Full Transcript for why is my freezer steak tweeting nihilism: the steakumm saga

Speaker 2: Moonpie quote tweets Hostess Snacks and writes loll okay, I don't know. 00:07:34 Speaker 3: The Moonpie account was run by social media manager Patrick Wells, and the other successful nihilist Twitter account was the Stakum account, as run by our guest today Nathan Allapach. And like any advertising venture, the name of the game was finding the specific lane your product fell into while still playing 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. 00:08:10 Speaker 2: Are pop Tarts my friend? 00:08:12 Speaker 3: Meanwhile, pop Tarts was more into a kind of horny bully vibe. This is what they captioned, an image of a poptart being used as garnish for a cocktail. 00:08:23 Speaker 2: Calm down, it's a virgin like you. 00:08:26 Speaker 3: And I want to reiterate that. Nathan Alibach, who ran the stake of account, has also basically written the history of brand Twitter in two pieces in Vulture twenty nineteen's How Brand Twitter Grew Up and twenty twenty two's when brands got horny linked in the description and as you can imagine, as Amy Brown led us in on last Week, it behooved a lot of these twenty somethings social media managers of this time to be friendly with one another in order to strategize these kinds of interactions. And while no one ever really got harsher with competing brands than the Wendy's account, the late twenty tens kind of began this bizarre pattern of social media managers of different brands basically having their products form parisocial attachments to each other. No accounting for it. But speaking of Nathan Alibach, he started at Stakhm in twenty seventeen, and, much like Amy Brown and Serenity Disco, was in his mid twenties and it couldn't have been a better time. According to his twenty nineteen piece in Vulture, this was a moment where brand memes hadn't quite gone mainstream before. 00:09:36 Speaker 2: 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. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: And going into twenty eighteen, things would continue to get more experimental. Anyone remember when I hop became I hob. 00:10:19 Speaker 5: I hop as always pancake pancakes, but now where burger and burgers. 00:10:24 Speaker 2: Whoo with Burger's made with all natural black angus be our seven new ultimate state burgers are so burger and good. We're even changing our name to I hob Combos starting at six ninety nine with unlimited fries and a drink I how Burgers Burger's Burgers, Fries, fries. 00:10:41 Speaker 3: Fries presented without comment. But yeah, this was that time. It's the tail end of BuzzFeed, clickbait aggregate and the peak of Instagram accounts like the malevolent Fuck Jerry. See our Disaster Girl episode for more on them. But these screenshot driven and gage strategies which could be a pain in the ass for the uncredited joke writer. While Fuck Jerry made money off of their work. But this was a boon for brands whose only aim was visibility by any means, and as things got weirder, social media had to up the stakes see where I'm going with this in order to stand out on Twitter. I think my least favorite example of this that makes my stomach kurdle to this day is when like local aquariums and petting zoos were posting pictures of like big animals sexualizing them. Do you remember this? This is a tweet from the Monterey Bay Aquarium from late twenty eighteen, posting a picture of a large otterer. Good luck with this one. 00:11:50 Speaker 2: Grant Abby is a thick girl. What an absolute unit she chunk. Look at the size of this lady. Oh lord, she coming another internetism. 00:12:04 Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. But the Steakum account was a prime target for a weirdo rebrand of this ilk because Steakham Yeah, they were kind of a gross looking steak strip from Pennsylvania that you put in your freezer. They've been around for a long time, but there wasn't much to say about them. 00:12:26 Speaker 7: Got a minute, then you've got time for a hot steak sandwich. Keep Steakhum frozen. Til you're ready to eat, then stick them in the frying pan. Sixty seconds later, take them off the heat and fix them up. Any Way, you can try steak them on a roll with cheese top it. Any Way, you please steak them sandwich steaks. They're one hundred percent pure beef and nothing else. 00:12:46 Speaker 3: Now. I've written a lot analyzing why we view food defined by class, and I've written a lot about highly processed meat, arguing for its merits. But steakhum is actually quite gross looking. I would never buy it. I don't want it. When a meet can't even photograph appetizingly, what are we doing? But even Stakham's website seems to understand what value having this weird internet persona in the twenty tens added to their brand, because to this day, it is literally half of their about page on stakom dot com. 00:13:25 Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, it developed a viral persona on Twitter that's been described as ironic, existential meta and has earned media everywhere from The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Vox, Washington Post, Associated Press, and beyond. This persona has since expanded to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and seeks to embody Stakehem's company values as a legacy brand in a strange new world. 00:13:54 Speaker 3: Keep that last sentence in mind, the fact that an ironic Twitter presence represents Stakham's company values. We'll come back to that. But when it came to Stakham's Twitter presence, unlike brands like Denny's or Wendy's

