How about THAT? Who knew! OK, let me explain, because I'm just going to make the assumption here that you have no idea what an "internet bacon influencer" might be, as I also didn't up until this morning. The lovely and talented Brittney Bush Bollay (who was, btw, the first Seattle rock photographer who came across my radar when I moved here) Tweeted this to me today: "@mariannesp Will be happy to know she is influential about bacon." Upon further investigation, I found out that this information came from Klout: (from Wiki)
"Klout is a San Francisco based company that provides social media analytics that measures a users influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data collected from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person's network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content. Klout measures influence by using data points from Twitter, such as: following count, follower count, retweets, list memberships, how many spam/dead accounts are following you, how influential the people that retweet you are, and unique mentions. This information is blended with Facebook data such as comment, likes, and the number of friends in your network to come up with a "Klout Score" that measures a user's online influence."
So I had to check out what Brittney had seen. IT'S TRUE!
Well, this is quite the responsibility, I feel. All of bacon-dom is counting on me to represent fried strips of pig to my best ability. Little did I know that someday I could tell my children that the Internet -- THE INTERNET!!! - figured out that people were listening to my opinions about bacon, even more than they listen to me about Wisconsin politics. I'm practically glowing with greasy pride.
Did you realize that bacon has become kind of a "thing?" People Like Bacon, A Lot. Proof of Baconmania can be seen at the extremely-fabulous Archie McPhee store, located in Seattle, coincidentally. Look at all that! I've actually tried the bacon mints, which tasted like liquid smoke and soap. I guess the next step is for me to get a Bacon outfit.
Since I've got your Baconattention, I'd like to tell you my favorite thing to eat with bacon: The Peanut-Butter-And-Bacon Sandwich. If you think this sounds awful, GET OUT. It's amaaaaaazzing. Here's how to make it:
Ingredients:
2-4 slices bacon cooked crispy, drained
2 slices good quality hearty wheat or multi-grain bread
Sliced bananas, honey, jam (optional)
Peanut butter (I like Skippy Chunky)
Put bread in toaster. Toast bread. Put bread on plate. Take a knife and smear some peanut butter on the
bread (be careful, it will be melty and messy). Add banana slices or honey or jam or ALL if you like.
Place bacon strips on top of peanut butter and close up the sandwich. EAT THE HELL OUT OF IT.
OK, I'm gonna fess up. I know how Klout came up with their "bacon influencer" thing for me. It's as simple and stupid as this: I got in on some conversations with some Twitter friends about bacon and got on a retweet-stuff-about-bacon list. That's it. That's the entire extent of the meaning behind it. You can apply metrics to almost anything, but that doesn't make them meaningful. I couldn't influence anyone on Twitter to let out a popcorn fart, much less anything to do with bacon (or politics, for that matter).
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman