Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - why is my freezer steak tweeting nihilism: the steakumm saga

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Picture this: it's 2020, you're clinging to sanity, and a frozen steak your mom used to eat after school called SteakUmm is now tweeting in the hopes of turning you into a socialist. But... what? Can one be radicalized by hot dog grade meat? Is what's being sold here an idea or microwaveable meat slop? In our penultimate installment of the Sentient Brands series, Jamie gets into the weeds with the mind behind the SteakUmm account, writer and social media director Nathan Allebach. Spoiler alert: we do, indeed, live in a society. Follow Nathan here: https://beacons.ai/nathanallebach?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaw8UJ_ctC-xxP2HrkYDPA5-9p2LBtn_w_NQsXsZhvZeBBYwiEzyZ6LooY_aem_Dm_8G9fFWhqyK0YAyD1JzQ Read Nathan's history of sentient brands: https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/brand-twitter-jokes-history.html Follow Yedoye Travis: https://www.instagram.com/yedoye_/?hl=enSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CoalZone Media. I'm not so bad when you turn up the lights, but I can't be perfect all in a time. So make me a star, let's take it too far, and give me one moment. 17 minutes of fame 60 minute of fame I'm not so bad when you say I'm talking about to say

so goodbye Welcome back to 16th minute, the podcast where we take a look back at the internet's main characters, talk to them about how their moment affected them and what that says about us and the internet. I'm your host Jamie Loftus and this week we are bravely concluding our series on sentient brands that occasionally get too horny on social media. Play the horn. But before we head into the final installment of this series, I feel like the need to slow us down for a moment. Because I'll be honest, I am, maybe it's obvious, susceptible to the enjoyment that comes with kind of revisiting this

branded goofy moment on social media. One that we'll discover continues into today, that's a teaser for Thursday, to the point where I am kind of worried I haven't been critical enough of this movement. And that's motivated quite a bit from the fact that the guests on this series are funny, kind, normal people who I genuinely like and who I want to like me, many such cases. So I'll repeat that what I'm about to say isn't a criticism of the guests. But it is just a little scary that brands were successfully becoming our friends on the internet for a while there, right? I mean, and I know that there are so many bigger fish to fry at the moment. But there's people that are dying. But I was scrolling the

other day, as I've made it my job to do, so it isn't sad. And I came across this old subway takes video with the wonderful comic, Yadouye Travis. And... So what's your take? Society went down a very dark path by making commercials funny. 100% agree. Funny commercials downfall of civilization. Absolutely. And why so? Because we've blurred the lines between what's real and what's not. Because as we look at social media, everybody's now primed to make them palatable to advertisers. So they're now fabricating a reality. So they're now fabricating a reality. That's why, like, Oscar Meyer Wieners is, like, tweeting out ebomics. Literally.

Like, all these brands are talking to each other, Doug. What is going on? Would you prefer for commercials to be boring? Yes. Like, informative? Like an infomercial? Absolutely. It's just like, here's an Accura.

You can drive it. Yes. You don't appreciate the entertainment at all. I would like to buy things based on what they do. And yeah, he's completely right. It is weird. And while this video came out in late 2023, and you'll find that Twitter today is a total wasteland for

virtually anything now, the sentient brand movement continues and is alive well and still has some of the smartest and funniest people in the world behind them. And this has always been true. The best joke writer I've ever met got his start writing copy at Groupon because you've got to live. I mean, this podcast probably just served you one million ads to join the police and overdose on diet pills because that's how I have to pay my rent. It's a mess. And the fact that these jobs, as our guest Amy Brown pointed out last week, can pay not great, but certainly better than a public school teacher, is patently ridiculous. I just hope that these same funny people will be given opportunities they deserve to express that creative voice as themselves and actually get paid for it.

Because no matter how many times I laugh at the weirdness of a brand today, there is no brand that deserves that. And there are thousands of really cool creative people that do. So shout out to Yadouye for screwing my head back on correctly. And follow him at the links in the description. He's great. Okay. Again, if you haven't heard the first two parts of this series, I recommend you go back and do so because This week, we are reaching the climax of sentient brands, bringing us into the present day.

So we left off with Amy Brown and the ever-escalating Wendy's Twitter feud culture of about 2015 to 2017, the peak example of internet marketing harnessing the anger and pettiness that was inherent to the platform. And it certainly didn't hurt that this also happened at the peak of clickbait culture. But as with any tack on social media, people are only dazzled with something for so long. And soon enough, the brands needed to find a new way to keep their audience entertained. And so, dear listener, a road diverged in a wood. Stay with me here, everybody. And lo and behold, there are but two paths to take.

