In June 2010, I was famous. More correctly, in June 2010, my sausage log cabin with bacon curtains was famous on the Internet. And on June 13, 2010, Jimmy Dean died. These events are directly related. How do I know this? Several blogs, including this post on Time.com, used images of my sausage log cabin to pay homage to the king of branded sausage. Booyah!
ME & JIMMY DEAN ARE CONNECTED ON THE INNERTUBES!
After seeing these posts, I got curious and ran an image search for “bacon curtains.” Aside from some competition from the SFW pork bacon ribbon curtains, I was delighted to see my sausage log cabin with bacon curtains appear in the top 10 images returned! And I was equally thrilled to see a plethora of my log cabins in the top 10 when I searched for “sausage log cabin.”
Sausage Log Cabin with Bacon Curtains Extreme Close-up
Sadly, though, when I clicked the images, only 2-3 of them linked to my photography website. And, of the blogs that are hosting images of my work, most of them failed to credit me or link back to my site. Ouch. People were admiring and appreciating my carefully tied-back bacon curtains and sausage log cabin, but no one knew they were MINE. This is akin to Kim Kardashian’s sex tape being anonymous! If there weren’t names tied to that video, that family wouldn’t be famous for being famous*!
Honestly, I’m overjoyed that my meat sculpture resonates with people, but I’m disappointed that my name isn’t associated with my work. And as a professional online marketer who’s worked on the Web for years, I’m especially disappointed that I failed to heed my own advice. I didn’t watermark my photography. I didn’t label my log cabin. Doh! Of course people are going to take stuff from the Internet and save it, use it, repost it, and do whatever the hell they want with it. It’s the Internet.
At this point, the horse is out of the barn. Or the lips and a-holes have already been shoved into the casing, cooked, and presented. But it’s a good reminder about how the Internet works. And an even better reminder that sausage log cabins and death can bring people together. The rest of the images can be see here: Bacon Curtains (SFW)
* Bruce Jenner exempted, of course, due to the whole Olympics thing.
© Josephine Lowry. Every time someone steals another person’s image and/or copy, a unicorn gets a tapeworm. Link to my blog instead.
Josefiend 
who is Kim Kardashian ?
This is the stuff that dreams are made of, Erica. I hope that we can one day experience a Kardashian-free world…
I intend to tell the world about you and your food art…..you are a genius my dear. I am also so very sorry to the two or three unicorns out there that I might have infested.
Awww, thanks, Tina. Though I’m pretty sure there aren’t many people spending their days with tube meat and toothpicks.
The Internet used to be a considerate and respectful place.
And now we have to threaten the parasitic infection of unicorns to encourage people to do the right thing. We’re not in the 90s anymore, are we? j/k
Call me a cynic, but even if you DID watermark your work, some beefjerkypants would blur it out and take credit for it.
You’re right, Sonny Dunes, some people are still going to be jerks. The no rules/goat rodeo aspect of the Internet is what makes it so fabulous and so horrific.
Ha ha. No. In 2013, Pee Herman shares my work without giving me credit and now another group is sharing it sans credit. I’m going to be chasing this image down for the rest of my life. So happy that it resonates with folks and makes them laugh, but damn, it sucks to have it shared without credit.