Nathan Allebach Behind The Legendary Steak-umm Twitter Reveals How The Brand Immersed Itself In Internet Culture And Avoided Becoming ‘How Do You Do Fellow Kids?’

t’s no secret that brands on social media have picked up on the power of memes as a viral marketing tool, but more often than not, they fall flat on their face and wind up becoming the latest “How Do You Do Fellow Kids?” Typically labeled as cringe, corporations of all types have begun implementing internet culture into their online presences for many years now, but that doesn’t mean all of them fail miserably.

Perhaps the most well-known and well-respected brand to use memes online is none other than Steak-umm, the frozen meat company that began its meteoric rise on Twitter back in 2017 after Nathan Allebach was given command of the ship. To hear more about how anyone could turn a company selling frozen beef sheets into one of the most beloved personas online, we reached out to Allebach who was kind enough to give us a little behind-the-scenes glimpse into his work running the Steak-umm Twitter account, what he thinks of the ever-increasing use of memes in marketing, and why so many others fail where Steak-umm succeeded.

Q: Hey, Nathan. Thanks for joining us. Introduce yourself, what you’re known for online and what you’ve been up to lately to get us started.

A: The pleasure’s all mine. I’m a brand shill most known for humanizing the meat company “Steak-umm” on Twitter and TikTok, which my vegan wife loves. I’m also a songwriter, podcast host and writer who covers internet culture, misinformation, advertising and whatever else tickles my brain.

Q: Since you’re an internet culture writer, can you take us back to your childhood and fill us in on some early experiences online that shaped your interest in writing about the subject?

A: To be honest, I was a normie growing up. Had a Xanga and Myspace, surfed sites like Homestar Runner and eBaum’s World sometimes, but didn’t know much about internet culture. I got into Reddit, YouTube and Twitter right after high school. In 2014, I started following BLM, GamerGate and the rise of the “SJW'' discourse, mainly around the YouTube skeptic community and Twitter. I had no context for how all this stuff came to be and mostly stayed a casual observer. As my job managing Steak-umm’s Twitter took off in 2017, it converged with these interests since I came to know people in “weird Twitter” (think ironic/absurdist accounts like @dril). I learned that much of weird Twitter came from Something Awful, which led to researching 4chan and beyond. So yeah, my interest actually sparked in my early 20s.

Q: What about specific memes from back in the day? Any that you remember in particular that stuck with you or influenced your taste in online humor?

A: When I was a kid, I loved weird shit like Salad Fingers and over-the-top YouTube videos like Powerthirst. Those Tumblr memes where Nicholas Cage and Nigel Thornberry would be placed on the faces of Disney princesses killed me. Anything absurdist for its time left an impression.

Q: Before we dive into the Steak-umm Twitter account, how’d you first get into the social media industry? Did you work on any other brands or projects before that one?

A: My dad started a small ad agency outside Philly in the early ’90s so I grew up in his office while he built the business. I loved it in my younger years, but once I “rebelled” as a teenager, I started hating the “system.” Thought I would become a songwriter and never sell out. After several years of failing at that, working dead-end jobs and having a mental breakdown, I took an internship at our family agency in 2014. Classic failson tale. Turned out that same year they started working with brands like Utz Snacks, which wanted to get active on social media. I was the token millennial at the agency and had experience promoting local bands and shows online, so they let me manage their Facebook pages. I worked on Entenmann’s Little Bites and a few other regional brands but never did anything near the scale of Steak-umm.

Q: Alright, so take us back to the earliest days of working with the Steak-umm brand. How’d they approach you and how did you begin working with them initially?

A: It’s a weird story. We started working with Steak-umm in 2015 but the Twitter didn’t start until 2017. That summer, Joe Rogan published his 1,000th podcast episode with Joey Diaz and Tom Segura. In their conversation, Diaz told some hilarious childhood stories about Steak-umm causing him to produce toxic farts. It being such a big episode, I figured there’d be chatter online so I pitched the idea of running their vacant Twitter account in my free time since they had spent their annual budget by spring. The account only had 1,000 inactive followers, so the client was down. Wasn’t much of a risk.