Nileism and horny. I know, I know. Why not both? Well, we'll get there, because there are social media managers who straddle these things. But our guests this week reached the height of their profession by choosing one of these divergent paths hard. And in this episode, we're exploring Path One, nihilism. This path takes advertising, any product, any old product, and shocks its listeners not only by making the product behave sentiently, but being aware of the futility of advertising

in general. So as we've discussed, where most brands have spent at least half a decade by the late 2010s building out their editorial jokey voice and engaging ironically with their followers, these accounts, the woke brand accounts or the Nihilus brand accounts, depending on what think piece you're reading, got engagement by acknowledging how pointless and awful it felt to court engagement online. The two most successful versions of these accounts were Moon Pies, the marshmallow snack cake. Look around. The world's different now.

People are overworked. Overcommitted. Tired. But the moon is still the moon. Still round. Still filled with marshmallow. So here is Moon Pie quote tweeting. a Hostess Snacks tweet from 2017, where Hostess Snacks is bragging that Golden Cupcakes

is the official snack cake of the eclipse. Moon Pie quote tweets, hostess snacks, and writes, LOL OK. I don't know. The MoonPye account was run by social media manager Patrick Wells. And the other successful Nihilist Twitter account was the Stakem account, as run by our guest today, Nathan Allopach. And like any advertising venture, the name of the game was finding the specific lane

your product fell into while still playing the game everyone else was. For example, Moonpie was just as sarcastic as other accounts, but their specialty was friendship, specifically courting friendship with Pop-Tarts. Are Pop-Tarts, my friend? Meanwhile, Pop-Tarts was more into a kind of horny, bully vibe. This is what they captioned an image of a Pop-Tart being used as garnish for a cocktail. Calm down. It's a virgin like you. And I want to reiterate that Nathan Alibach, who ran the Steakum account,

has also basically written the history of Brand Twitter in two pieces in Vulture, 2019's How Brand Twitter Grew Up, and 2022s 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 20-something social media managers of this time to be friendly with one another in order to strategize these kinds of interactions. And while no one ever really got harsher with competing brands than the Wendy's account, the late 2010s kind of began this bizarre pattern of social media managers of different brands

basically having their products form parasocial attachments to each other. No accounting for it. But speaking of Nathan Alibach, he started at Stakeham in 2017, and much like Amy Brown and Serenity Disco was in his mid-20s, and it couldn't have been a better time. According to his 2019 piece in Vulture, this was a moment where brand memes hadn't quite gone mainstream before. 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, This Brand, actually gets it.

And going into 2018, things would continue to get more experimental. Anyone remember when IHOP became IHob? IHop is always pancake pancakes, but now we're Burger and Burgers. With burgers made with 100% all-natural Black Angus B. Our seven new ultimate state burgers are so burger and good, we're even changing our name. To IHop. Combos starting at 699 with Unlegged. Limited fries and a drink.

I-ha. Burgers, burgers, burgers. Prize, 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 engagement 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? Ugh, in order to stand out on Twitter. I think my least favorite example of this that makes my stomach curdle to this day is when, like, local aquariums and petting zoos were posting pictures of, like,

Big animals, sexualizing them. Do you remember this? This is a tweet from the Monterey Bay Aquarium from late 2018, posting a picture of a large otter. Good luck with this one, Grant. Abby is a thick girl. What an absolute unit. She chunk.

Look at the size of this lady. Oh, Lord, she coming. Another internetism. Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no. No. But the Steakam account was a prime target for a weirdo rebrand of this ilk. Because Steakam, yeah, they were kind of a gross-looking steak strip from Pennsylvania that you put in your freezer.

They'd been around for a long time, but there wasn't much to say about them. Got a minute? Then you've got time for a hot steak sandwich. Keep Steakam frozen till you're ready to eat. Then stick them in the frying pan. 60 seconds later, take them off the heat. and fix them up any way you can. Try Steakam on a roll with cheese.

Top it any way you please. Stakeham sandwich steaks. They're 100% pure beef and nothing else. 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 Steakam is actually quite gross-looking. I would never buy it. I don't want it.

When a meat can't even photograph apatom, Surprisingly, what are we doing? But even Stakem's website seems to understand what value having this weird internet persona in the 2010s added to their brand, because to this day, it is literally half of their about page on Stakem.com. In 2017, it developed a viral persona on Twitter that's been described as ironic, existential, meta, and has earned media everywhere from the Wall Street. Journal, Fox News, Vox, Washington Post, Associated Press, and beyond. This persona has since expanded to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and seeks to embody Stakem's company values as a legacy brand in a strange new world. Keep that last sentence in mind.

