 2: Stakhem's new marketing strategy millennial angst with a side of
Speaker 2: meat puns.
Speaker 3: Stakhem's social media person sounds like they might need a hug.
Speaker 2: Stakum is woke now everything is hell.
Speaker 3: So, as Nathan speaks to in our interview, this thread
Speaker 3: got a ton of press, but the reception of the
Speaker 3: thread was somewhat mixed. Some culture writers enjoyed the post,
Speaker 3: while others found the approach pretty pernicious. This is from
Speaker 3: Heather Docray in Mashable. The brand's recent monologue was its
Speaker 3: most explosive and self aware, yet if only any of
Speaker 3: it was real. Docray then dives into the marketing precedent
Speaker 3: for what Nathan is doing here. The idea of anti
Speaker 3: advertising touching on everything from VW marketing their bug in
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties to emphasize the car's small size in
Speaker 3: order to contrast the dick swinging big car ads of
Speaker 3: the day, will table the Nazi stuff, and all the
Speaker 3: way up to a Sprite commercial with Lebron James and
Speaker 3: Liliatti from twenty sixteen, where the big joke is that
Speaker 3: Lebron knows how advertising works.
Speaker 6: Let's get one thing straight. I'll never tell you to
Speaker 6: drink Sprite. Even if I was in a commercial for Sprite,
Speaker 6: which I am, or you were watching it what you are,
Speaker 6: I would tell you to drink it, no matter what
Speaker 6: that q car says. Proh Man say it no.
Speaker 3: But as you know by this point in listening to
Speaker 3: this show, all impressions are good impressions for advertisers, and
Speaker 3: the company that Nathan works for, all Abach Communications, was
Speaker 3: only benefiting from this. But for what it's worth, Nathan
Speaker 3: was consistently singled out as the mind behind the stake
Speaker 3: of account and defended his work to outlets at the time.
Speaker 3: Here's a quote from him in a piece from Vox
Speaker 3: in fall twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: We're trying to create meaningful content, so we're not just
Speaker 2: posting nonsense, he explains. There's some substance to it, but
Speaker 2: at the same time, it's really light hearted and it's
Speaker 2: centered around the community.
Speaker 7: That we built.
Speaker 2: We're not taking sides or having a specific stance on anything.
Speaker 3: There are a few breakout feathers in the stake of
Speaker 3: Twitter cap. This twenty eighteen rant was the first, but
Speaker 3: the account got a second massive wave of attention in
Speaker 3: the early days of COVID lockdown nearly two years later,
Speaker 3: when misinformation which I don't know if you remember misinformation
Speaker 3: ran absolutely rampant. That was now five years ago. I
Speaker 3: don't want to talk about it, but given the brand
Speaker 3: voice that Nathan had developed in this account, tackling misinformation
Speaker 3: was a perfect topic for Stakeom to take on and
Speaker 3: you really just have to hear it to believe it.
Speaker 3: April sixth, twenty twenty, once again, rant.
Speaker 2: Greater friendly reminder. In times of uncertainty and misinformation, anecdotes
Speaker 2: are not data. Good data is carefully measured and collected
Speaker 2: information based on a range of subject dependent factors, including
Speaker 2: but not limited to, controlled variables, meta analysis, and randomization.
Speaker 2: Outliers attempting to counter global consensus surround this pandemic with
Speaker 2: amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. Breaking
Speaker 2: news stories that only relay initial findings of an event
Speaker 2: are not collecting data. We have to be careful in
Speaker 2: our media consumption. It can be difficult to know what
Speaker 2: to believe in a time when institutional trust is diminished
Speaker 2: and the gatekeepers of information have been dismantled. But it's
Speaker 2: more crucial now than ever before to follow a range
Speaker 2: of credentialed sources for both breaking news and data collection.
Speaker 2: All we currently have are limited and evolving metrics that
Speaker 2: experts are deciphering and acting upon immediately to the best
Speaker 2: of their ability. This terrain leaves many openings for opportunists
Speaker 2: and charismatic manipulators to lead people astray by exploiting what
Speaker 2: they want to hear. Breaking news and storytelling will always
Speaker 2: be spun with interpretive bias from different media perspectives, but
Speaker 2: data is a science that can't be replaced by one
Speaker 2: off anecdotes. Try to remember this to avoid fear based
Speaker 2: sensationalism or conspiracy theories taking over your mind. You can
Speaker 2: maintain independent, critical thinking toward institutions without dipping into fringe
Speaker 2: conspiracies that get jump started by individual anecdotes being virally
Speaker 2: spread as data. It's not easy, but it's necessary to
Speaker 2: keep any semblance of responsible online information flow. We're a
Speaker 2: frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people
Speaker 2: and generate sales, so this is peak irony, But Hey,
Speaker 2: we live in a society, so please make informed decisions
Speaker 2: to the best of your ability, and don't let anecdotes
Speaker 2: dictate your worldview. Okay, stakehem bless?
Speaker 3: Yeah, stakhem bless was the sign off. And if by
Speaker 3: this point you're like, wow, Grant is so good at this,
Speaker 3: I agree. But if after that you're like, but wait,
Speaker 3: is this Pennsylvania meat brand remotely woke outside of this
Speaker 3: Twitter account, Well you've come to the right place, because I,
Speaker 3: Jamie Loftus, am a literal authority on whether meat brands
Speaker 3: such as this are being run remotely ethically, and the
Speaker 3: answer is probably not. Back in twenty twelve, food publication
Speaker 3: grub Street laid out an ongoing federal court battle between
Speaker 3: Stakhum and a South Philly mom and pop shop called
Speaker 3: Stakum Up, in which the Stakham founder, Gene Gagliardi, spent
Speaker 3: six figures on lawyers in a copyright infringement case that
Speaker 3: he would eventually lose.