that already had some existing voice, there was just kind of nothing there. Well, there was something there, but I'm going to let Nathan Alabach tell you that story in detail in the interview, because the very logged in at the time that Nathan took over that account in twenty seventeen would have only interacted with the Stakehum account in order to cyberbully it. Stacam did have a previous social media manager, but they appeared to be thin skinned, defensive, and weirdly into Iinrand, never a good combination, and all of which made them perfect fodder for being cyberbullied by Weirdwitter. We can't Weird Twitter is a short series all its own. Suffice it to say, weird Twitter was a loosely organized grew group 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 stake of social media account manager and got a kick out of being blocked by a freezer meat brand, even though they were all well aware that behind this account was a to this day unidentified utilitarian weirdo. And this is where Nathan Alibach comes in. While working for his dad's ad firm in Philadelphia, he pursued the Pennsylvania based stakehum account because twist Nathan was a big fan of weird Twitter and seemed to relish the chance to get to interact with these accounts that he's been enjoying for years. While it's unlikely that his favorite joke writers would interact with him a fan, he knew enough Internet lore to be sure that they would interact with Stakehum. I know, but this strategy worked really well at first because Nathan Alibach, in spite of working in advertising, was working this job as a means to an end. This is something we've learned in virtually every interview in this series. So Nathan actually shared the anti capitalist politics of weird Twitter. But the tricky thing is he then made his politics the politics of Stakum, and before he knew it, Stakum was being hailed as the woke brand on Twitter, even if the build to that title was slow because it took a while for Nathan to develop the voice of the account. Here is an early post he made in late twenty seventeen. 00:17:21 Speaker 2: At some point in your life, you're going to stare deeply into the eyes of another human being and see your entire future unfold. At another point in your life, you're going to stare deeply into a frying pan of Stakum and get grease splattered in your eye light engagement. 00:17:37 Speaker 3: On this one, the voice isn't quite developed under Nathan's watch. The Stakum account lightly interacts with Moonpie around this time, ostensibly trying to interact with other cool brands in the pursuit of making Stakum a cool brand. But by the fall of twenty eighteen, the table was fully set, the freezer was thawed. I'm going to stop. I hate this. September twenty sixth, twenty eighteen, the stake of Twitter account under Nathan Alibach goes on a pretty impressive anti capitalist rant, and so dear listeners performing this monologue is Grant Crater. 00:18:22 Speaker 2: Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention. 00:18:29 Speaker 6: I'll tell you why. 00:18:31 Speaker 2: 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 tonight just be happy, but to survive this caseaotic time with every problem happening at once under a microscope. They grew up through the dawn of Internet culture and have had mass advertising drilled into their media consumption, and now they're being resold their childhoods by remakes, sequels, spinoffs, 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 twenty four to seven has made them numb to everything, anxious and depressed about everything, and vitriolic are closed off toward anyone different from them. Young people today have it the best and the worst. There's so much to process and very few trusted, accessible outlets to process it all through. They go to memes, They go to obscure or absurdist humor. They go to frozen meat companies on Twitter and brand Stakhem. 00:20:30 Speaker 3: Bless okay, so this got a big media reaction. Stakham is using anti consumerism to get you to buy Snooze. 00:20:42 Speaker 2: Stakhem's new marketing strategy millennial angst with a side of meat puns. 00:20:48 Speaker 3: Stakhem's social media person sounds like they might need a hug. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Stakum is woke now everything is hell. 00:20:58 Speaker 3: So, as Nathan speaks to in our interview, this thread got a ton of press, but the reception of the thread was somewhat mixed. Some culture writers enjoyed the post,

while others found the approach pretty pernicious. This is from Heather Docray in Mashable. The brand's recent monologue was its most explosive and self aware, yet if only any of it was real. Docray then dives into the marketing precedent for what Nathan is doing here. The idea of anti advertising touching on everything from VW marketing their bug in the nineteen forties to emphasize the car's small size in order to contrast the dick swinging big car ads of the day, will table the Nazi stuff, and all the way up to a Sprite commercial with Lebron James and Liliatti from twenty sixteen, where the big joke is that Lebron knows how advertising works. 00:21:58 Speaker 6: Let's get one thing straight. I'll never tell you to drink Sprite. Even if I was in a commercial for Sprite, which I am, or you were watching it what you are, I would tell you to drink it, no matter what that q car says. Proh Man say it no. 00:22:13 Speaker 3: But as you know by this point in listening to this show, all impressions are good impressions for advertisers, and the company that Nathan works for, all Abach Communications, was only benefiting from this. But for what it's worth, Nathan was consistently singled out as the mind behind the stake of account and defended his work to outlets at the time. Here's a quote from him in a piece from Vox in fall twenty eighteen. 00:22:40 Speaker 2: We're trying to create meaningful content, so we're not just posting nonsense, he explains. There's some substance to it, but at the same time, it's really light hearted and it's centered around the community. 00:22:52 Speaker 7: That we built. 00:22:53 Speaker 2: We're not taking sides or having a specific stance on anything. 00:22:58 Speaker 3: There are a few breakout feathers in the stake of Twitter cap. This twenty eighteen rant was the first, but the account got a second massive wave of attention in the early days of COVID lockdown nearly two years later, when misinformation which I don't know if you remember misinformation ran absolutely rampant. That was now five years ago. I don't want to talk about it, but given the brand voice that Nathan had developed in this account, tackling misinformation was a perfect topic for Stakeom to take on and you really just have to hear it to believe it. April sixth, twenty twenty, once again, rant. 00:23:39 Speaker 2: Greater friendly reminder. In times of uncertainty and misinformation, anecdotes are not data. Good data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject dependent factors, including but not limited to, controlled variables, meta analysis, and randomization. Outliers attempting to counter global consensus surround this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. Breaking news stories that only relay initial findings of an event are not collecting data. We have to be careful in our media consumption. It can be difficult to know what 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 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, stakehem bless? 