CULTURE

Steak-Umm's Twitter Account Is Officially America's Most Trusted News Source

With recent tweet threads transforming Steak-Umm's Twitter account into a font of wisdom, it's time for the brand to pivot

When you think of Steak-Umm—if you even have a clue what it is—you probably think of philly cheesesteaks and of bags of "meat" sold in the frozen section of the supermarket.

If you're a food scientist, or a scholar of obscure copyright cases, you might instead think of "chopped and formed emulsified meat product that is comprised of beef trimmings left over after an animal is slaughtered." You are probably far less likely to look to the Steak-Umm brand when you're craving reliable media analysis, cultural wisdom, and insight into the scientific method. As it turns out, maybe you should.

On Tuesday morning, "Steak-Umm" became a trending topic on Twitter after the brand's verified account posted a lengthy thread running through various fallacies and analytical flaws that plague broader understanding of issues around the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning with a "friendly reminder" that "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," the social media arm of a frozen-sandwich-meat company went on to break down some of the frequent mistakes that media outlets and consumers make in processing information on a rapidly evolving topic.

Among Steak-Umm's thoughtful and lucid insights were some notes on the erosion of trust in traditional media ("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") and the threat of "opportunists and charismatic manipulators" stepping into that vacuum to feed people comforting lies and "fear-based sensationalism." After several tweets of this kind of concise and measured analysis, the thread closed with an acknowledgment of the irony that Steak-Umm was delivering this message, a succinct summation of the overall points, and the phrase "steak-umm bless."

The account also linked to another thread "touching on small, simple ways that the average person can take on the daily cultural challenges of this pandemic without demonizing or otherizing our neighbors" and to a donation page for Feeding America—a charity to which Steak-Umm recently pledged $25,000. Whether or not we take anything else from these sudden bouts of wisdom coming from such a seemingly unlikely source, perhaps it's worth considering a new direction for the Steak-Umm brand. People have been shifting away from highly processed foods in recent years and are more and more desperate for trustworthy sources of carefully processed information. Maybe it's time for Steak-Umm to pivot.

Just as Nintendo pivoted from trading cards and "love hotels" to video games in 1966, it's time for Steak-Umm to change with the times. The world doesn't need their softened emulsified meat nearly as much as we need their trenchant observation and analysis. It's time for Steak-Umm to start a newspaper.

The Steak-Umm Digest, helmed by Nathan Allebach could come out weekly—in honor of how long it takes the human body to digest its namesake—and offer the kind of insight that slices through the pressed, frozen loaf of left-over news trimmings to let us know what's really going on. While Steak-Umm's Twitter account calls for us all to get our news from "credentialed sources," the fact that the director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver said that "Steak-umm is free to come teach my methods class" seems like credential enough.

So forget the New York Times, the Washington Post, Popdust. Take all those tired old media juggernauts and Steak-Umm where the sun don't shine.