Speaker 2: From that piece, new lawsuit reveals the world's grossest meat
Speaker 2: is probably Stakhum's. In courtroom proceedings, the composition of the
Speaker 2: meat came to light. The Daily News reports that the
Speaker 2: stuff is chopped and formed emulsified meat product that is
Speaker 2: comprised of beef trimmings leftover after an animal is slaughtered
Speaker 2: and all the primary cuts such as tenderloin, filet, and
Speaker 2: rabbi are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a
Speaker 2: loaf and sliced, frozen, and packaged. After learning that a
Speaker 2: federal judge denied Stakam's claims, their inventor, Geene Gagliardi, was
Speaker 2: quoted as saying he did no justice to the meat
Speaker 2: world and continue to rant about how the poor quality
Speaker 2: of meat and cheese steaks drove him to create his
Speaker 2: own sandwich steak. You couldn't serve it to children because
Speaker 2: the meat was so tough. You drag it out of
Speaker 2: the sandwich and choke on it. Gagliardi is quoted as
Speaker 2: saying this was definitely a safety feature.
Speaker 3: Apologies to Philadelphians everywhere for the accent work there. He's
Speaker 3: still working on his Boston accent to talk to my uncles.
Speaker 3: If nothing else. He did no justice to the meat
Speaker 3: world is a great sentence, but to be clear.
Speaker 6: So let me be clear.
Speaker 3: While the description of what is in Stakhum sounds pretty gross,
Speaker 3: this is not demonstrably worse than your average grocery store
Speaker 3: hot dogs production. How do I know that? Maybe read
Speaker 3: Raw Dog paperback out next month. The difference here is
Speaker 3: you don't see ballpark franks preaching the gospel of fighting
Speaker 3: misinformation and soft socialism, and that's for a reason. Their
Speaker 3: company's values, as Stakum alluded to earlier, do not back
Speaker 3: that up. So in Stakhem's defense, from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: the company isn't technically bullshitting by printing the phrase one
Speaker 3: hundred percent beef on the front of their box for
Speaker 3: all these decades, But there are major missing operative words there,
Speaker 3: words like buy product or even one hundred percent processed beef.
Speaker 3: Buy product, you know, the stuff that's left over when
Speaker 3: the expensive cuts of beef are gone, you know, like
Speaker 3: a hot dog. Just and because we've covered what I
Speaker 3: think is almost a disproportionate number of stories about processed
Speaker 3: meat and men from Philadelphia on this show, Gene Gagliardi
Speaker 3: certainly fits the bill for a big personality Philly guy
Speaker 3: and also has the claim to fame of being the
Speaker 3: guy who invented KFC popcorn Chicken. So when I found
Speaker 3: myself asking what are the company values of Stakhum. I
Speaker 3: had to look into the history of the company, and
Speaker 3: here are some polls from a twenty eighteen Mental Floss
Speaker 3: article by Jake Rowson about.
Speaker 2: That Eugene Gagliardi, patriarch of the Gagliardi meatpacking business, raised
Speaker 2: the twenty two ounce frozen log of beef products it
Speaker 2: would shortly become known as Stakhum, and sent it careening
Speaker 2: into his son's angle. Nobody's ever gonna buy it a shit,
Speaker 2: he screamed, storming off. Despite his numerous contributions to food service,
Speaker 2: he still feels slided by his father, who passed away
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one and apparently never acknowledged his son's success.
Speaker 2: I never got a compliment, he says.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yes, Beneath every weird specific business is the story of
Speaker 3: fathers and sons. So well, Stakham certainly has working class
Speaker 3: Philly roots, It has the production integrity of a hot dog,
Speaker 3: and the company has been sold to two huge conglomerates
Speaker 3: over the years, both Hines and Quaker Foods. The brand
Speaker 3: could not conceivably be described as woke. So if a funny,
Speaker 3: creative young person is promoting his personal politics and values
Speaker 3: on the brand account of a company that appears to
Speaker 3: have no politics whatsoever. What does it all fucking mean
Speaker 3: when we come back my conversation with the man behind
Speaker 3: it all, Nathan Alibach. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm
Speaker 3: so burned out on eat the rich, prestige media and
Speaker 3: feel completely alone in the world on that front. And
Speaker 3: here's my interview with the man who turned washed up
Speaker 3: freezer meat brand Stakum into a national phenomenon. Here's Nathan Alibach.
Speaker 8: My name's Nathan Alibach. I'm the current social media lead
Speaker 8: at a company called Ramp, which is a fintech company,
Speaker 8: but previously most known in the niche internet micro celebrity world.
Speaker 8: I suppose for being the social media manager behind the
Speaker 8: meat brand Stakum, or the frozen beef sheep brand, as
Speaker 8: I once referred to enough Sheep.
Speaker 3: I honestly did not know Stakhum existed before you, so
Speaker 3: thank you for that.
Speaker 6: It's you're welcome.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like Steakham was this kind of like legacy frozen
Speaker 8: meat product from like the nineteen seventies and eighties that
Speaker 8: people like the gen X and Boomer generations were very
Speaker 8: familiar with.
Speaker 6: It's like latchkey kids.
Speaker 8: You know. It's like parents, parents were like, you like
Speaker 8: leave their kids alone, be like here, make some steak
Speaker 8: and it's easy. It takes thirty seconds. It was funny
Speaker 8: and strange to kind of like give it a new
Speaker 8: life through this Twitter persona where people maybe were familiar
Speaker 8: with the name because it's such like a memeable name
Speaker 8: like steak. Yeah, it's so ridiculous, but uh yeah, happy
Speaker 8: to I guess reintroduce it to the world. I mean,
Speaker 8: I grew up in a pretty small suburb just outside
Speaker 8: of Philadelphia, and my dad was a small business owner
Speaker 8: started an advertising agency around the time that I was born.