The fact that an ironic Twitter presence represents Stakem's company values. We'll come back to that. But when it came to Stakem'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 Alabock tell you that story in detail in the interview. Because the very logged in at the time that Nathan took over that account in 2017 would have only interacted with the Stakem account in order to cyber bully it. Stacom did have a previous social media manager, but they appeared to be thin-skinned, defensive, and weirdly into Ayn Rand, never a good combination,

and all of which made them perfect fodder for being cyber-bullied by Weird Twitter. We can't. Weird Twitter is a short series all its own. Suffice it to say, Weird Twitter was a loosely organized group of Twitter, joke writers, and comedians, some of whom use their real names, others who didn't or tweeted in character. Think Drill? Drill was doing it the best. I think we can all agree.

But what's important is that most of this community were pretty squarely anti-capitalist. And I come to you as a humble fan of Weird Twitter. I loved Weird Twitter at its peak. And a lot of the people who were a part of it went on to become successful comedy writers or performers. A couple were fucking creeps. but many I consider to be terrific people and friends. So in this house, we respect weird Twitter and their various endeavors, except for those few guys. Anyways, these would be the guys.

There were a couple girls, but let's be honest. These would be the guys that would absolutely demolish the original Stacom's social media account manager and got a kick out of being blocked by a freezer meat brand. Even though they were all well aware that behind this account, was a to this day unidentified utilitarian weirdo. And this is where Nathan Olabak comes in. While working for his dad's ad firm in Philadelphia, he pursued the Pennsylvania-based Stakem account

because Twist, Nathan was a big fan of weird Twitter and seemed to relish the chance to get to interact with 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 Stacom. 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 Stakem. And before he knew it, Stakem was being hailed as the woke brand on Twitter, even if the build to that title was slow. Because it took a while for Nathan to develop the voice of the account. Here is an early post he made in late 2017. 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 Steakam and get grease splattered in your eye. Light engagement on this one. The voice isn't quite developed. Under Nathan's watch, the Stakem account lightly interacts with Moon Pie around this time,

ostensibly trying to interact with other cool brands in the pursuit of making Stakem a cool brand. But by the fall of 2018, The table was fully set. The freezer was thawed. I'm going to stop. I hate this. September 26th, 2018.

The Stakem Twitter account, under Nathan Alibach, goes on a pretty impressive anti-capitalist rant. And so, dear listeners, performing this monologue is Grant Crater. Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention. I'll tell you why. They're isolated from real communities. Working service jobs, they hate while barely making ends meet and are living with unchecked personal mental health problems.

They're crushed by student loan debt, disenfranchised by past generations, and are dreading the future of our world every day from mass media addiction and the struggle to not just be happy, but to survive this chaotic time with every problem happening at once under a microscope. They grew up through the dawn of internet culture and have had mass advertising drilled into their media consumption. And now they're being resold their childhoods by remakes, sequels, spinoffs, and other cheap nostalgia, making them more cynical to growth or authenticity. They often don't have parents to talk to because they say stuff like,

you don't know how good you have it. And they don't have mentors to talk to because most of them have no concept for growing up in this strange time which perpetuates the feeling of helplessness, loneliness. They have full access to social media and the information highway,

but they feel more alone and insecure. than ever. Being behind a screen 24-7 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 rant. Stakem bless. Okay, so this got a big media reaction. Stakem is using anti-consumerism to get you to buy, snooze.

Stakem's new marketing strategy, millennial angst with a side of meat pun. Stakeham's social media person sounds like they might need a hug. Stakem is woke, and now everything is hell. So as Nathan speaks to in our interview, this thread got a ton of press. But the reception of the thread was somewhat mixed. Some culture writers enjoyed the post, while others found the approach pretty pernicious. This is from Heather Dockray in Mashable. The brand's recent monologue was its most explosive and self-aware yet.

If only any of it was real. Doc Ray then dives into the marketing precedent for what Nathan is doing here. The idea of anti-advertising. Touching on everything from VW marketing their bug in the 1940s to emphasize the car's small size in order to contrast the dick-swinging big car ads of the day, we'll table the Nazi stuff. and all the way up to a Sprite commercial with LeBron James and Liliotti from 2016, where the big joke is that LeBron knows how advertising works.