00:26:01 Speaker 3: Yeah, stakhem bless was the sign off. And if by this point you're like, wow, Grant is so good at this, I agree. But if after that you're like, but wait, is this Pennsylvania meat brand remotely woke outside of this Twitter account, Well you've come to the right place, because I, Jamie Loftus, am a literal authority on whether meat brands such as this are being run remotely ethically, and the answer is probably not. Back in twenty twelve, food publication grub Street laid out an ongoing federal court battle between Stakhum and a South Philly mom and pop shop called Stakum Up, in which the Stakham founder, Gene Gagliardi, spent six figures on lawyers in a copyright infringement case that he would eventually lose. 00:26:51 Speaker 2: From that piece, new lawsuit reveals the world's grossest meat is probably Stakhum's. In courtroom proceedings, the composition of the meat came to light. The Daily News reports that the stuff is chopped and formed emulsified meat product that is comprised of beef trimmings leftover after an animal is slaughtered and all the primary cuts such as tenderloin, filet, and rabbi are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a loaf and sliced, frozen, and packaged. After learning that a federal judge denied Stakam's claims, their inventor, Geene Gagliardi, was quoted as saying he did no justice to the meat world and continue to rant about how the poor quality of meat and cheese steaks drove him to create his own sandwich steak. You couldn't serve it to children because the meat was so tough. You drag it out of the sandwich and choke on it. Gagliardi is quoted as saying this was

definitely a safety feature. 00:27:47 Speaker 3: 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. 00:28:01 Speaker 6: So let me be clear. 00:28:02 Speaker 3: While the description of what is in Stakhum sounds pretty gross, this is not demonstrably worse than your average grocery store hot dogs production. How do I know that? Maybe read Raw Dog paperback out next month. The difference here is you don't see ballpark franks preaching the gospel of fighting misinformation and soft socialism, and that's for a reason. Their company's values, as Stakum alluded to earlier, do not back that up. So in Stakhem's defense, from what I can tell, the company isn't technically bullshitting by printing the phrase one hundred percent beef on the front of their box for all these decades, But there are major missing operative words there, words like buy product or even one hundred percent processed beef. Buy product, you know, the stuff that's left over when the expensive cuts of beef are gone, you know, like a hot dog. Just and because we've covered what I think is almost a disproportionate number of stories about processed meat and men from Philadelphia on this show, Gene Gagliardi certainly fits the bill for a big personality Philly guy and also has the claim to fame of being the guy who invented KFC popcorn Chicken. So when I found myself asking what are the company values of Stakhum. I had to look into the history of the company, and here are some polls from a twenty eighteen Mental Floss article by Jake Rowson about. 00:29:38 Speaker 2: That Eugene Gagliardi, patriarch of the Gagliardi meatpacking business, raised the twenty two ounce frozen log of beef products it would shortly become known as Stakhum, and sent it careening into his son's angle. Nobody's ever gonna buy it a shit, he screamed, storming off. Despite his numerous contributions to food service, he still feels slided by his father, who passed away in nineteen ninety one and apparently never acknowledged his son's success. I never got a compliment, he says. 00:30:09 Speaker 4: Ah. 00:30:10 Speaker 3: Yes, Beneath every weird specific business is the story of fathers and sons. So well, Stakham certainly has working class Philly roots, It has the production integrity of a hot dog, and the company has been sold to two huge conglomerates over the years, both Hines and Quaker Foods. The brand 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 Alibach. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm so burned 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 Stakum into a national phenomenon. Here's Nathan Alibach. 00:31:29 Speaker 8: My name's Nathan Alibach. I'm the current social media lead at a company called Ramp, which is a fintech company, but previously most known in the niche internet micro celebrity world. I suppose for being the social media manager behind the meat brand Stakum, or the frozen beef sheep brand, as I once referred to enough Sheep. 00:31:52 Speaker 3: I honestly did not know Stakhum existed before you, so thank you for that. 00:31:57 Speaker 6: It's you're welcome. 00:31:58 Speaker 8: Yeah, Like Steakham was this kind of like legacy frozen meat product from like the nineteen seventies and eighties that people like the gen X and Boomer generations were very familiar with. 00:32:09 Speaker 6: It's like latchkey kids. 00:32:10 Speaker 8: You know. It's like parents, parents were like, you like leave their kids alone, be like here, make some steak and it's easy. It takes thirty seconds. It was funny and strange to kind of like give it a new life through this Twitter persona where people maybe were familiar with the name because it's such like a memeable name like steak. Yeah, it's so ridiculous, but uh yeah, happy to I guess reintroduce it to the world. I mean, I grew up in a pretty small suburb just outside of Philadelphia, and my dad was a small business owner started an advertising agency around the time that I was born. Before he did that, like he was like he worked at like a meat packing facility, Like like looking back, it was kind of all destined to be. I suppose like he would work the night shift doing that, and then you would take classes at u arts to yeah, for like graphic design and yeah. So I kind of like grew up in and around like advertising. I remember a lot of kind of like goofy commercials from the nineties and the early two thousands. Interesting environment to grow up in. As I got to be like a teenager, I never in a million years or of stalled myself working in advertising. I kind of like rebelled became like at the times kind of like whatever, aimless anti establishment kid. Yeah, just like very anti consumers when all that. So, I was like a songwriter. I grew up in like a hardcore local music scene. It was weird because like growing up, like all my friends were in bands, we did a lot of it was all this kind of like anti establishment vibe. And then like as I got older and started to realize like, Okay, I'm probably not going to make it as a musician, and I was just like kind of bleeding money working dead end jobs. I decided to give the family this is a whirl. This has been twenty fourteen, So this is like when social media platforms were starting to become more commoditized, with advertising really like a model for it. So I was just like lucky enough with the timing to kind of get in at the ground level when there was opportunity and there wasn't really rules or like

