If you're not familiar with Steak-Umm, the frozen beef slices that have been letting people make fake Philly cheesesteak sandwiches for decades, you've probably never looked at their Twitter account. And normally, no one would ever have a reason to read tweets from a frozen meat brand.


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But Steak-Umm is different, and the 28 year-old guy who runs the Steak-Umm Twitter account has changed the brand's history forever.


Nathan Allebach, Steak-Umm's Twitter writer, has been popping up in the news over the past few years, and in light of the Washington Post's latest article on him, it's worth sharing some of the stranger things that have come to light both about Allebach and his work at Steak-Umm.


Steak-Umm Has Been Praised As the Wokest Brand Ever


Allebach first made major news in 2018 when he wrote a tweet from the Steak-Umm account that tried to explain why young kids can become so oddly attached to social media accounts.



Seeing this kind of message from an official brand, and one as unlikely as Steak-Umm, resonated with people, and Allebach started writing more of these critiques on health, wellness, and humanity.


More importantly, he also wrote about what brands should NOT do when they want to interact with audiences in an "authentic" way.




Allebach kept this up, and after recently tweeting about the dangers of misinformation around COVID-19 and shaming any brand who doesn't step up to help people during this time, he's being lauded as a beacon of corporate responsibility.





People Thought Nathan Allebach Was the Son of a Cult Leader


For a couple delightful hours this morning, many were under the impression that Allebach was the son of David Koresh, former leader of the Branch Davidians.



The Branch Davidians are a protestant cult most known for having a standoff with the FBI in which 79 people died, including Koresh, who was shot in the head.


People believed Allebach was related to Koresh because a parody account posted a paragraph from the Washington Post story where they altered the text to say Allebach is Koresh's son, and thousands of people ate it up.


Allebach was merely amused by the whole thing.



Allebach Takes His Tweets Way Too Seriously


According to the Washington Post, Allebach keeps "multiple running notepads of personal thoughts" and writes "long, repetitive rants" that the Steak-Umms social media manager will help condense into shortened tweets.


It's one thing to leave a tweet in the draft folder and come back to it later, but filling up journals with your wildest thoughts and editing them like a stressed out novelist, all for Twitter, can't be healthy.


Not surprisingly, Allebach has said that "seeing a therapist is the best thing you can do as a social media manager."



Teens Have Sought Life Advice From Steak-Umm


In a 2018 interview, Allebach said he's had hundreds of kids message him at the Steak-Umm account to ask for help with all kinds of real issues.


"I can’t even tell you how many people, mostly kids, have DM’d me about how they don’t know what to go to college for, they don’t know what to do as a career," he said.


While Allebach didn't share specifics on any of the kids he's chatted with, he has argued that this is a side effect of brands working so hard to relate to and connect with young people by using shared jokes, memes, and slang.


"They’re going to these insane outlets like a brand on Twitter because they think it’s relatable, and they say, 'Oh, whomever runs this gets it. I’ll ask them what they think.'"



OK enough about weird frozen meat now. Gonna go eat a real steak in peace.