Speaker 8: Before he did that, like he was like he worked
Speaker 8: at like a meat packing facility, Like like looking back,
Speaker 8: it was kind of all destined to be. I suppose
Speaker 8: like he would work the night shift doing that, and
Speaker 8: then you would take classes at u arts to yeah,
Speaker 8: for like graphic design and yeah. So I kind of
Speaker 8: like grew up in and around like advertising. I remember
Speaker 8: a lot of kind of like goofy commercials from the
Speaker 8: nineties and the early two thousands. Interesting environment to grow
Speaker 8: up in. As I got to be like a teenager,
Speaker 8: I never in a million years or of stalled myself
Speaker 8: working in advertising. I kind of like rebelled became like
Speaker 8: at the times kind of like whatever, aimless anti establishment kid. Yeah,
Speaker 8: just like very anti consumers when all that. So, I
Speaker 8: was like a songwriter. I grew up in like a
Speaker 8: hardcore local music scene. It was weird because like growing up,
Speaker 8: like all my friends were in bands, we did a
Speaker 8: lot of it was all this kind of like anti
Speaker 8: establishment vibe. And then like as I got older and
Speaker 8: started to realize like, Okay, I'm probably not going to
Speaker 8: make it as a musician, and I was just like
Speaker 8: kind of bleeding money working dead end jobs. I decided
Speaker 8: to give the family this is a whirl. This has
Speaker 8: been twenty fourteen, So this is like when social media
Speaker 8: platforms were starting to become more commoditized, with advertising really
Speaker 8: like a model for it. So I was just like
Speaker 8: lucky enough with the timing to kind of get in
Speaker 8: at the ground level when there was opportunity and there
Speaker 8: wasn't really rules or like people in place that knew
Speaker 8: what the hell was going on. So a guy who
Speaker 8: kind of grew up on the Internet with a background
Speaker 8: in like local like music, community building and songwriting. So
Speaker 8: I had been using Facebook and YouTube and other platforms
Speaker 8: to like promote music. So I had this, like I
Speaker 8: guess of the platforms to kind of give myself enough
Speaker 8: juice to get it off the ground at the at
Speaker 8: the agency. But yeah, I kind of hated it for
Speaker 8: the first few years. I didn't really know what I
Speaker 8: was doing. And then the Stakem stuff happened in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 8: and that like basically by honestly just so much by chance,
Speaker 8: like basically gave me a career because at that point,
Speaker 8: like it became this viral phenomenon over like the following
Speaker 8: years that got my name on a bunch of lists
Speaker 8: and got my name in the mix of other like
Speaker 8: social media marketers and advertising professionals where I don't think
Speaker 8: I would in a million years been considered among like
Speaker 8: the people I've been considered among just because of this
Speaker 8: one account that like kind of blew up early on.
Speaker 3: So do you like strike out on your own? Do
Speaker 3: you start working at an agency and then strike out
Speaker 3: on your own? What does that process like?
Speaker 8: Around the time when the Stakeum stuff started happening, like
Speaker 8: we were getting a lot of calls obviously from like
Speaker 8: different media companies like in the beginning, it was like
Speaker 8: ad Week and huff Post, and then the first like
Speaker 8: viral story happened in the very like in January of
Speaker 8: twenty eighteen. It was this whole like hashtag verify stakeum
Speaker 8: like movement quote unquote on Twitter or like we were
Speaker 8: trying to get the account verified and just got like
Speaker 8: a bunch of hype behind it. In the midst of
Speaker 8: all that attention, Yeah, like I started to like network
Speaker 8: and figure out like, Okay, you know, I'm at this
Speaker 8: small agency. I don't really have a history that I
Speaker 8: can like I don't know, like lean back on and
Speaker 8: be like, oh, yeah, like I had this whole thing
Speaker 8: planned out, like I knew exactly what I was doing, right,
Speaker 8: try to like reverse engineer parts of that. Like before
Speaker 8: the show, you and I were talking a little bit
Speaker 8: about some of the articles I wrote for Vulture Magazine,
Speaker 8: and like that type of stuff was a big part
Speaker 8: of how I started to kind of branch out on
Speaker 8: my own a bit with freelance writing and just like okay,
Speaker 8: bogging and like just trying to like build a little
Speaker 8: bit more of a credibility to myself, like since I
Speaker 8: just didn't really have a ton of like accolades or
Speaker 8: like value I guess to my resume. So yeah, I
Speaker 8: just became like, Okay, I'm a stakeem guy, but I'm
Speaker 8: also like the guy who sort of writes about weird
Speaker 8: niche internet history. By the time the stake ofm account
Speaker 8: was going viral and like the end of twenty seventeen
Speaker 8: early twenty eighteen, this brand Twitter stuff had been happening
Speaker 8: for years and I was like, for the most part
Speaker 8: unaware of like all of it.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, when you're building this identity for sake of
Speaker 3: how at this point in time did that work?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: That not too much structure in the beginning. I mean
Speaker 8: it was really so much much chance. Because so I
Speaker 8: give you context, Like summer of twenty seventeen is when
Speaker 8: I started posting on the account. And the only reason
Speaker 8: I was even really given the sort of greenlight and
Speaker 8: even like wanted to start doing it was because people
Speaker 8: were texting me that I think. It was like right
Speaker 8: in the middle of August that Joe Rogan had had
Speaker 8: on a guest on his podcast for his one thousandth episodes.
Speaker 8: It was like this kind of whatever's moment for the show,
Speaker 8: and the guest was telling like ridiculous stories about Stakehem.
Speaker 8: So like Stakhem prior to this was not active on
Speaker 8: Twitter at all, like rewind a hair, because like yeah,
Speaker 8: like up until this moment, there was no like there
Speaker 8: was no guardrails, there was no precedent. It was just
Speaker 8: kind of like the podcast happened. I asked our account executive,
Speaker 8: who then asked the marketing manager at stakem, like if
Speaker 8: we could start basically shit posting on the steakhum account
Speaker 8: because there's no activity there. They saw it as like
Speaker 8: a no stakes platform because like they weren't advertising. There
Speaker 8: really is a super small audience.
Speaker 3: Oh I just understood you were using the other version
Speaker 3: of Steaks. It's like, wait, steak not welcome on that platform. Okay, no,
Speaker 3: I see what you're saying.
Speaker 8: I see you're So it was like, okay, I mean
Speaker 8: this should be creating some buzz, like hopefully people will
Speaker 8: be talking about the brand here, but again there's no
Speaker 8: like monitoring or context for the team, So it was
Speaker 8: kind of just like a shot in the dark, like, hey,
Speaker 8: we have the log, let's get on the account.
Speaker 6: So on getting on the account.
Speaker 8: I realized in like the first few days that steakm
Speaker 8: had blocked like well over one hundred and fifty maybe
Speaker 8: two hundred or so accounts, and they're all like anonymous
Speaker 8: weird Twitter shit posting accounts. I'm like, what happened here?