people in place that knew what the hell was going on. So a guy who kind of grew up on the Internet with a background in like local like music, community building and songwriting. So I had been using Facebook and YouTube and other platforms to like promote music. So I had this, like I guess of the platforms to kind of give myself enough juice to get it off the ground at the at the agency. But yeah, I kind of hated it for the first few years. I didn't really know what I was doing. And then the Stakem stuff happened in twenty seventeen, and that like basically by honestly just so much by chance, 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. 00:35:12 Speaker 3: So do you like strike out on your own? Do you start working at an agency and then strike out on your own? What does that process like? 00:35:19 Speaker 8: Around the time when the Stakeum stuff started happening, like we were getting a lot of calls obviously from like different media companies like in the beginning, it was like ad Week and huff Post, and then the first like viral story happened in the very like in January of twenty eighteen. It was this whole like hashtag verify stakeum like movement quote unquote on Twitter or like we were trying to get the account verified and just got like a bunch of hype behind it. In the midst of all that attention, Yeah, like I started to like network and figure out like, Okay, you know, I'm at this small agency. I don't really have a history that I can like I don't know, like lean back on and be like, oh, yeah, like I had this whole thing planned out, like I knew exactly what I was doing, right, try to like reverse engineer parts of that. Like before the show, you and I were talking a little bit about some of the articles I wrote for Vulture Magazine, and like that type of stuff was a big part of how I started to kind of branch out on my own a bit with freelance writing and just like okay, bogging and like just trying to like build a little bit more of a credibility to myself, like since I just didn't really have a ton of like accolades or like value I guess to my resume. So yeah, I just became like, Okay, I'm a stakeem guy, but I'm also like the guy who sort of writes about weird niche internet history. By the time the stake ofm account was going viral and like the end of twenty seventeen early twenty eighteen, this brand Twitter stuff had been happening for years and I was like, for the most part unaware of like all of it. 00:36:47 Speaker 3: So, yeah, when you're building this identity for sake of how at this point in time did that work? 00:36:54 Speaker 6: Yeah? 00:36:54 Speaker 8: That not too much structure in the beginning. I mean it was really so much much chance. Because so I give you context, Like summer of twenty seventeen is when I started posting on the account. And the only reason I was even really given the sort of greenlight and even like wanted to start doing it was because people were texting me that I think. It was like right in the middle of August that Joe Rogan had had on a guest on his podcast for his one thousandth episodes. It was like this kind of whatever's moment for the show, and the guest was telling like ridiculous stories about Stakehem. So like Stakhem prior to this was not active on Twitter at all, like rewind a hair, because like yeah, like up until this moment, there was no like there was no guardrails, there was no precedent. It was just kind of like the podcast happened. I asked our account executive, who then asked the marketing manager at stakem, like if we could start basically shit posting on the steakhum account because there's no activity there. They saw it as like a no stakes platform because like they weren't advertising. There really is a super small audience. 00:38:02 Speaker 3: Oh I just understood you were using the other version of Steaks. It's like, wait, steak not welcome on that platform. Okay, no, I see what you're saying. 00:38:10 Speaker 8: I see you're So it was like, okay, I mean this should be creating some buzz, like hopefully people will be talking about the brand here, but again there's no like monitoring or context for the team, So it was kind of just like a shot in the dark, like, hey, we have the log, let's get on the account. 00:38:24 Speaker 6: So on getting on the account. 00:38:27 Speaker 8: I realized in like the first few days that steakm had blocked like well over one hundred and fifty maybe two hundred or so accounts, and they're all like anonymous weird Twitter shit posting accounts. I'm like, what happened here? So I started like doing some digging and unblocking all of these people and tweeting at them, being like what's going on here? And they're all kind of like, oh, it's steak them, like steak COM's back, and I'm like, what is happening? Because we had the agency had acquired the account in twenty sixteen, and it turned out this history with the previous Stake of admin on Twitter was in twenty fourteen. So okay, story short is that whoever was running this account, it could have been somebody that worked at Stake and it could have been somebody at an agency, like I honestly don't know, but it was just like tweeting really weird, just weird weird stuff through the account, Like they're tweeting like ironed rand quotes, just like really bizarre, like like why is this coming from a brand account? And I guess like weird Twitter as a community like it does, It's like people started to notice this and as kind of like an inside joke, just kind of like making fun of it, and whoever the admin was didn't take kindly to that. They

