The War on Oreos

The best things come to those who wait. Except when it comes to cookies. Cookies wait for no one. And people are not good at waiting for cookies either. If you've ever seen a piping hot oatmeal raisin sitting on the table, you know the person who waits on them to cool is the person who ends up waiting for nothing at all (I for one have a sensitive mouth which has always vexed me when the cookie getting is good).

When it comes to cookies made in a factory, they come with the added benefit of millions of dollars in brand advertising, to make up for the missing grandma baking them (although it is understood that Nabisco and Company is an equal-opportunity employer). One of the most advertised cookies is Oreos, unquestionably delicious and addictive. The only premade cookie that comes with directions, as if you didn't already know how to eat them in three easy steps.

The Oreo is the best-selling cookie on earth and the second most popular type of cookie overall. But Elon Musk has waged a gruesome war against his foes, and Oreo is in the crosshairs.

Far be it from me to discriminate against someone on non-merited characteristics but Elon Musk is clearly lacking merit as an advertising executive, although if he could, he'd fire me for saying so for lack of loyalty. The multi-billionaire who works 120 hours per week and still manages to find time to impregnate a variety of women, has recently purchased his main distraction. What are his plans? To make Twitter worth at least half of the purchase price.

Twitter, despite never attaining success as a business (with 2018 and 2019 being the only years it reported a net profit since its founding in 2007), has become the default platform for real-time information, and because of that, its the social media home of journalists, entrepreneurs, and other people who don't want to make reels because they are too busy. But the company has never really been able to monetize its users, or in other words, advertising doesn't do that well on Twitter.

As of last report from a reliable source (Twitter), Twitter has been shrinking. Active users are becoming less active, advertising is disappointing advertisers and profits have been scarce since the company started. But the moment its new owner carried a sink in the door, Musk, who also serves at Twitter's entire marketing department and their only PR rep, claims Twitter is now seeing record activity on the platform. Which, if you ask me, is sort of like bragging about the bathroom traffic at a Five Guys, but I can appreciate the stats either way. The newfound traffic may not be sustainable, and neither is it sustainable to live on Five Guys burgers, but I assure you, the burgers taste good. Twitter on the other hand has left a bad taste in many mouths.

Full disclosure: I am a member of Twitter. I joined in 2008 and since then have tweeted roughly 17,300 times, amounting to an average of 3.4 times per day – or the equivalent of 1.7 Five Guys burger patties (which is 2.55 bathroom visits).

This week, Elon and his Twitter have decided to go to war with one big, and apparently former, Twitter advertiser: Apple.

Whatever Apple did to crack his iPhone must have really gotten under his skin, because Musk, on Monday swiftly posts a string of tweets taking aim directly at Apple, tagging Tim Cook in at least one.

Elon is not good at selling advertising. But to be fair, he's not really good at selling subscription services either. I suspect he has a lot of great qualities that have nothing to do with these things, like hair plugs for example, but when it comes to things like comedy, fathering children, or selling ads, his acumen is lacking.

And since Musk took over the product, and tweeted his first conspiracy theory as Chief Twit, advertisers have dropped from 3900 to 2300 in a week, and I would suspect that trend has continued.

Musk doesn't know much about free speech either. Clearly, he failed to realize that free speech is not just something that can happen on Twitter, but also something that can happen literally anywhere else in the world (with a special exception for China).

Yes. Even Apple benefits from free speech.

But since Musk and his fans don't like that particular version of the popular freedom, one weekend Elon Musk's friend, Mike Davis sought to build a coalition of people boycotting the companies who have chosen not to advertise on Twitter. Musk agreed and said that some "thermonuclear naming and shaming" would be taking place (Musk is using a pun that means "being a dick that is not good at selling advertising").

Of note: Advertising costs money, so as a technicality it is not free. But it is free to decide where advertising will yield the greatest benefit for your company - this includes speculative choice.

To follow up on the thermonuclear plans, Mike and a number of Mike-like Twitter users have begun the name-shame process by highlighting what brands to ban.

Of course, Pfizer being one of them, I can understand why someone could forgo a lifesaving medicine because they believe the advertiser is not spending enough money advertising their product on Twitter.

But Oreos!?

Don't you dare encroach on my cookie crunch! Don't mess with my creamy middle. Don't touch my Oreos.

How in the world could one ever think that they could go to war with Oreos and win? Jenny Craig, Slim Fast, and nearly everyone on the Atkins diet knows this is a battle that will be lost.

Just like resisting the warm chocolate morsels of a toll house, evading the world's most dippable two-sided cream-filled cookie is a fool's errand. Since the Oreo Cookie was created in 1912, countless case studies have been written on the process of dipping the world's most commercially viable cookie. The Oreo is so popular, the internet should be advertising on them.  

But when the news broke of job cuts at Twitter, various publishers reported that the flow of information is facing peril – that elections are in danger, public safety is at risk and free speech is distorted. All because Twitter may have a new boss and fewer professionals fact-checking tweets. How will the world ever work without the wonderful employees of Old Twitter here to protect every single person ever with their website? I have a hunch based on over 100 years of history...

Oreos are sticking around – and I think we'll be fine without Twitter.