Speaker 8: So I started like doing some digging and unblocking all
Speaker 8: of these people and tweeting at them, being like what's
Speaker 8: going on here? And they're all kind of like, oh,
Speaker 8: it's steak them, like steak COM's back, and I'm like,
Speaker 8: what is happening? Because we had the agency had acquired
Speaker 8: the account in twenty sixteen, and it turned out this
Speaker 8: history with the previous Stake of admin on Twitter was
Speaker 8: in twenty fourteen. So okay, story short is that whoever
Speaker 8: was running this account, it could have been somebody that
Speaker 8: worked at Stake and it could have been somebody at
Speaker 8: an agency, like I honestly don't know, but it was
Speaker 8: just like tweeting really weird, just weird weird stuff through
Speaker 8: the account, Like they're tweeting like ironed rand quotes, just
Speaker 8: like really bizarre, like like why is this coming from
Speaker 8: a brand account? And I guess like weird Twitter as
Speaker 8: a community like it does, It's like people started to
Speaker 8: notice this and as kind of like an inside joke,
Speaker 8: just kind of like making fun of it, and whoever
Speaker 8: the admin was didn't take kindly to that. They started
Speaker 8: to block people, and as they blocked people, it became
Speaker 8: like a streisand effect where then more people from weird
Speaker 8: Twitter like, oh my gosh, if you like, if you
Speaker 8: dissstake them or whatever, like they'll block you. It would
Speaker 8: be really funny. So everybody started to do this and
Speaker 8: it started to pile on. And there's this one weird
Speaker 8: Twitter user, but I'm not sure if he's still active anymore.
Speaker 6: Is at Is or was Boner Hitler.
Speaker 8: He basically started like a crusade against Steakham, kind of
Speaker 8: like leveraging these weird Twitter accounts where he had this
Speaker 8: bit saying that his wife left him and like in
Speaker 8: the in the heat of like a fight when they
Speaker 8: were she was leaving, he like got mad and he
Speaker 8: burned his hand on like a pan and threw steak
Speaker 8: of at her or something. It was something like this,
Speaker 8: Like it was just like a ridiculous bit. When they
Speaker 8: blocked him, he became like the sort of ring leader
Speaker 8: of this whole thing and really corralled hundreds of these
Speaker 8: accounts to try to harass steak them culminated with steakhem
Speaker 8: like they tried to publish a rules thing on their bio,
Speaker 8: which again backfirecs like the rules onto like what people
Speaker 8: can tweet, and then eventually like the stakem admin just
Speaker 8: left the account like abandoned it, stop posting, and the
Speaker 8: whole thing died. Without that context from before my time,
Speaker 8: everyone had taken off, because in the beginning, when I
Speaker 8: unblocked all these people and started engaging them, they were
Speaker 8: the initial groundswell of engagement that then I've seeded conversations
Speaker 8: with Stake more broadly, So it became kind of like
Speaker 8: weird self fulfilling prophecy where to me again not having
Speaker 8: context of like what I was even really doing or
Speaker 8: like what brands were doing. It was all just a
Speaker 8: fun gag for me in the beginning. So I was
Speaker 8: like interacting with these weird Twitter people who are all
Speaker 8: very almost all very anti capitalists or very kind of
Speaker 8: like radical as it was like a bit, and like
Speaker 8: they liked me personally, like I was able early on
Speaker 8: I kind of like revealed to a few of them
Speaker 8: like my personal accounts they kind of like was and
Speaker 8: I was trying to be as transparent about the whole
Speaker 8: thing as I could be even they all ran to
Speaker 8: it like I was in all these group chats with
Speaker 8: them and like really interesting time. But then as the
Speaker 8: account went viral, then after a few months the end
Speaker 8: of the year, little by little the community started to
Speaker 8: turn on stake them and just be like they felt duped.
Speaker 8: I think because then they felt like, oh, like we
Speaker 8: were part of like the reason this corporation now is
Speaker 8: getting all this positive press essentially, and there was certainly
Speaker 8: like some pockets of them just didn't really give a shit,
Speaker 8: like some of them were like who cares, Like we
Speaker 8: knew this all along, like it was a company, like
Speaker 8: what did you expect? But people felt like genuinely betrayed
Speaker 8: the marketing I guess with it. So it was really
Speaker 8: difficult to navigate because I did feel like I developed
Speaker 8: relationships with a lot of them, like with my personal account,
Speaker 8: so I knew these people and I thought it was
Speaker 8: like really fun. But then like kind of like coming
Speaker 8: to learn the sort of ideological tensions was interesting, like
Speaker 8: over like the following years.
Speaker 3: You are lending so much of what makes you cool
Speaker 3: to a brand? Did your feelings on that change over time?
Speaker 3: Like how did that? How did you process that.
Speaker 8: I feel like I've kind of come full circle on
Speaker 8: it a bit, Like in the beginning, I hadn't really
Speaker 8: thought about it much at all. Like in the beginning,
Speaker 8: like I said, it was all just kind of like
Speaker 8: nonsense to me. I did not anticipate it blowing up
Speaker 8: the way it did. It was fun like coming up
Speaker 8: with dumb stuff and like trying to get people's attention
Speaker 8: and kind of like navigating community to community.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 8: My feelings on it definitely evolved because like at the beginning, yeah,
Speaker 8: I felt after all of the tension started unravel, I
Speaker 8: certainly felt torn, Like I felt bad.
Speaker 6: I was like, man, like people feel.
Speaker 8: Bad about this, Like I was not my intention to
Speaker 8: like manipulate people or whatever. I was trying to like
Speaker 8: do my best to play this like stupid and impossible
Speaker 8: dance where I'm like posting through a corporate brand account
Speaker 8: while also trying to be sincere and like that. I
Speaker 8: think that that thread, that like that tension is the
Speaker 8: thing that actually made it go megaviral, and it's also
Speaker 8: the thing that I was trying to do to like
Speaker 8: solve the solve for the tension, And so it didn't
Speaker 8: really solve it basically like made the thing blow.
Speaker 2: Up, just amplify it. Yet Yeah, because.