Quiet and action. Let's get one thing straight. I never tell you to drink Sprite, even if I was in a commercial for Sprite, which I am, or you were watching it, what you are. I wouldn't tell you to drink it no matter what that cute car says. Brian, man, say it. No. But as you know,

By this point in listening to this show, all impressions are good impressions for advertisers. And the company that Nathan works for, Alabakh Communications, was only benefiting from this. But for what it's worth, Nathan was consistently singled out as the mind behind the Stakeham account and defended his work to outlets at the time. Here's a quote from him in a piece from Vox in fall 2018. We're 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 lighthearted and it's centered around the community that we built.

We're not taking sides or having a specific stance on anything. There are a few breakout feathers in the Stakeham Twitter cap. This 2018 rant was the first, but the account got a second massive wave of attention in the early days of COVID lockdown nearly two years later, when misinformation, which I don't know if you remember, misinformation ran absolutely rampant. That was now five years ago. I don't want to talk about it. But given the brand voice that Nathan had developed in this account,

tackling misinformation was a perfect topic for Stakem to take on. And you really just have to hear it to believe it. April 6th, 2020, once again, Grant Crater. Friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation. Anecotes are not data. Good data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including but not limited to controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization. Outliers attempting to counter global consensus around this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not.

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 stake em bless yeah stake em 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 2012, Food Publication Grub Street laid out an ongoing federal court battle between Stakeham and a South Philly.

mom and pop shop called Stakeem up, in which the Stakem founder, Gene Gagliardi, spent six figures on lawyers in a copyright infringement case that he would eventually lose. From that piece, new lawsuit reveals the world's grossest meat is probably Stakem'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 left over after an animal is slaughtered, and all the primary cuts, such as tenderloin, fillet, and ribby, are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a loaf and sliced, frozen and packaged. After learning that a federal judge denied Stakem's claims,

their inventor, Gene Gagliardi, was quoted as saying, he did no justice to the meat world, and continued to rant about how the poor quality of meat in 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 the saying. This was definitely a safety feature. 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, so let me be clear. While the description of what is in Steakam 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 Stakem alluded to earlier, do not back that up. So, in Stakeham's defense, from what I can tell, the company isn't technically bullshitting by printing the phrase 100% beef on the front of their box for all these decades. But there are major missing operative words there, words like byproduct, or even 100% processed beef byproduct. You know, the stuff that's left over when the expensive cuts of beef are gone. You know, like a hot dog.

And because we've covered what I think is almost a disproportionate number of stories about processed meat and men from Philadelphia on this show. Gene Gagliardi certainly fits the bill for a big personality Philly guy and also has the claim to fame of being the guy who invented KFC popcorn chicken. So when I found myself asking, what are the company values of Steakum, I had to look into the history of the company. And here are some polls from a 2018 mental floss article by Jake Rosson about that. Eugene Gagliardi, patriarch of the Gagliardi meatpacking business, raised the 22-ounce frozen log of beef products that would shortly become known as Steakham and sent it careening into his son's ankle. Nobody's ever going to buy it as shit, he screamed, storming off.

Despite his numerous contributions to food service, he still feels slighted by his father, who passed away in 1991 and apparently never acknowledged his son's success. I never got a compliment, he says. Ah, yes, beneath every weird, specific business is the story of fathers and sons. So while Steakam certainly has working class Philly roots, it has the production integrity of a hot dog. And the company has been sold to two huge conglomerates over the years, both Heinz and Quaker foods. The brand could not conceivably be described as woke. So, if a funny, creative young

person is promoting his personal politics and values on the brand account of a company that appears to have no politics whatsoever, what does it all fucking mean? When we come back, my conversation with the man behind it all, Nathan Alabock. Our I Heart Radio Music Festival Presented by Capital One is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu.

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Welcome back to 16th Minute. I'm so burnt out on Eat the Rich prestige media and feel completely alone in the world on that front. And here's my interview with the man who turned washed up freezing. meat brand Steakum into a national phenomenon. Here's Nathan Alibach. My name's Nathan Alabok. 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 microcelebrity world, I suppose, for being the social media manager behind the meat brand Steakam, or the frozen beef sheep brand, as I once

referred to it out. sheep. I honestly did not know Steakam existed before you. So thank you for that. It's, you're welcome. Yeah, like, Stakem was this kind of like legacy frozen meat product from like the 1970s and 80s that people like the Gen X and Boomer generations were very familiar with as like latchkey kids, you know, it's like parents. Parents were like, like, leave their kids alone and be like, here, make some Steakam. It's easy. It takes 30 seconds. It was funny and strange to kind of like give it a new life through this Twitter persona where people maybe were familiar with the name because it's such like a memeable name like steak it's so ridiculous but but yeah happy to I guess reintroduce it to