When I logged in, I found they had blocked over 150 people, all related to weird Twitter. I unblocked everybody and started engaging with them. Soon after, I learned that whoever ran Steak-umm before our agency in 2014 went on a blocking spree when the user @bonerhitler trolled them with this bit about how his wife left him in a motel because he couldn’t maintain an erection, so he threw Steak-umm at her. Steak-umm blocked him and all his friends who would tweet stuff like “unblock bonerhitler u cowards.” The more they blocked, the more powerful these trolls got, until eventually, they bullied the social media manager off Twitter. So I started interacting with these accounts during office hours and every night until it gained traction. To be honest, I didn’t think anything substantial would come from it at first. It was just fun.

Q: Since the account was fairly revolutionary as far as a brand incorporating internet culture and humor into their tweets, how did you convince Steak-umm to trust in your avant-garde methods?

A: There was just an ongoing tension for the first few months. I’d push boundaries, the client would push back. I remember posting a few Jesus memes like that one “they hated Jesus because he told them the truth” except replacing Jesus with Steak-umm. They didn’t like that. There weren’t many serious discussions on content guardrails until it hit national headlines. Once it was successful, building trust came easier.

Q: So when did you post the first meme on the account? What was the response like, and how did you and the brand react to some of those first experiments with such tweets?

A: I posted our first meme at the end of August 2017. It was a pic of kids chewing on trees and I wrote something like, “This is what happens when vegan parents have kids.” We didn’t have much of an audience, so the responses were underwhelming for a while, but we thought they were funny enough. I got edgier as time went on and started posting ones mocking Twitter and nazis, which were the first that got significant attention on the platform. I made this spinning game show wheel meme and captioned it “Twitter deciding which nazi to verify next” during our #VerifySteakumm campaign. We usually only heard client feedback on memes when they felt something went too far.

Q: The “Verify Steak-umm” campaign was one earlier standout on the account, so how did you come up with that idea? Were you surprised by the end result?

A: We started that bit in October 2017 because Twitter was under fire for verifying nazis like Richard Spencer. We thought, “What the hell, Jack Dorsey will do that but not verify real companies like us?” It was never meant as a “campaign” or anything official, it just naturally picked up steam and became the leading reason we gained followers. Everybody loves an underdog. For a while, it felt like we’d never get verified after discovering the only reason other brands had the checkmark was due to them spending money on the platform and having direct contacts internally. By December, we hit around 14,000 followers and got media attention from HuffPost and Adweek, then once Twitter verified us in January, we hit national headlines via the Associated Press and USA Today. It was wild. None of us expected that. Guess it was a slow news day.

Q: The viral tweet about brands and young people on social media in 2018 was another notable series. Why do you think this resonated with so many people? Do you think this one was key to Steak-umm being genuinely loved by internet users?

A: Throughout 2018 soooo many kids DMed Steak-umm about how they were struggling with everything from school to family to relationships to depression. It blew my mind that they were all so desperate for an outlet that they’d go to a frozen meat company for advice. So, I wrote a thread about why I thought young people were struggling and attracted to brands on Twitter.

My tweets about millennials being uniquely disadvantaged in the job market and being like the internet guinea pigs were nothing new. I think the virality had more to do with the absurdity that it was coming from a brand — especially a frozen meat one. That moment iconized Steak-umm. I think we gained like 70,000 followers and the tweets started a whole discourse over whether this was fun and insightful, versus unethical to humanize brands and commodify subjects like cultural criticism, depression and so on. Anytime you’re the main character on Twitter, it’s bound to be polarizing.

Q: Steak-umm expanded into other social media platforms like TikTok in 2019. How did this decision come about, and how was the brand received on the platform?

A: We had this giant Steak-umm box helmet made at a local mascot shop in Philly in 2019 to create the Twitter character IRL. First, we tried YouTube but soon realized it was gonna take a lot more time and money to grow on the platform, so later in the year, we decided to try out TikTok. It was what the zoomers were talking about and there weren’t many brands taking advantage of it yet in an organic sense, so we started messing around. Over time, we found a groove just being weird around our office. Super low barrier to entry. Funny enough, our most viral moments came from trying to get TikTok to verify us just like what happened on Twitter. We were well-received from the start since most people saw it as an absurd advertising gimmick and not this late-stage capitalism spawn out to destroy civilization like some people thought on the hellsite known as Twitter dot com.

