It’s easy to feel unmoored these days. Lies are everywhere, and wisdom is rare. The touchstones that used to perform quality control on our dialogue have been degraded, while opportunistic know-nothings abound. People yearn for a voice with knowledge and insight, but that voice is hard to find.
But what if I told you that a sage capable of matching wits with the great thinkers of any age walks among us? And what if I told you that that philosopher is whoever runs the Twitter account for America’s #1 flash-frozen chipped beef meat product? I speak of the Steak-Umm Twitter feed, which any reasonable observer will agree provides better commentary on life, culture, and the human condition than 99.999% of the chattering class.
For those who don’t know: Steak-umm is the brand name of an edible steak-like entity made by forming beef trimmings into a loaf and then slicing it thinly. They’re good for Philly cheesesteaks and loose meat sandwiches. And the Steak-umm account dutifully spreads the good word about their product to potential buyers from Cherry Hill to Bucks County.
But there’s only so much one can say about ingestible frozen meat sheets. So, the Steak-umm author — the anonymous scribe whose words will surely echo through the ages — eventually began weaving commentary about society, politics, and life into the Steak-umm feed. Like this:
The existence of free will has been debated since Democritus wrote about atomistic determinism in the 5th century B.C. Steak-umm effectively ended the millenia-old conversation with a picture of three pretty-tasty-looking stuffed peppers. There’s no way to describe which pepper you prefer1 without expressing free will — Steam-umm has laid a logical trap worthy of Socrates.
There’s also this enlightened bit of self-awareness:
Much societal dysfunction is caused by epistemic closure that distorts reality. The first step towards enlightenment is to recognize how our perception is altered by filtered information. Steak-umm is steering people towards greater awareness by giving us the tools we need to have a “fish-realizing-he’s-surrounded-by-water” moment.
Steak-umm also has a zen perspective on human wants and needs:
In The Four Noble Truths introduces the concept of “samudaya”, which is the idea that suffering is caused by craving and desire. This Steak-umm tweet gets to that same realization succinctly, thus leaving more time for making meals out of amalgamated beef. Frankly, Steak-umm used 125 characters to capture an idea that Buddha needed an entire book to get across, which does make the Buddha look like something of a verbose wanker.
The Steak-umm Twitter account is quite clearly to our age what Immanuel Kant was to his. And, yes, I’m grading on a curve: Kant was contemporaries with Burke, Rousseau, and Hume, while Steak-umm is contemporary with Catturd and whatever confused logical positivist runs the Fruit Stripe Gum account. It might be true that we’re so surrounded by dolts and hacks that any source of common sense — even if it’s the promotional tool of a company that sells sliced-and-frozen cow parts — seems like profound enlightenment.
Or maybe the Steak-umms account has achieved a higher plane of awareness! Maybe its most profound insights are still to come! I’d argue that any person with a curious mind should be awaiting the next utterance from the Steak-umm account like they’re awaiting Moses’ words upon his descent from Mount Sinai. The keys that unlock deep truths of the universe may arrive in between tweets about the best hoagie rolls for cheesesteaks and new Steak-umm Buffalo-style chicken egg rolls. And if not: Still check out those egg rolls — they look good! Wisdom these days may be as rare as affordable meat products that are ready-to-eat in mere minutes, but it exists for all those who have eyes to see.
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GUEST COLUMN: I'm Also Buying Jimmy John's
Much has been made of my recent $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Reactions have ranged from elation to outrage, all of which I welcome; this is the type of robust exchange that a social media platform should guarantee. But Twitter isn’t the only company in dire need of a culture shift; other, more traditional businesses have badly lost their way. And that is why I’m pleased to announce that I have acquired the sub sandwich restaurant Jimmy John’s for a price of $3.6 billion.
Red for me, thanks.
On the one hand, strong respect for raising this legendary account, which I continue to point to as evidence that advertising can and should be art as well as business and should be the gold standard to which brand social media aspires to.
On the other hand, I am deeply disappointed by your surface level scroungings of the Steak-Umm tweets, completely missing out on the glorious late 2010s and early 2020s where if I remember correctly, amongst other things it was giving detailed explanations of existentialist philosophy and quantum theory and all manner of other topics in a far more engaging way than most official scientists.
How could you miss out the genuine Twitter flame war they had with Neil De Grasse Tyson!? The beef puns write themselves!
Time for me to pack it in