started to block people, and as they blocked people, it became like a streisand effect where then more people from weird Twitter like, oh my gosh, if you like, if you dissstake them or whatever, like they'll block you. It would be really funny. So everybody started to do this and it started to pile on. And there's this one weird Twitter user, but I'm not sure if he's still active anymore. 00:40:00 Speaker 6: Is at Is or was Boner Hitler. 00:40:03 Speaker 8: He basically started like a crusade against Steakham, kind of like leveraging these weird Twitter accounts where he had this bit saying that his wife left him and like in the in the heat of like a fight when they were she was leaving, he like got mad and he burned his hand on like a pan and threw steak of at her or something. It was something like this, Like it was just like a ridiculous bit. When they blocked him, he became like the sort of ring leader of this whole thing and really corralled hundreds of these accounts to try to harass steak them culminated with steakhem like they tried to publish a rules thing on their bio, which again backfirecs like the rules onto like what people can tweet, and then eventually like the stakem admin just left the account like abandoned it, stop posting, and the whole thing died. Without that context from before my time, everyone had taken off, because in the beginning, when I unblocked all these people and started engaging them, they were the initial groundswell of engagement that then I've seeded conversations with Stake more broadly, So it became kind of like weird self fulfilling prophecy where to me again not having context of like what I was even really doing or like what brands were doing. It was all just a fun gag for me in the beginning. So I was like interacting with these weird Twitter people who are all very almost all very anti capitalists or very kind of like radical as it was like a bit, and like they liked me personally, like I was able early on I kind of like revealed to a few of them like my personal accounts they kind of like was and I was trying to be as transparent about the whole thing as I could be even they all ran to it like I was in all these group chats with them and like really interesting time. But then as the account went viral, then after a few months the end of the year, little by little the community started to turn on stake them and just be like they felt duped. I think because then they felt like, oh, like we were part of like the reason this corporation now is getting all this positive press essentially, and there was certainly like some pockets of them just didn't really give a shit, like some of them were like who cares, Like we knew this all along, like it was a company, like what did you expect? But people felt like genuinely betrayed the marketing I guess with it. So it was really difficult to navigate because I did feel like I developed relationships with a lot of them, like with my personal account, so I knew these people and I thought it was like really fun. But then like kind of like coming to learn the sort of ideological tensions was interesting, like over like the following years. 00:42:38 Speaker 3: You are lending so much of what makes you cool to a brand? Did your feelings on that change over time? Like how did that? How did you process that. 00:42:48 Speaker 8: 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. 00:43:06 Speaker 6: I don't know. 00:43:06 Speaker 8: My feelings on it definitely evolved because like at the beginning, yeah, I felt after all of the tension started unravel, I certainly felt torn, Like I felt bad. 00:43:14 Speaker 6: I was like, man, like people feel. 00:43:16 Speaker 8: Bad about this, Like I was not my intention to like manipulate people or whatever. I was trying to like do my best to play this like stupid and impossible dance where I'm like posting through a corporate brand account while also trying to be sincere and like that. I think that that thread, that like that tension is the thing that actually made it go megaviral, and it's also the thing that I was trying to do to like solve the solve for the tension, And so it didn't really solve it basically like made the thing blow. 00:43:49 Speaker 2: Up, just amplify it. Yet Yeah, because. 00:43:51 Speaker 8: Then people were like, oh my gosh, this brand's like super self aware and it's like doing cultural commentary and also at the same time telling us that it's selling us a product, Like it became my marketing trope that hadn't really existed at least in online. Now I'm definitely a lot more chill about the lines between what marketing is and like what sort of personal branding is and journalism is. Like these are lines that have continued to blur since those early days of stake. I'm not just within like my world, but like the world more broad Like what makes like when does a person stop becoming a person and they become a brand? 00:44:29 Speaker 3: You know, now, in twenty twenty five, it sounds kind of silly to me to be like, oh, you know, a smart, thoughtful person feeling betrayed by the stake of Twitter account. I think that you were at like sort of the tail end of people not always thinking about how yeah, obviously there's a person behind thisactly. 00:44:51 Speaker 8: I feel like it was at this kind of weird precipice of a generational divide, where like when you look at like say twenty twenty onward, especially like in the TikTok air with social media and how brands interact with social media, like zoomers and young millennials like are just so I don't want to say they're not critical of media, but like they

grew up on like these sort of smart devices and with Internet culture in a way where like they are more sort of naive and just like don't really think as much about this stuff the way that older millennials and younger Gen X people did. So, like the way Twitter culture used to be in those like the like twenty say thirteen to twenty eighteen ish era, Like it was dominated by people who were millennials and older who had basically been like online forever, Like people that were online from like the nineties the early two thousands, like had grown up through like the forum days, and like had seen how things had evolved into this new like advertiser model, which to them like really bastardized, like what Internet culture used to be. The way Rich Kayanka, the founder of Something Awful, used to describe this was like the Internet started to go downhill when people stopped prioritizing the creation of image macros and started prioritizing memes because it was like before like memes were really a thing if you wanted to like stand out and get laughs online, like you had to create something, like you had to make your own video, you had to design your own image, and it became like an original thing. But then years later maybe became a meme. But at the time it was like it existed in a time and place that people latched onto. And then like once the Internet became accessible to literally everybody, and then you have like generations growing up just on the Internet. It memes became like the default because it's the most successible, low hanging fruit that you can share, and like it's just it wasn't about, hey, how can I make you know, the most original, weird piece of art or or like or media possible. It then just became about like, oh my gosh, have you seen this thing online? I'm gonna share it from Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to whatever. So like that piece of it as well, Like when you look at the way like audiences engage with brands on TikTok at large, like go to any brand's profile, any brands common sections, you're not seeing people being like silence brand. Like the way the algorithms work now, it's it's it fire hoses out to people in a way where back in the day when it was much more like follower driven, linear driven, these people like these more like critical sort of like anti brand accounts were able to early on when brands would post like latch on to something, share it in the group chat and be like, yo, let's like harass this brand post because this is like trash, Like we should discourage like this type of content on the timeline. Like it's it's such an impossible thing to do now like that, people just don't really try anymore. It just feels so futile. I have some battle scars. I had some crazy crazy people from the weird Twitter community target maing like come after me over the years, which you know, I know they're not like like necessarily representative of the whole group or whatever, but yeah, the account really went like National National during COVID for like the commentary on misinformation, like that's what you got like a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in a bunch of places. And during that era, I had just some crazy crazy people targeting me. 00:48:22 Speaker 6: This one account. I'll never forget. 00:48:25 Speaker 8: It was somewhat late in the day logged on, I saw this account had tagged me in a tweet and it was an anonymous parody account called White Women posting their ws. There was women posting their ws and then women posting their l's and they became. 00:48:40 Speaker 3: These Oh I guess I don't know white women specifically buzzy their debuts. 00:48:44 Speaker 8: Because this was just like it had no followers, it was just but it had just made the account and they tagged me in a tweet and I was like what is this and like didn't really think anything of it. 00:48:54 Speaker 6: It just looked like a ship poster. 00:48:55 Speaker 8: And then the following morning I went to work and at like tenants am got to call my wife and she's like, hey, can you like come home? And I was like, uh, like like sure, like like what do you what do you need? And she's like, well, the secret servicer here and like they want to talk to you. And so I was like what, like will they like what what what's going on? She's like they won't explain anything to me, Like you have to come home to like talk to them. So these guys are at my doors to agents and I let them in my house. They're like, do you know why we're here? And I'm like, no, like what's going on? And they pulled out this iPad and uh, all in the iPad pulled up this white women posting their w's Twitter account And in the bio of this account, it says run by Nathan Albach and the top tweet on it is I'm gonna kill Joe Biden or like I'm gonna kill the president like something like that, which I triggered something in their nets of like. 00:49:53 Speaker 3: Oh, that's what they have the alert on for job guys. 00:49:58 Speaker 6: My name the like we saw this. We went up in the middle of the night and like you need to. 00:50:03 Speaker 3: Threat directly threatened the president under your government name. 00:50:07 Speaker 8: They're like, and I was just like, this isn't my account, the like put your names on it the way. I had to explain so much context. They're like, well, why would somebody do this? And I was like, look, I run this frozen meat brand account and there's people who hate me online because of it, and they're just like their eyes are like glazing over, like what is this guy talking about. There's just so many things like that that would just all because of this meat account that I would not have anticipated at the time. 00:50:33 Speaker 3: We'll be right back with more Nathan Allabach, Welcome back to sixteenth 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 car again. And it makes me laugh because it

looks like if you killed Sully from Monsters, Inc. And turned him into a rug. Anyways, here's the rest of my interview with Nathan Alibach. When did you sort of decide I'm done with this specific account. 00:51:13 Speaker 6: I mean I felt it waning right away. 00:51:15 Speaker 8: Honestly, after the first year, after that Millennial throat and viral, I was like, Okay, I've had enough, just because it was so mentally taxing, like with the way people harass me, I think, and I hate this even say that because it's it sounds so like menial, But there really was like a significant amount of people that came after me at the time, and I had to grow really thick skin. It's kind of just like eyed off my back and like keep working on it, especially because it's just such a strange thing to like target somebody over. I was like, there's so many like things happening in the world, and there was like this dedicated group of people that really. 00:51:51 Speaker 3: Part of your job is to behave like but like a person, but don't react like a person. Like it just it feels very that of course that's the mostly taxing. 00:52:01 Speaker 8: Yeah, you learned to take it on the chin in like ninety plus percent of cases. I think the fact that my personal name and like brand quote unquote, like my Twitter account was so closely attached to this thing, it just became like more of a target than I had I had hoped. It was like the double edged short, you know, because I was getting all of these accolades and like public attention from the account. It would go viral, get a ton of followers, get a ton of business, like people wanting to work with me on stuff. On the flip side, was just like a constant wave of people sending me death threats and like just crazy like yeah, and sending the secret service to my house. 00:52:36 Speaker 6: I don't know, like I've been. 00:52:37 Speaker 8: Doing it for like four years at that point, very sick of frozen beef sheet puns and uh yeah, like I ended up we ended up getting off the account. 00:52:47 Speaker 6: I think later that year like that. 00:52:49 Speaker 8: That December then was the end of the It was like a six year or seven year relationship with that client being the end of it and I moved on to other things. But yeah, it was definitely a tough time because it was like to think about the landscape of brands at that point, like I'd been writing about like the horny brand trend like yes, you're too prior, and like it was just weird to look at what was going viral and like what was becoming popular and trying to think like in terms of a career, like how can I be part of this and like do something that's different and do something that's not just like circling the drain of it. A lot of this which like no again, no hate like the individual social media managers like everything's an attention to economy and I get it, but it definitely like put into perspective like Okay, I've been doing this for so many years now, like what is the