Speaker 8: Then people were like, oh my gosh, this brand's like
Speaker 8: super self aware and it's like doing cultural commentary and
Speaker 8: also at the same time telling us that it's selling
Speaker 8: us a product, Like it became my marketing trope that
Speaker 8: hadn't really existed at least in online. Now I'm definitely
Speaker 8: a lot more chill about the lines between what marketing
Speaker 8: is and like what sort of personal branding is and
Speaker 8: journalism is. Like these are lines that have continued to
Speaker 8: blur since those early days of stake. I'm not just
Speaker 8: within like my world, but like the world more broad
Speaker 8: Like what makes like when does a person stop becoming
Speaker 8: a person and they become a brand?
Speaker 3: You know, now, in twenty twenty five, it sounds kind
Speaker 3: of silly to me to be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: a smart, thoughtful person feeling betrayed by the stake of
Speaker 3: Twitter account. I think that you were at like sort
Speaker 3: of the tail end of people not always thinking about
Speaker 3: how yeah, obviously there's a person behind thisactly.
Speaker 8: I feel like it was at this kind of weird
Speaker 8: precipice of a generational divide, where like when you look
Speaker 8: at like say twenty twenty onward, especially like in the
Speaker 8: TikTok air with social media and how brands interact with
Speaker 8: social media, like zoomers and young millennials like are just
Speaker 8: so I don't want to say they're not critical of media,
Speaker 8: but like they grew up on like these sort of
Speaker 8: smart devices and with Internet culture in a way where
Speaker 8: like they are more sort of naive and just like
Speaker 8: don't really think as much about this stuff the way
Speaker 8: that older millennials and younger Gen X people did. So,
Speaker 8: like the way Twitter culture used to be in those
Speaker 8: like the like twenty say thirteen to twenty eighteen ish era,
Speaker 8: Like it was dominated by people who were millennials and
Speaker 8: older who had basically been like online forever, Like people
Speaker 8: that were online from like the nineties the early two thousands,
Speaker 8: like had grown up through like the forum days, and
Speaker 8: like had seen how things had evolved into this new
Speaker 8: like advertiser model, which to them like really bastardized, like
Speaker 8: what Internet culture used to be. The way Rich Kayanka,
Speaker 8: the founder of Something Awful, used to describe this was
Speaker 8: like the Internet started to go downhill when people stopped
Speaker 8: prioritizing the creation of image macros and started prioritizing memes
Speaker 8: because it was like before like memes were really a
Speaker 8: thing if you wanted to like stand out and get
Speaker 8: laughs online, like you had to create something, like you
Speaker 8: had to make your own video, you had to design
Speaker 8: your own image, and it became like an original thing.
Speaker 8: But then years later maybe became a meme. But at
Speaker 8: the time it was like it existed in a time
Speaker 8: and place that people latched onto. And then like once
Speaker 8: the Internet became accessible to literally everybody, and then you
Speaker 8: have like generations growing up just on the Internet. It
Speaker 8: memes became like the default because it's the most successible,
Speaker 8: low hanging fruit that you can share, and like it's
Speaker 8: just it wasn't about, hey, how can I make you know,
Speaker 8: the most original, weird piece of art or or like
Speaker 8: or media possible. It then just became about like, oh
Speaker 8: my gosh, have you seen this thing online? I'm gonna
Speaker 8: share it from Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to whatever.
Speaker 8: So like that piece of it as well, Like when
Speaker 8: you look at the way like audiences engage with brands
Speaker 8: on TikTok at large, like go to any brand's profile,
Speaker 8: any brands common sections, you're not seeing people being like
Speaker 8: silence brand. Like the way the algorithms work now, it's
Speaker 8: it's it fire hoses out to people in a way
Speaker 8: where back in the day when it was much more
Speaker 8: like follower driven, linear driven, these people like these more
Speaker 8: like critical sort of like anti brand accounts were able
Speaker 8: to early on when brands would post like latch on
Speaker 8: to something, share it in the group chat and be like, yo,
Speaker 8: let's like harass this brand post because this is like trash,
Speaker 8: Like we should discourage like this type of content on
Speaker 8: the timeline. Like it's it's such an impossible thing to
Speaker 8: do now like that, people just don't really try anymore.
Speaker 8: It just feels so futile. I have some battle scars.
Speaker 8: I had some crazy crazy people from the weird Twitter
Speaker 8: community target maing like come after me over the years,
Speaker 8: which you know, I know they're not like like necessarily
Speaker 8: representative of the whole group or whatever, but yeah, the
Speaker 8: account really went like National National during COVID for like
Speaker 8: the commentary on misinformation, like that's what you got like
Speaker 8: a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in a bunch
Speaker 8: of places. And during that era, I had just some
Speaker 8: crazy crazy people targeting me.
Speaker 6: This one account. I'll never forget.
Speaker 8: It was somewhat late in the day logged on, I
Speaker 8: saw this account had tagged me in a tweet and
Speaker 8: it was an anonymous parody account called White Women posting
Speaker 8: their ws. There was women posting their ws and then
Speaker 8: women posting their l's and they became.
Speaker 3: These Oh I guess I don't know white women specifically
Speaker 3: buzzy their debuts.
Speaker 8: Because this was just like it had no followers, it
Speaker 8: was just but it had just made the account and
Speaker 8: they tagged me in a tweet and I was like
Speaker 8: what is this and like didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 6: It just looked like a ship poster.
Speaker 8: And then the following morning I went to work and
Speaker 8: at like tenants am got to call my wife and
Speaker 8: she's like, hey, can you like come home? And I
Speaker 8: was like, uh, like like sure, like like what do
Speaker 8: you what do you need? And she's like, well, the
Speaker 8: secret servicer here and like they want to talk to you.
Speaker 8: And so I was like what, like will they like
Speaker 8: what what what's going on? She's like they won't explain
Speaker 8: anything to me, Like you have to come home to
Speaker 8: like talk to them. So these guys are at my
Speaker 8: doors to agents and I let them in my house.
Speaker 8: They're like, do you know why we're here? And I'm like, no,
Speaker 8: like what's going on? And they pulled out this iPad
Speaker 8: and uh, all in the iPad pulled up this white
Speaker 8: women posting their w's Twitter account And in the bio
Speaker 8: of this account, it says run by Nathan Albach and
Speaker 8: the top tweet on it is I'm gonna kill Joe
Speaker 8: Biden or like I'm gonna kill the president like something
Speaker 8: like that, which I triggered something in their nets of like.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's what they have the alert on for job guys.
