Crock Pot Girls Goes Viral....Hmmmm

Over the past couple of weeks I have been noticing a lot of my Facebook friends "liking" a certain page called Crock Pot Girls. At first it was one or two, then I noticed my friends were liking this page in droves. It piqued my curiosity as I own a crock pot but never use it and thought of all the amazing dishes I could be cooking up while I write blog posts such as these. However, I didn't give it a second thought until today when another friend of mine posted a link to a blog about this fan page being a "crock". Apparently, these three moms from Texas started an innocent little Facebook page intended to share crock pot recipes. Within two weeks they now have over 1 million fans. That's right, 1 million! To put this in perspective, they have more fans than the Today Show, most celebrities and all other legit cooking pages including Rachel Ray. She has only 400K or so. It takes A LOT of work to get a million fans and that sort of traffic does not happen overnight. But for some reason Crock Pot Girls have gotten tens of thousands of fans during the wee hours when most of America is sleeping! Now I REALLY wanted to know what all the fuss was about so I "liked" the page myself to check it all out.

What I found was an ongoing stream of posts from overly enthusiastic crockpotters sharing pieces of recipes or gushing about how delicious these crock pot creations were. I also found many confused posters looking for recipes and a website that did not exist. As I refreshed my page I noticed the incessant amount of manic posters that just seemed way too into this crock pot thing. I mean its nice to have a meal cook itself but I would never choose to do all my cooking via slow cooker. I also noticed that their fan base was increasing by the hundreds every time I refreshed. It all seemed so odd. So contrived.

I didn't see any posts from the Crock Pot Girls themselves and when I looked in the photos and discussion sections, I found a very disorganized mish mosh of recipes, none of which were posted by said Crock Pot Girls. So where is all the content? Nothing on the facebook page is user friendly. Its more like watching a live chat room where you can't keep up because too many people are posting. As for the website? Well, right now there isn't one. Everyone (it seems they all know these ladies personally and feel the uncontrollable desire to defend them at all costs) says it will be up shortly because they are switching web hosts due to all the unplanned traffic overloading the site. Riiiiiiight.

So you may be wondering why I am "wasting my time" writing about all of this and why don't I have "anything better to do". Well, let me tell you. There are thousands of legitimate businesses that advertise on Facebook everyday. They pay good money to get their ads out there and acquire a fan base. I am sure that they would be stark raving mad if they found out that someone was acquiring a fan base without paying for it. I don't buy the claim that this site went viral. There is no legitimate content on it for it to go viral. The rate at which this page gained "likes" is completely suspect.  Plus, there is evidence that cyber bots were used to acquire the fans.

When I looked into this a little further, I found my friends (the ones that supposedly showed up in my news feed as liking the Crock Pot Girls) had not actually liked them at all. How is this possible? Its possible through a program that can make your friends appear to like something in hopes that you will join the bandwagon and like it too. So in essence, these Crack Pot Girls (oops) gained a million fans (many who are made up profiles) to make it seem that the site went viral. Then they assumed so many people would want to know what its all about and then the "real" people would join in.

When it comes down to it, its not legit or fair and I hope the truth comes out soon. Social media advertising is still relatively new and the kinks still need to be worked out. There are people out there looking to take advantage of "loop holes" every chance they can get.

If you have bothered to read this far, then you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with being green. Well, just look at some of the recipes that people are sharing. The most unhealthy stuff I have ever seen. Too much salt, too much dairy, processed foods, nasty ingredients, all dumped together and slow cooked until all the nutrients are gone. One recipe called for cheese whiz!! Seriously, I do not make this up.

With all of this said, maybe you don't care at all about how these ladies got their fans. That's fine, I respect your opinion. But for all the legitimate sites, blogs, fan pages out there, I know you will relate to what I am saying. If it were that easy to get a million fans, we all would have them by now!