next step for someone in my shoes? Like how can you keep doing a career of being online? Like you just keep getting crazier. So yeah, I don't know. That was definitely a turning point, I would say, And how I think about it. 00:53:50 Speaker 6: So how do you. 00:53:51 Speaker 3: Move forward from that? How did you sort of keep things interesting and more balanced for yourself after put in a post stake of world. 00:54:00 Speaker 8: 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 your identity isn't your work. 00:54:25 Speaker 6: Essentially. 00:54:26 Speaker 8: I struggle with that because, like whatever I do, I want to put my all into it, Like I want to be noticed for my work internally, like I want to get paid well, Like I want to grow in my career. So there's like always a tension there between, like how much of your life do you want to? Like when I started this whole thing back in like twenty seventeen, it was kind of I mentioned this earlier. 00:54:46 Speaker 6: It is kind of coming to the. 00:54:47 Speaker 8: Tail end of my like non career as a songwriter and a musician, Like I was in a bunch of bands and like I was, I really wanted to do songwriting to some extent, like what I didn't really have any like this illusionment that I was going to make like a living full. 00:55:02 Speaker 6: Time doing it. 00:55:03 Speaker 8: But I always imagined myself doing it at least part time on the side, and like trying to make it like a big part of me makes it always had been in your entire And as time went on with the work, like I realized that was just not possible, because like the way to get really good, especially as you work with other companies and organizations, like you have to commit so much time to learning how they operate. You know, when I'm not posting about this, like I don't have the creative energy to be like doing writing in my free time now, or like making the talks in my free time, Like I have done the work and now I'm tired. So like that's certainly been the biggest shift I think in the past five or seven years, is like I have less and less of that artistic identity. Like I don't write as much. I journal, but I don't like publish writing as much anymore. I don't do music anymore. Once in a while I'll play like an open mic with some friends just to kind of like blow some steam off and get. 00:56:03 Speaker 6: Out of the house. 00:56:03 Speaker 8: And I have other hobbies like a garden, a landscape, like I do a lot, and I got two kids. Now, not like not like all all is lost by any means, but certainly like in the context of those past years, like thinking about trying to kind of like spread your eggs a bit and

not have everything in one basket, Like that's not a lot more feasible than it does now. Like now it's like, Okay, getting older, it's harder to be online all the time. I have to kind of like consolidate my energy around singular topics, singular platforms, and it's just hard to establish those boundaries and like maintain that sense of self outside of work when your work is so just like dominant, when your job is to be online for like eight or even many maybe twelve or fourteen hours a day, like you really do just like commit so much of your sort of like spiritual sense of self to the internet, and like it's like the meme online like people talk about like irony poison, like you break your brain, and like it really does become so difficult to establish boundaries and like to figure out like how to I don't know, like be like a healthy person outside of that. That's why, like I've figured out, like they do. They really do try to like become like I don't know, like they go to the gym a lot, or like they become like people that hike a lot. Like you're always trying to kind of counterbalance all the insane amount of hours you spend staring at a phone every every week. 00:57:27 Speaker 6: You know, there's like. 00:57:28 Speaker 8: These fake jobs like like YouTuber, social media manager, podcasts or whatever, and like, sure they're nothing like the strain of like a like a laborist nine to five, but there is something spiritually demanding about them that I think most people maybe don't fully understand. 00:57:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like I look forward to reading someone's thesis paper on it in like fifteen years. 00:57:52 Speaker 8: But a lot of it's, like, you know, it's like your privileged to the extent that you know you're to do this, like you're put out there, you're building a personal brand, like most people don't have those options in the first place. It becomes again contextually, it's difficult to talk about, but it's interesting. It certainly has its repercussions that, like you said, we'll learn about in time. 00:58:12 Speaker 3: So yeah, this is the exact conversation I wanted to have with the STAKM guys. So this works great. 00:58:17 Speaker 8: I remember when I wrote that culture piece. I've been chatting with a ton of fellow social media marketers and just online friends about it, and everybody kind of had the same response, which is just like, yeah, where do we go from here? Like it doesn't really seem to be a clear path for brands, Like the areas that would you would could be considered taboo for brands, like religion, politics, drugs, Like there's some obvious, obvious third rails there, Like you know, the vast majority of brands will never touch religion as like a topic. They'll never touch drugs even when drugs are legalized, Like it's say, say pot or whatever, Like it's one of the where Like it's just such high risk for a brand that I think it's not worth that. Yeah, not worth touching. So like and I also just don't know,