the world I mean I grew up in a pretty small suburb just outside of Philadelphia 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 meatpacking facility like looking back it was kind of all destined to be, I suppose. Like he would work the night shift doing that and then he 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. Like I remember a lot of kind of like goofy commercials from the 90s in the early 2000s. Interesting environment to grow up in. As I got to be like a teenager, I never in a million years of saw myself working in advertising. I kind of like rebel and became like

at the time it's kind of like whatever aimless anti-establishment kid yeah just like very anti-consumers and 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 we did a lot of it was all this kind of like anti-establishment vibe and then like as i got older and started to realize like okay i'm probably not going to make it as a musician and i was just like kind of bleeding money working dead-end jobs. I decided to give the family biz a whirl. This has been 2014. So this is like when social media platforms were starting to become more commoditized with advertising, like prior to really like a model for it. So I was just like lucky enough with the timing to kind of get in at the ground

level when there was opportunity and there wasn't really rules or like people in place that knew what the hell was going on. So 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 wear I guess of the platforms to kind of give myself enough juice to get it off the ground at the agency. But yeah, I kind of hated it for the first few years.

Like didn't really know what I was doing. And then the Steakom stuff happened in 2017. And that, like, basically, by honestly, just so much by chance, like, basically gave me a career. Because at that point, like, it became this viral phenomenon over, like, the following years that got my name on a bunch of lists and got my name in the mix of other, like, social media marketers and advertising professionals where I don't think I would, in a million years, been considered among, like, the people I've been considered among just because of this one account that, like, kind of blew up early on. 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 around the time when the stacom 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 2018 it was this whole like hashtag verify stakem like movement quote unquote on Twitter where 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 and like I knew exactly what I was doing. So I 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 fogging 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 just became like okay I'm a staccum guy but I'm also like the guy who sort of writes about weird niche internet history by the time the Stakeham account was going viral in like the end of 2017, early 2018. This brand Twitter stuff have been happening for years. And I was like, for the most part, unaware of like all of it. So yeah, when you're building this identity for Stacob, how at this point in time did that work? Yeah, that not not too much structure in the beginning. I mean, it was really so much chance because

so to give you context, like summer of 2017 is when I started posting on the account. And the only reason I was even really given the sort of green light and even like wanted to start doing it was because people were texting me that I think it was like right in the middle of August that Joe Rogan had had on a guest on his podcast for his 1,000th episodes. It was like this kind of whatever's moment for the show. And the guest was telling like ridiculous stories about Stakem. So like Stakem prior to this was not active on Twitter at all. Like rewind to hair because like yeah like up into this moment there was no like there was no guardrails there's no precedent it was just kind of like the podcast happened i asked um our account executive who then

asked the uh the marketing manager at stake i'm like if we could start basically shit posting on the stacom account because there's no activity there they saw it as like a no stakes platform because like they weren't advertising there really it was super small audience oh i i just understood you were you were using the other version of steaks like wait was stakes was stakes was Stake not welcome on that platform. Okay, no, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. The hope 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 login. Let's get on the account. So upon getting on the account, I realized in like the first few days that Stakem had blocked, like, well over 150, maybe 200 or so accounts. and they're all like anonymous, weird Twitter shit posting accounts.

I'm like, what happened here? So I started like doing some digging and unblocking all of these people and tweeting at them being like, what's going on here? And they're all kind of like, oh, it's Stakem. Like Stakem's back. And I'm like, what is happening? Because we had the agency had acquired the account in 2016. And it turned out this history with the previous Stakem admin on Twitter was in 2014.

So, 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 what I was running was just like tweeting really weird, just weird, weird stuff through the account. Like, they're tweeting like, I and ran quotes. Just like really bizarre. 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. as kind of like an inside joke

just kind of like making fun of it and whoever the admin was didn't take kindly to that so they started to block people and as they blocked people it became like a Streisand effect where then more people from weird Twitter like oh my gosh if you like

if you diss stake them or whatever they'll block you and it'll be really funny so everybody started to do this and it started to pile on and there's this one weird Twitter user who I'm not sure if he's still active anymore his at is or was

Boner Hitler he basically started like a crusade against stacom kind of like leveraging these weird Twitter accounts where he had this saying that his wife left him and like in the in the heat of like a fight when they were she was leaving he like got mad and he burned his hand on like a pan and threw stake a matter or something it was something like this like it was just like a ridiculous bit when they blocked him he became like the sort of ringleader of this whole thing and really corralled hundreds of these accounts to try to harass Stakem. Culminated with Stakem, like, they tried to publish a rules thing on their bio, which again, backfire because 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, the account ever would have taken off.