Speaker 6: My name the like we saw this. We went up
Speaker 6: in the middle of the night and like you need to.
Speaker 3: Threat directly threatened the president under your government name.
Speaker 8: They're like, and I was just like, this isn't my account,
Speaker 8: the like put your names on it the way. I
Speaker 8: had to explain so much context. They're like, well, why
Speaker 8: would somebody do this? And I was like, look, I
Speaker 8: run this frozen meat brand account and there's people who
Speaker 8: hate me online because of it, and they're just like
Speaker 8: their eyes are like glazing over, like what is this
Speaker 8: guy talking about. There's just so many things like that
Speaker 8: that would just all because of this meat account that
Speaker 8: I would not have anticipated at the time.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back with more Nathan Allabach, Welcome back
Speaker 3: to sixteenth minute. I need to throw away the carpet
Speaker 3: in my office because it smells like dog piss, but
Speaker 3: I don't want to throw it away because I can't
Speaker 3: find the same car again. And it makes me laugh
Speaker 3: because it looks like if you killed Sully from Monsters, Inc.
Speaker 3: And turned him into a rug. Anyways, here's the rest
Speaker 3: of my interview with Nathan Alibach. When did you sort
Speaker 3: of decide I'm done with this specific account.
Speaker 6: I mean I felt it waning right away.
Speaker 8: Honestly, after the first year, after that Millennial throat and viral,
Speaker 8: I was like, Okay, I've had enough, just because it
Speaker 8: was so mentally taxing, like with the way people harass me,
Speaker 8: I think, and I hate this even say that because
Speaker 8: it's it sounds so like menial, But there really was
Speaker 8: like a significant amount of people that came after me
Speaker 8: at the time, and I had to grow really thick skin.
Speaker 8: It's kind of just like eyed off my back and
Speaker 8: like keep working on it, especially because it's just such
Speaker 8: a strange thing to like target somebody over. I was like,
Speaker 8: there's so many like things happening in the world, and
Speaker 8: there was like this dedicated group of people that really.
Speaker 3: Part of your job is to behave like but like
Speaker 3: a person, but don't react like a person. Like it
Speaker 3: just it feels very that of course that's the mostly taxing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you learned to take it on the chin in
Speaker 8: like ninety plus percent of cases. I think the fact
Speaker 8: that my personal name and like brand quote unquote, like
Speaker 8: my Twitter account was so closely attached to this thing,
Speaker 8: it just became like more of a target than I
Speaker 8: had I had hoped. It was like the double edged short,
Speaker 8: you know, because I was getting all of these accolades
Speaker 8: and like public attention from the account. It would go viral,
Speaker 8: get a ton of followers, get a ton of business,
Speaker 8: like people wanting to work with me on stuff. On
Speaker 8: the flip side, was just like a constant wave of
Speaker 8: people sending me death threats and like just crazy like yeah,
Speaker 8: and sending the secret service to my house.
Speaker 6: I don't know, like I've been.
Speaker 8: Doing it for like four years at that point, very
Speaker 8: sick of frozen beef sheet puns and uh yeah, like
Speaker 8: I ended up we ended up getting off the account.
Speaker 6: I think later that year like that.
Speaker 8: That December then was the end of the It was
Speaker 8: like a six year or seven year relationship with that
Speaker 8: client being the end of it and I moved on
Speaker 8: to other things. But yeah, it was definitely a tough
Speaker 8: time because it was like to think about the landscape
Speaker 8: of brands at that point, like I'd been writing about
Speaker 8: like the horny brand trend like yes, you're too prior,
Speaker 8: and like it was just weird to look at what
Speaker 8: was going viral and like what was becoming popular and
Speaker 8: trying to think like in terms of a career, like
Speaker 8: how can I be part of this and like do
Speaker 8: something that's different and do something that's not just like
Speaker 8: circling the drain of it. A lot of this which
Speaker 8: like no again, no hate like the individual social media
Speaker 8: managers like everything's an attention to economy and I get it,
Speaker 8: but it definitely like put into perspective like Okay, I've
Speaker 8: been doing this for so many years now, like what
Speaker 8: is the next step for someone in my shoes? Like
Speaker 8: how can you keep doing a career of being online?
Speaker 8: Like you just keep getting crazier. So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 8: That was definitely a turning point, I would say, And
Speaker 8: how I think about it.
Speaker 6: So how do you.
Speaker 3: Move forward from that? How did you sort of keep
Speaker 3: things interesting and more balanced for yourself after put in
Speaker 3: a post stake of world.
Speaker 8: It's just such a I just love this conversation. Thank you,
Speaker 8: Jamie hilarious. Yeah, it's a great question. Like I think
Speaker 8: for me, the through line of this whole ordeal or
Speaker 8: this whole like whatever like career trajectory has been just
Speaker 8: like making sure that I have an identity outside of
Speaker 8: this thing. Amy talks about this a lot, just kind
Speaker 8: of like making sure that your job isn't your identity
Speaker 8: isn't your work.
Speaker 6: Essentially.
Speaker 8: I struggle with that because, like whatever I do, I
Speaker 8: want to put my all into it, Like I want
Speaker 8: to be noticed for my work internally, like I want
Speaker 8: to get paid well, Like I want to grow in
Speaker 8: my career. So there's like always a tension there between,
Speaker 8: like how much of your life do you want to?
Speaker 8: Like when I started this whole thing back in like
Speaker 8: twenty seventeen, it was kind of I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 6: It is kind of coming to the.
Speaker 8: Tail end of my like non career as a songwriter
Speaker 8: and a musician, Like I was in a bunch of
Speaker 8: bands and like I was, I really wanted to do
Speaker 8: songwriting to some extent, like what I didn't really have
Speaker 8: any like this illusionment that I was going to make
Speaker 8: like a living full.
Speaker 6: Time doing it.
Speaker 8: But I always imagined myself doing it at least part
Speaker 8: time on the side, and like trying to make it
Speaker 8: like a big part of me makes it always had
Speaker 8: been in your entire And as time went on with
Speaker 8: the work, like I realized that was just not possible,
Speaker 8: because like the way to get really good, especially as
Speaker 8: you work with other companies and organizations, like you have
Speaker 8: to commit so much time to learning how they operate.