like from like an ideological standpoint, the politics stuff really only resonates when it's safe. Now, you don't you wouldn't see like anytime an issue becomes act like there's actual again stakes don't mind my pun. Like, when there's an any kind of issue with actual like skin in the game, when there's actually like a polarizing element to it, brands almost never touch it. Like the only brand there's only a couple brands really that have stuck to their guns with this, Like one is classically Ben and Jerry's, and like those are the ones that, like because they have such credibility baked into like their mission and how they talk about it, it makes sense that they would stick to their guns. But for the vast majority of brands, like anything, anytime something like that hot like a moment pops up in the zeitgeist, like it's just an opportunity and it's I'm not even saying that like fully cynically, because like there is like the cynical side of it of like, hey, let's make money doing this. But then there's also like the com like the communication side of it of like what are the repercussions if we don't, you know, there's kind of like we need to maybe reevaluate our policy or reevaluate like how we're positioning our team and our company and how we hire people or whatever. So like it's not all fully cynical, but like the way it's presented in like the medium of social media content is just very strange from an ideological standpoints. 01:00:23 Speaker 3: 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. 01:00:31 Speaker 8: Yeah, Like it's it's kind of weird and in some ways sad to say, but like, I think we've treaded most of the original ground here, so at this point, everything's just getting retreaded. That's been really weird to see as somebody especially I can't even imagine for like Amy or Serenity, who have been doing this for longer than I have. It's like when I think back over the past like ten or so years of trends, like talk about these vulture pieces, like how the different dynamics of content have evolved and devolved over the years. In the past four or five years, I would say, we've just seen repeats of most of what was happening earlier. A lot of the stuff that felt novel ten years ago is starting to feel a novel again. As long as like people feel a genuine connection to you, like how you talk to them verbally and in written form. I think that is always going to be like the thing that people have to like really figure out for themselves because people just sniff out in authenticity so quick nowadays. So you either have to go so like personified and absurd that you're clearly putting on a character, or be like so true to yourself that you can keep it up every day, you know what I mean to reach people. So at least that's how I feel like right now, I'm like whatever I make, like, I want to be able to feel like I can put myself into it comfortably. 01:01:52 Speaker 6: Because if I can't, like it just feels. 01:01:53 Speaker 8: So contrived and like I won't have the energy to keep it up over months or years. 01:01:59 Speaker 6: You know. 01:02:00 Speaker 8: Personification like it's it's part of who we are as certain makes the work feel again like there's blurred lines, makes it feel very sticky for all of us in our own ways, I think. But yeah, but it's a cool part of what we get to do. Again, It's like it's easy to hate on like again, like I've kind of come out of my more like cynical years on this, I think, just because it was weighing me down so heavily and like not really going anywhere. But like when I think about how I used to I think about how I used to think about this, it was like I don't know, like this is unhealthy and like I can't keep doing this whatever, Like it's I'm chilling myself for a brand, and like even if some of that is still true, like obviously it's again like it's not not very different if I was a songwriter, except I'm doing this for a company versus myself. It's like you have to put on our performance, like you have to put on some kind of facade, whether it's a light facade or a heavy facade, to like really put an image and a message out there for people to resonate with. 01:03:00 Speaker 6: And you know, I think where I'm at now. 01:03:03 Speaker 8: Like I tried just to be at peace with knowing there's like a separation there and let people kind of let the chips fall where they are, let people interpret it how they will, but not like get too crazy about it like I did the seven or eight years ago, or it just felt like all consuming and I don't know, like it was just like messing with me mentally, Like it's just not that deep anymore to me. But maybe that's just because I'm getting older and I don't have time to think too much about it anymore. 01:03:29 Speaker 6: Who knows. For a lot of this, I always. 01:03:31 Speaker 8: Wish I had like clear answers for people, but so much of it is just this kind of like weird, hazy world where like from a creative standpoint, if you are somebody in marketing and you want to get into this world, like I tell us to young people all the time, like if you want to be a writer, like a copywriter, or like a graphic designer or something of that nature, may do a much easier time kind 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 get too crazy as a personified brand, you know. 01:04:26 Speaker 3: Thank you so much to Nathan for his time, and you can learn more about his work at the links in the description. So much of this interview really stuck with me in the days after, and I really want to again thank Nathan for his good sense of humor and candor about everything. He's obviously a very funny and thoughtful guy, and I totally understand why it hurt that the comedy writers he'd kind of taken over the stakehum account in order to befriend eventually turned on him. But I also understand the other side of that. It's fine to be friends with Nate, and it's great when Nathan is doing well at work, But at what point are you, as a public facing anti capitalist, just promoting a dangerously 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, pissoaked, Duo Lingo Bird and the brilliant mind behind it. We'll see you then. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Whole Zone Media and iHeart Rodous. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. 01:06:05 Speaker 2: Our theme song. 01:06:06 Speaker 3: Is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Brant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's flee and Casper and my pet Rockbert, who will outlive us all. Bye.