COOKIE FEVER: THE HISTORY OF THE EAT'EMGOOD WEB

"Eat different!"

No one questioned the need for it in the beginning, but by the end, the few who knew of its existence were happy to see it go.

"The Eat'emgood Web" -- it seems strange to read those words now and realize that once upon a time, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of baked goods fanatics actually supported a rag-tag collection of Web sites dedicated to the promotion of one particular corporation and its admittedly unique variety of snack foods. There was just something undefinable about this particular brand, something in the recipe perhaps, that caused early tasters to swear allegiance and take it upon themselves to convince the world that cookies and crackers were better than Cream of Wheat.

Most of the world was committed to hot, slopping bowls of the tasteless wheat concoction, having long ago invested in the necessary stoves, saucepans, spoons and serving dishes. A huge service industry had sprung up to supply the millions of Cream of Wheat consumers with recipes, condiments, and cooking utensils, and most people could hardly imagine ever eating anything else.

Along the way came those dark days when it looked like there would be no more Cookie Corp. What, no more mega-chocolate chips with pecans? No more saltines?? The prospect was daunting, and the Eat'emgood Web went into hyperdrive. With a great howling and frothing, everything Eat'emgood-related was raised to a level of near-cosmic importance, at least by the associated webmasters and all the snack food addicts clamoring to be heard.

Eventually the company was saved, not necessarily by the unpaid promotional efforts of fanatical Eat'emgood enthusiasts but through clever new recipes and marketing strategies employed by a visionary and tyrannical leader. Cookie Corp. even came to shun its pesky partisans, whose agitation and vocal presence were now more of an irritation than anything else. Additionally, in what they rightfully regarded as a heroic fight to save the Eat'emgood brand, many of the munchers had assumed a self-importance out of all proportion to either the effect of their words or relative importance of the baked goods they were trying to promote.

Eat'emgood cookies and crackers were wonderful things, but Cookie Corp. was just that: a corporation, not a philanthropic organization. The allegiance of the directors of the company was entirely to its shareholders and potential investors. The members of the board, already wealthy, rewarded themselves with huge benefit packages and stock options far beyond the dreams of individual Eat'emgood consumers, most of whom were not even aware of the existence of such a thing as the Eat'emgood Web!

These essential facts seemed lost on the Eat'emgood webmasters and writers who continued to expand the number of Eat'emgood sites and imagined themselves journalists, media moguls, or even Eat'emgood "philosophers." Until this time there had never been a philosophy of cookies, much less one concerned with only one brand, but that did nothing to quell the embarrassing pseudo-intellectual din. Before long, having run out of things to say about baked goods, the writers took to attacking each other in an effort to justify their own importance. Hitherto respectable average academics and salesmen wore their weakness on their sleeves and pontificated endlessly on Web sites rife with shallow sentiments and bad spelling. For a time these few enjoyed a brief period of imagined glory, chiefly the result of lengthy emails exchanged among themselves, but the daisy-chain was in fact much smaller and shorter than anyone imagined.

This is not to say that postive work was not carried out in some quarters. Although Eat'emgood cookies and crackers had the advantage of being self-contained and easy to consume, there were many uninitiated among the hungry who needed to be shown how to open the box and how many to eat (some former Cream of Wheat users had even forgotten how pleasurable it was to bite and chew their own food). The record shows that a number of Eat'emgood sites were run by altruistic Cookie believers who performed valuable services during this interim period, and these should be given their due.

What many contemporary observers consider the tragedy of these years was that competent individuals were diverted from more important dilemmas facing humanity and the planet. That most cultures and habitats have survived is due entirely to the efforts of the vast majority of the population who never heard of the Eat'emgood Web! Even in its supposed heyday, the imagined movers and shakers never performed the simple test of querying Cookie customers to see how many were even aware of Eat'emgood Web sites like EatCentral, EatWEEK, CookieCrumbs, or Eat Dough Daily. Most, of course, were not, and the exaggerated traffic reported by Eat'emgood webmasters of that era is now regarded as the result of the industry chasing its own tail.

The end, when it came, was thankfully quiet, though somewhat drawn out. Improved worldwide standards of living and increased nutritional awareness eventually eliminated the need for such products. At the same time, in the absence of any credible threat to the food supply, the more influential members of the "Eat'emgood community" (as many called it) came to realize the absurdity of acting as unpaid promoters of what was after all only a single corporation and moved on to more satisfying pursuits. One by one the Eat'emgood sites shut down or merged with others in a vain attempt to build commercial monuments within the cloistered little world of Cookie Corp., but in the end Cookie's own Internet presence proved to be more than adequate.

We can only be grateful that the misplaced public trust in profit-making entities and the little-understood nature of the primitive technologies of the early Internet Era were not greater influences on the evolution of human society than they were. For this reason the minor phenomenon of the Eat'emgood Web remains instructive.

The names of the founders, however, have been lost.

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM.

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February 08, 2012