Q: Speaking of TikTok, do you think Millennials or Zoomers are more difficult to come up with successful content that they connect with?

A: Millennials are probably a little tougher because they’re older, more experienced, and more cynical on average. They’re quicker to pick up on marketing gimmicks and see through bullshit. Zoomers more often have this twinkle in their eye like everything is a meme, so they don’t dwell on the consequences of them or their culture being exploited for profit. I think that’s always how it’s been. Kids are the easiest demo to manipulate in general, maybe besides old people. They’re certainly savvier today than they’ve ever been, but I think they’ll always be a little easier to connect with for advertisers or content creators.

Q: Last year’s viral tweets about misinformation regarding the coronavirus pandemic were widely covered in the media and also considered a big success. How did you come up with this idea and were you expecting such widespread admiration for it?

A: Similar to the viral tweetstorm from 2018, I didn’t think there was much special about the tweets I wrote about COVID misinformation in spring 2020, but they stood out due to the lack of clear scientific communication around the virus in the mainstream, the endless conspiracy theories and polarization. So much of what made this particular moment resonate was the timing.

We gained 100,000 followers in a week, many being scientists, doctors and prominent media figures. I got interviewed by Hank Green and several outlets. It was a whirlwind of emotions, given the circumstances of going viral amidst the virus. The inspiration was just me being annoyed by how many people were conflating anecdotes with data in the news media and my hometown on Facebook. I’ve always tried to synthesize surface-level concepts like that which aren’t covered enough, this one just hit the zeitgeist.

Q: Of the many posts, memes, etc. that you’ve done with Steak-umm over the years, do you have any particular favorites?

A: Oh man. I love any meta posts that remind people we’re a brand and that brands aren’t your friends. All our one-sided dunks on Hot Pockets were fun. There was this DJ Luigi meme where I added the lyrics from “Bodies” by Drowning Pool but made them “let the bodies hit the beef.” That will always have a special place in my heart.

Q: While it certainly seems like all fun from the outside, social media management and coming up with creative content is taxing, so how did you keep it from becoming a chore or going stale?

A: It’s rough, especially once you’ve worked on a brand for four years and have had a few viral moments. It creates this looming sense of “Ok, now what?” And every brand on Twitter is constantly trying to stand out in unique ways. It sounds simple, but the best thing I do is just consoom creative content every day on as many platforms as I can and surround myself with creative people. Whether it’s coworkers, content creators or friends I follow online, I’m always drawing inspiration from my environment. That, and taking breaks to enjoy life. Anything to heal my broken brain. I experience burnout fairly often and have personal routines to help get me back on track. It comes with the territory of working online.

Q: Yeah I can relate to that. When creating such content, where did you find inspiration, and what was your creative process like?

A: My brain never turns off, and 99 percent of my ideas are trash, but I write them all down. I keep notepads on my phone and computers that I fill out every day. Usually, I’ll come back to ideas a couple of days after I write them to see if they still sound good or if they just sounded good in the moment. I don’t have a consistent process. Sometimes inspiration strikes, but most days you just gotta do the work.

Like I said before, the key is to consoom. Consoom YT videos, consoom new subreddits, new Instagram accounts, TikToks, subcultures, relationships, all that. Different brands require different vibes. You just gotta constantly stay curious and challenge yourself. If you’re someone who gets overly attached to a style, you’ll end up projecting that style onto brands where it doesn’t fit. Every day my inner boomer becomes stronger and pressures me to just settle for the things I like now. That’s the death of creativity, and there’s always some young gun on the rise who’s way more hungry and plugged into the culture. Knowing that helps keep me competitive.

Q: Memes and internet culture references stemming from brands mostly come off as “How do you do fellow kids?” Why do you think the majority who try this fail, and what makes Steak-umm successful in this realm?

A: HA. Because advertising is cringe! It’s similar to Christian culture. Why are most worship songs or Christian movies terrible? Because they aren’t art for art’s sake, they’re propaganda. To semi-avoid this you gotta own the cringe. Everything a brand does is cringe to some extent because it’s constantly pushing a bottom line. You just gotta be self-aware and not try to speak on things you don’t understand.