Speaker 8: You know, when I'm not posting about this, like I
Speaker 8: don't have the creative energy to be like doing writing
Speaker 8: in my free time now, or like making the talks
Speaker 8: in my free time, Like I have done the work
Speaker 8: and now I'm tired. So like that's certainly been the
Speaker 8: biggest shift I think in the past five or seven years,
Speaker 8: is like I have less and less of that artistic identity.
Speaker 8: Like I don't write as much. I journal, but I
Speaker 8: don't like publish writing as much anymore. I don't do
Speaker 8: music anymore. Once in a while I'll play like an
Speaker 8: open mic with some friends just to kind of like
Speaker 8: blow some steam off and get.
Speaker 6: Out of the house.
Speaker 8: And I have other hobbies like a garden, a landscape,
Speaker 8: like I do a lot, and I got two kids. Now,
Speaker 8: not like not like all all is lost by any means,
Speaker 8: but certainly like in the context of those past years,
Speaker 8: like thinking about trying to kind of like spread your
Speaker 8: eggs a bit and not have everything in one basket,
Speaker 8: Like that's not a lot more feasible than it does now.
Speaker 8: Like now it's like, Okay, getting older, it's harder to
Speaker 8: be online all the time. I have to kind of
Speaker 8: like consolidate my energy around singular topics, singular platforms, and
Speaker 8: it's just hard to establish those boundaries and like maintain
Speaker 8: that sense of self outside of work when your work
Speaker 8: is so just like dominant, when your job is to
Speaker 8: be online for like eight or even many maybe twelve
Speaker 8: or fourteen hours a day, like you really do just
Speaker 8: like commit so much of your sort of like spiritual
Speaker 8: sense of self to the internet, and like it's like
Speaker 8: the meme online like people talk about like irony poison,
Speaker 8: like you break your brain, and like it really does
Speaker 8: become so difficult to establish boundaries and like to figure
Speaker 8: out like how to I don't know, like be like
Speaker 8: a healthy person outside of that. That's why, like I've
Speaker 8: figured out, like they do. They really do try to
Speaker 8: like become like I don't know, like they go to
Speaker 8: the gym a lot, or like they become like people
Speaker 8: that hike a lot. Like you're always trying to kind
Speaker 8: of counterbalance all the insane amount of hours you spend
Speaker 8: staring at a phone every every week.
Speaker 6: You know, there's like.
Speaker 8: These fake jobs like like YouTuber, social media manager, podcasts
Speaker 8: or whatever, and like, sure they're nothing like the strain
Speaker 8: of like a like a laborist nine to five, but
Speaker 8: there is something spiritually demanding about them that I think
Speaker 8: most people maybe don't fully understand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like I look forward to reading someone's thesis
Speaker 3: paper on it in like fifteen years.
Speaker 8: But a lot of it's, like, you know, it's like
Speaker 8: your privileged to the extent that you know you're to
Speaker 8: do this, like you're put out there, you're building a
Speaker 8: personal brand, like most people don't have those options in
Speaker 8: the first place. It becomes again contextually, it's difficult to
Speaker 8: talk about, but it's interesting. It certainly has its repercussions that,
Speaker 8: like you said, we'll learn about in time.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this is the exact conversation I wanted to
Speaker 3: have with the STAKM guys. So this works great.
Speaker 8: I remember when I wrote that culture piece. I've been
Speaker 8: chatting with a ton of fellow social media marketers and
Speaker 8: just online friends about it, and everybody kind of had
Speaker 8: the same response, which is just like, yeah, where do
Speaker 8: we go from here? Like it doesn't really seem to
Speaker 8: be a clear path for brands, Like the areas that
Speaker 8: would you would could be considered taboo for brands, like religion, politics, drugs,
Speaker 8: Like there's some obvious, obvious third rails there, Like you know,
Speaker 8: the vast majority of brands will never touch religion as
Speaker 8: like a topic. They'll never touch drugs even when drugs
Speaker 8: are legalized, Like it's say, say pot or whatever, Like
Speaker 8: it's one of the where Like it's just such high
Speaker 8: risk for a brand that I think it's not worth that. Yeah,
Speaker 8: not worth touching. So like and I also just don't know,
Speaker 8: like from like an ideological standpoint, the politics stuff really
Speaker 8: only resonates when it's safe. Now, you don't you wouldn't
Speaker 8: see like anytime an issue becomes act like there's actual
Speaker 8: again stakes don't mind my pun. Like, when there's an
Speaker 8: any kind of issue with actual like skin in the game,
Speaker 8: when there's actually like a polarizing element to it, brands
Speaker 8: almost never touch it. Like the only brand there's only
Speaker 8: a couple brands really that have stuck to their guns
Speaker 8: with this, Like one is classically Ben and Jerry's, and
Speaker 8: like those are the ones that, like because they have
Speaker 8: such credibility baked into like their mission and how they
Speaker 8: talk about it, it makes sense that they would stick
Speaker 8: to their guns. But for the vast majority of brands,
Speaker 8: like anything, anytime something like that hot like a moment
Speaker 8: pops up in the zeitgeist, like it's just an opportunity
Speaker 8: and it's I'm not even saying that like fully cynically,
Speaker 8: because like there is like the cynical side of it
Speaker 8: of like, hey, let's make money doing this. But then
Speaker 8: there's also like the com like the communication side of
Speaker 8: it of like what are the repercussions if we don't,
Speaker 8: you know, there's kind of like we need to maybe
Speaker 8: reevaluate our policy or reevaluate like how we're positioning our
Speaker 8: team and our company and how we hire people or whatever.
Speaker 8: So like it's not all fully cynical, but like the
Speaker 8: way it's presented in like the medium of social media
Speaker 8: content is just very strange from an ideological standpoints.