Because in the beginning, when I unblocked all these people and started engaging them, they were the initial groundswell of engagement that then. kind of seated conversations with Stakey 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 in the space. It was all just a fun gag for me in the beginning. So it was like interacting with these weird Twitter people who are all very, almost all,

very anti-capitalist or very kind of like radical as it was like a bit. And like they liked me personally. Like, I was able, early on, I kind of, like, revealed to a few of them, like, my personal accounts. They kind of, like, it was. And I was trying to be as transparent about the whole thing as I could be. Right, right. They all ran with it. Like, I was in all these group chats with them and, like, really interesting time.

But then as the account went viral then, after a few months, 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, reason this corporation now is getting all this positive press, essentially. There was certainly like some pockets of them just didn't really give a shit. Some of them were like, who cares? Like, we knew this all along. Like, it was a company. Like, what did you expect? But other people felt like genuinely betrayed by my 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 with my personal

account. So like I knew these people and I thought it was like really fun. But then like, like, kind of like coming to learn the sort of ideological tensions was interesting, like, over, like, the following years. 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? I feel like I've kind of come full circle on it a bit. Like, in the beginning, I hadn't really thought about it much at all.

Like, in the beginning, like I said, it was all just kind of, like, nonsense to me. I did not anticipate it blowing up the way it did. It was fun, like, coming up with dumb stuff and, like, trying to get people's attention and kind of, like, navigating community to community. I don't know. My feelings on it definitely evolved because, like, in the beginning, yeah, I felt after all the tension started to unravel, I certainly felt torn. Like, I felt bad. I was like, man, like, people feel bad about this. Like, I, it was not my intention to, like, manipulate people or whatever.

I was trying to, like, do my best to play this, like, stupid and impossible dance where I'm, like, posting through a corporate brand account while also trying to be sincere. And, like, I think that thread, that, like, that tension is the thing that actually made it go mega viral. And it's also the thing that I was trying to do to, like, solve the, solve for the tension. And so it didn't really solve it. Basically, like, made the thing blow up. Just amplified it, yeah.

Yeah, because then people were like, oh, my gosh, this brand's, like, super self-aware. And it's, like, doing cultural commentary. And also at the same time telling us that it's selling us a product, like, It became this anti-marketing trope that hadn't really existed, at least in online now. I'm definitely a lot more chill about it, the lines between what 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?

brand, you know. Now in 2025, it sounds kind of silly to me to be like, oh, a smart, thoughtful person feeling betrayed by the Stakeham Twitter account. I think that you were at like sort of the tail end of people not always thinking about how, yeah, obviously there's a person behind this. I feel like it was at this kind of weird precipice of a generational divide where like when you look at like say 2020 onward, especially like in the TikTok era with social media and how brands interact with social media. Like, Zoomers and young millennials are just so, I don't want to say they're not critical of media, but like they grew up on like these sort of smart devices and with internet culture in a way where like they are more sort of naive and just like don't really

think as much about this stuff, the way that older millennials and younger Gen X people did. So, like, the way Twitter culture used to be in those, like, yeah, like, 20, say, 13 to 2018-ish era, 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 90s, the early 2000s, 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.

that then years later maybe became a meme. But at the time, it was like it existed in a time and place that people latched onto. And then like once the internet became accessible to literally everybody and then you have generations growing up just on the internet, memes became like the default because it's the most accessible 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 like, or media possible. it then just became about like, oh my gosh, have you seen this thing online?

I'm going to share it from Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to whatever. So like that piece of it as well, like when you look at the way like audiences engage with brands on TikTok, I enlarge, like go to any brands profile, any brands comment sections. You're not seeing people being like silence brand. Like the way the algorithms work now, it's it firehoses 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 um sort of like anti brand accounts were

able to early on when brands would post like latch on something share it in the group chat and be like yo let's like harass this brand post because we this is like trash like we should discourage like this type of um content on the timeline like it's such an impossible thing to do now like the people just don't really try anymore it just feels so futile I have some battles scars. I had some crazy, crazy people from the weird Twitter community target me and like come after me over the years, which, you know, I know they're not like 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 like in Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in a bunch

places. And during that era, I had just some crazy, crazy people targeting me. I had this one account, I'll never forget. It was somewhat late in the day, logged on. I saw this account had tagged me in a tweet, and it was an anonymous parody account called white women posting their Ws. There was women posting their Ws, and then women posting their Ls, and they became these Oh, I guess I don't know white women specifically posting their Ws. wouldn't because this was just like it had no followers it was just this somebody 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 it just looked like a shit poster and then the following morning i went to work and at like 10 a m got