Steak-umm acknowledges what it is, reminds people it’s advertising, and I make sure I’m as educated as possible in the subcultures we work in. We got mocked on /r/fellowkids years ago and played into it. Now we’re a mod there. I like laughing at the absurdity of what we do and do my best not to get mad or take things personally (unless I’m getting death threats or being told to kill myself, in which cases it’s unavoidable). That’s when you lose people. Most brands also have way more legal bureaucracy, which kills creativity.

Q: Since you took over the Steak-umm Twitter, memes have become quite a powerful medium for advertisements, marketing and even politics. What do you make of this phenomenon, and do you think it’s a fad or something we’ll continue seeing more?

A: I think on a conceptual level memes have always existed in advertising since advertising often hijacks cultural trends, so it makes sense to me that this would continue. I know a lot of meme purists hate seeing brands or politicians using them. I feel that too sometimes. But memes are like language. They’re constantly evolving with culture and we can’t stop the tide, all we can do is influence it. As brands like Nike or Gillette have learned, even when you post polarizing or cringe content, you’re gonna win the attention economy as long as it pushes people to respond.

Q: So are you still running the account, what else are you doing these days? Can you share some of your recent work or endeavors with us?

A: I’m still running the account, I just have coworkers who help me since I’m working on more clients now as well. Since 2019, I’ve started doing a lot of freelance work. I wrote a long-form article in Vulture about the history of brand Twitter, which is a good starting point for people interested in this phenomenon. I was doing social strategy for YouTube until recently and am working with several other brands I’m not supposed to talk about. I’m writing a book about internet culture wars and also host a podcast called “What’s Really Good” where I do interviews on these subjects. My favorite thing is helping people find jobs, talking through their career goals or just building communities. My Twitter DMs are always open for that kind of stuff.

Q: This is a tough one, but what would you say is your all-time favorite meme? Think you can narrow it down?

A: Maybe God Warrior? That woman on the show “Trading Spouses” from like 2005 who kept screaming about how the family she stayed with was “not Christian” and all “dark-sided” and worshipped the moon and gargoyles. What a trip. I grew up deep in a charismatic Christian community, so I knew some people who went ham like that in real life. I live for people who are living memes.

Q: What about current memes and internet trends? Any favorite formats going around or any you loathe?

A: It’s tough to say since memes rise and fall so fast these days. I don’t have many visceral reactions to trends anymore. I enjoy them in the moment and let them go when the moment passes. As my friend Oliver Bateman says, “That’s the work and we’re all here for it.”

Q: So among the Twitter accounts from brands that have sorta followed in the footsteps of Steak-umm, which ones would you say are doing it the best right now? What brand has the best memes currently?

A: On the absurdist meme side of things, no one comes close to Slim Jim’s Instagram, which was popularized by the late Andy Hines AKA @heckoffsupreme who tragically passed away in 2020. In terms of the more existential commentary style, I’m not sure. Little Debbie does a similar self-help/inspirational style of tweets that works for them. I think most brands lean into humor and away from serious topics like we touch on because they’re harder to navigate.

Q: What about some of the biggest failures? Who’s doing it wrong and why?

A: Oh there are way too many fails to list. Some people would say Steak-umm is doing it wrong. It’s all subjective. Different people are triggered or captivated by different things brands do. Since it’s become culturally lucrative to be “woke,” corporations have been getting more comfortable co-opting social justice messaging, which can feel pretty cringe. I do err on the side of thinking it’s a net positive because it helps move the cultural Overton window, but it can also be transparently opportunistic. Like in the wake of the BLM protests — it sucks when a brand exploits a cultural moment for clout, then ignores it once the hype passes. I think when brands go all-in on something, it at least feels more consistent and speaks to their values. But like I said, interpreting these as based or cringe is subjective and all companies have different goals.

Q: Any final word to close us out on?

A: It’s an honor to be featured in the hall of memes. Steak-umm bless.

Nathan Allebach is an internet culture writer, podcaster and marketer who created the infamous Steak-umm Twitter account in 2017. To see more of his work, you can follow him on Twitter and Twitch or check out his Medium, podcast and Bandcamp for more.