Speaker 3: Where is there left to go? But there's always somewhere.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you if you have any predictions of
Speaker 3: where you see things going next.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like it's it's kind of weird and in some
Speaker 8: ways sad to say, but like, I think we've treaded
Speaker 8: most of the original ground here, so at this point,
Speaker 8: everything's just getting retreaded. That's been really weird to see
Speaker 8: as somebody especially I can't even imagine for like Amy
Speaker 8: or Serenity, who have been doing this for longer than
Speaker 8: I have. It's like when I think back over the
Speaker 8: past like ten or so years of trends, like talk
Speaker 8: about these vulture pieces, like how the different dynamics of
Speaker 8: content have evolved and devolved over the years. In the
Speaker 8: past four or five years, I would say, we've just
Speaker 8: seen repeats of most of what was happening earlier. A
Speaker 8: lot of the stuff that felt novel ten years ago
Speaker 8: is starting to feel a novel again. As long as
Speaker 8: like people feel a genuine connection to you, like how
Speaker 8: you talk to them verbally and in written form. I
Speaker 8: think that is always going to be like the thing
Speaker 8: that people have to like really figure out for themselves
Speaker 8: because people just sniff out in authenticity so quick nowadays.
Speaker 8: So you either have to go so like personified and
Speaker 8: absurd that you're clearly putting on a character, or be
Speaker 8: like so true to yourself that you can keep it
Speaker 8: up every day, you know what I mean to reach people.
Speaker 8: So at least that's how I feel like right now,
Speaker 8: I'm like whatever I make, like, I want to be
Speaker 8: able to feel like I can put myself into it comfortably.
Speaker 6: Because if I can't, like it just feels.
Speaker 8: So contrived and like I won't have the energy to
Speaker 8: keep it up over months or years.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: Personification like it's it's part of who we are as
Speaker 8: certain makes the work feel again like there's blurred lines,
Speaker 8: makes it feel very sticky for all of us in
Speaker 8: our own ways, I think. But yeah, but it's a
Speaker 8: cool part of what we get to do. Again, It's
Speaker 8: like it's easy to hate on like again, like I've
Speaker 8: kind of come out of my more like cynical years
Speaker 8: on this, I think, just because it was weighing me
Speaker 8: down so heavily and like not really going anywhere. But
Speaker 8: like when I think about how I used to I
Speaker 8: think about how I used to think about this, it
Speaker 8: was like I don't know, like this is unhealthy and
Speaker 8: like I can't keep doing this whatever, Like it's I'm
Speaker 8: chilling myself for a brand, and like even if some
Speaker 8: of that is still true, like obviously it's again like
Speaker 8: it's not not very different if I was a songwriter,
Speaker 8: except I'm doing this for a company versus myself. It's
Speaker 8: like you have to put on our performance, like you
Speaker 8: have to put on some kind of facade, whether it's
Speaker 8: a light facade or a heavy facade, to like really
Speaker 8: put an image and a message out there for people
Speaker 8: to resonate with.
Speaker 6: And you know, I think where I'm at now.
Speaker 8: Like I tried just to be at peace with knowing
Speaker 8: there's like a separation there and let people kind of
Speaker 8: let the chips fall where they are, let people interpret
Speaker 8: it how they will, but not like get too crazy
Speaker 8: about it like I did the seven or eight years ago,
Speaker 8: or it just felt like all consuming and I don't know,
Speaker 8: like it was just like messing with me mentally, Like
Speaker 8: it's just not that deep anymore to me. But maybe
Speaker 8: that's just because I'm getting older and I don't have
Speaker 8: time to think too much about it anymore.
Speaker 6: Who knows. For a lot of this, I always.
Speaker 8: Wish I had like clear answers for people, but so
Speaker 8: much of it is just this kind of like weird,
Speaker 8: hazy world where like from a creative standpoint, if you
Speaker 8: are somebody in marketing and you want to get into
Speaker 8: this world, like I tell us to young people all
Speaker 8: the time, like if you want to be a writer,
Speaker 8: like a copywriter, or like a graphic designer or something
Speaker 8: of that nature, may do a much easier time kind
Speaker 8: of like separating your work from like your personal life.
Speaker 8: But yeah, social media management is certainly a harder game
Speaker 8: for doing that. Like you're just you're always putting a
Speaker 8: piece of yourself on the Internet, And I think it's
Speaker 8: good to know going into it like that, that's what
Speaker 8: you have to expect and you have to kind of
Speaker 8: wrestle with that tension like we're talking about here, like
Speaker 8: figuring out how to compartmentalize and draw boundaries and figure out,
Speaker 8: you know, where your sense of self is derived from
Speaker 8: outside of your work, so you don't get too crazy
Speaker 8: as a personified brand, you know.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much to Nathan for his time, and
Speaker 3: you can learn more about his work at the links
Speaker 3: in the description. So much of this interview really stuck
Speaker 3: with me in the days after, and I really want
Speaker 3: to again thank Nathan for his good sense of humor
Speaker 3: and candor about everything. He's obviously a very funny and
Speaker 3: thoughtful guy, and I totally understand why it hurt that
Speaker 3: the comedy writers he'd kind of taken over the stakehum
Speaker 3: account in order to befriend eventually turned on him. But
Speaker 3: I also understand the other side of that. It's fine
Speaker 3: to be friends with Nate, and it's great when Nathan
Speaker 3: is doing well at work, But at what point are you,
Speaker 3: as a public facing anti capitalist, just promoting a dangerously
Speaker 3: sourced meat brand. It's kind of an impossible thing to navigate,
Speaker 3: and as long as young creatives are still getting pulled
Speaker 3: into advertising, we'll probably never be fully out of it.
Speaker 3: Much to consider, and in our grand finale to the
Speaker 3: Sentient Brand series this Thursday, I'm going to bring you
Speaker 3: right up to the present moment, onto that second road,
Speaker 3: in that thorny divergent wood, the Horny Brand, a look
Speaker 3: at the social media history that leads us to the murdered, pissoaked,
Speaker 3: Duo Lingo Bird and the brilliant mind behind it. We'll
Speaker 3: see you then. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Whole
Speaker 3: Zone Media and iHeart Rodous. It is written, posted, and
Speaker 3: produced by me Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie
Speaker 3: Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our
Speaker 3: supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song.
Speaker 3: Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Brant Crater
Speaker 3: and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my
Speaker 3: Kat's flee and Casper and my pet Rockbert, who will
Speaker 3: outlive us all. Bye.