a call from my wife and she's like hey can you like come home and i was like uh like well like sure like what do you what do you need and she was like well the secret service are here and like they want to talk to you. And so I was like, what? Like, will they, like, what, what's going on? She's like, they won't explain anything to me. Like, you have to come home to, like, talk to them. So these guys are at my door, these two agents. And I let them in my house. They're like, you know why we're here? And I'm like, no, like, what's going on? And they pulled out this iPad and on the iPad pulled up this white women posting their W's Twitter account. And in the bio of this account, it says

run by Nathan Alibach and the top tweet on it is I'm going to kill Joe Biden or like I'm going to kill the president like something like that which I get triggered something in their nets of like. Oh, that's what they have the alert on for

good job guys. My name just like they're like what we saw this tweet went up in the middle of the night and like your name. Did you threat directly threaten the president under your government name? They're like, I don't I was just like, this isn't my account. They're like, put your names on it.

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 there's 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.

We'll be right back with more Nathan Alabock. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. From a very rural background myself, my dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin, so, like, it's not, like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

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Anyways, here's the rest of my interview with Nathan Alibok. When did you sort of decide I'm done with this specific account? I mean, I felt it waning right away, honestly. After the first year, after that millennial threat went viral, I was like, okay, I've had enough. Just because it was so mentally taxing, like with the way people would harass me. And I hate to even say that because it sounds so, like, menial.

But there really was, like, a significant amount of people that came after me at the time. and I had to grow really thick skin and just kind of just like right 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 uh part of your job is to behave like like a person but don't react like a person like it just it feels very that of course that's emotionally taxing.

Yeah you learn to take it on the chin and like 90 plus percent of cases be it 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 hoped it was like the double-edged sword you know because I was getting all of these accolades and like public attention from the account it would go viral get a ton of followers get a ton of business like people wanting to work with me on stuff the flip side it was just like a constant wave of people sending me death threats and like just crazy messages and like yeah and sending the secret service to my house I don't know like I've been doing it for like four years at that point very sick of frozen beef sheet puns and yeah like I ended up we ended up getting off the account I think later that year like that that December then was the end of the there 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 like

Like, I had been writing about, like, the horny brand trend, like, here or two prior. And, like, it was just weird to look at what was going viral and, like, what was becoming popular and trying to think, like, in terms of a career, like, how can I be part of this and, like, do something that's different and do something that's not just, like, circling the drain of a lot of this, which, like, again, no hates, like, the individual social media managers. Like, everything is an attention economy. I mean, I get it. But it definitely, like, put into perspective, like, okay, I've been doing this for so many years now. Like, what is the next step for someone in my shoes? Like, how can you keep doing a career of being online? Like, things just keep getting crazier. So, yeah, I don't know. That was definitely a turning point, I would say, and how I think about it?

So how do you move forward from that? How did you sort of keep things interesting and more balanced for yourself after, in a post-stakem world? It's just such a... I just love this conversation. Thank you, Jamie. It's hilarious. Yeah, it's a great question. 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. I know, like, Amy talks about this a lot, just kind of, like, making sure that your job isn't... Or your identity isn't your work, essentially. I struggle with that because, like, whatever I do, I want to put my all into it. I want to be noticed for my work internally. Like, I want to get paid well.

Like, I want to grow in my career. So there's, like, always a tension there between, like, how much of your life do you want to? Like, when I started this whole thing back in, like, 2017, it was kind of, I mentioned this earlier. It was kind of coming to the tail end of my, like, non-career as a songwriter and a musician. Like, I was in a bunch of bands. And, like, I was, I really wanted to do songwriting, to some extent, like, I didn't really have any disillusionment that I was going to make a living full-time doing it. But I always

imagined myself doing it at least part-time on the side and trying to make it like a big part of me because it always had been in your fire. 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 learn in how they operate. You know, when I'm not posting about this, like, I don't have the creative energy to be, like, doing writing in my free time now, or, like, making talks in my free time. Like, I have done the work, and now I'm tired. So, like, that's certainly been the biggest shift, I think, in the past five or seven years is, like, I have less and less of that artistic

identity. Like, I don't write as much. I journal, but I don't, like, publish writing as much anymore. I don't do music anymore. Once in a while, I'll play like an open mic locally with some friends just to kind of like blow some steam off and get out of the house. And I have other hobbies. Like I garden, a landscape. Like I do a lot and I got two kids now. Not like, uh, not like 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 thought a lot more feasible than it does now. Like now it's like, okay, getting old. 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 to ten or maybe maybe 12 or 14 hours a day, like you really do just like commit so much of your sort of like spiritual sense of self to, the internet and like it's it's like the meme online like people talk about like irony poison like you break your brain like it really does become so difficult to establish boundaries and like to figure out like how to i don't know like be like a healthy person outside of that's why like like i haven't 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 day, week, you know? There's like these fake jobs, like YouTube or social media manager, podcast 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. Yeah, I'm like, I look forward to reading someone's thesis paper on it in like 15 years.

A lot of it's like, you know, it's like, you're privileged to the extent that, you know, you're able to do this. Like, you're putting a commodity out there. You're building a personal brand. Like, most people don't have those options in the first place. So it becomes, again, contextually, it's difficult to talk about, but it's interesting. It certainly has its repercussions that, like you said, we'll learn about in time. Yeah, this is the exact conversation I wanted to have with the Stakeham guy. So this works great. I remember I wrote that fulcher piece. I had been chatting with a ton of fellow social media marketers and just online friends about it.

everybody kind of had the same response which is just like yeah where do we go from here like it doesn't really seem to be a clear path for brands like the areas that would you would be considered taboo for brands like religion politics uh 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 set another topic they'll never touch drugs even when drugs are legalized like say say pot or whatever like it's one of the areas where like it's just such high risk um for a brand that I think it's not worth it 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 any time an issue becomes act like there's actual against stakes don't mind my pun like when there's any kind of issue with actual like skin in the game when there's actually like a polarizing element to it brand. 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 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 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 standpoint. Where is there left to go?

But there's always somewhere. I'm curious if you have any predictions of where you see things going next. Yeah, like it's kind of weird and in some ways sad to say, but like I think we've treaded most of the original ground here. So at this point, everything's just getting retreaded. That's been really weird to see as somebody, especially I can't even imagine for like Amy or Serenity who have been doing this for longer than I have. It's like when I think back over the past like 10 or so years of trends, like talk about these vulture pieces, like how the different dynamics of content have evolved and devolved over the years.

In the past four or five years, I would say, we've just seen repeats of most of what was happening earlier. A lot of the stuff that felt novel 10 years ago is starting to feel novel again. As long as like people feel a genuine connection to you, like how you talk to them verbally and in written form, I think that. is always going to be like the thing that people have to like really figure out for themselves because people just sniff out if in authenticity is so quick nowadays um so you either have to go so like personified and absurd that you're clearly putting on a character or you have to be like so true to yourself that you can keep it up every day you know what I mean to reach people so at least that's that's how I feel like right now I'm like whatever I make like I want to be able to

feel like I can put myself into it comfortably, because if I can't, like, it just feels so contrived and, like, I won't have the energy to keep it up over months or years, you know? The personification, like, it's part of who we are at a certain way where it makes the work feel, again, like those 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 how I think about how I

used to think about this, it was like, I don't know, like this is unhealthy and like I can't keep doing this, whatever. Like it's, I'm shilling myself for a brand. And like even if some of that is still true, like obviously it's again, like it's not not very different if I was a songwriter except I'm doing this for a company versus myself. It's like, 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.

And, you know, I think where I'm at now, like, I try just to be at peace with knowing there's like a separation there and let people kind of, let, 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. just felt like all consuming and I don't know like it was just like messing with me mentally like it's just not that deep anymore to me but maybe that's just because I'm getting older and I don't have time to to think too much about it anymore who knows for a lot of

this I always wish I had like clear answers for people but so much of it is just this kind of like weird hazy world where like from a creative standpoint if you are somebody in marketing and you want to get into this world like I tell us to young people all the time like if you want to be a writer, like a copywriter or like a graphic designer or something of that nature, you have 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 go too crazy as a personified brand, you know? 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 Stacom account in order to befriend, eventually turned on him. But I also understand the other side of that. It's fine to be friends with Nathan, and it's great when Nathan is doing well at work,

but at what point are you as a public-facing anti-capitalist just promoting a dangerously sourced meat brand? It's kind of an impossible thing to navigate, and as long as young creatives are still getting pulled into advertising, we'll probably never be fully out of it. Much to consider. And in our grand finale to the Sentient Brand series this Thursday, I'm going to bring you right up to the present moment. On to that second road in that thorny, divergent wood, the horny brand. A look at the social media history that leads us to the murdered, piss-soaked, duolingo bird. and the brilliant mind behind it. We'll see you then.

16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and I Hard Worldhouse. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shout-outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye.

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you.

you listen to shock incarceration on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts every case that is a cold case that has dna right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast america's crime lab every case has a story to tell and the dna holds the truth he never thought he was going to get caught and i just looked at my computer screen It's like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated.

Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of family secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.