The New York Times’ Sarah Lyall has this piece today about a web site that provides video of a cheddar cheese called Cheddarvision. And the site shows nothing but a cheddar cheese, maturing and molding over time in a farmer’s warehouse in Westcombe, England.
As weirdly boring as that sounds, the site has attracted over 919,000 visitors as of this morning and the cheese has received a valentine, Easter presents and even a wedding invitation. The cheese actually has its own MySpace page and has attracted over 500 friends.
How to explain this? While budding video filmmakers toil to create short films that someone will notice on YouTube, a time-lapsed video of the cheese’s maturation has been viewed nearly 70,000 times. The cheesemaker Tom Calver thinks that the cheese is comforting to some.
Mr. Calver is not quite sure why anyone would want to watch his cheese, although he said it might have something to do with the frenetic and provisional nature of life today.
“It’s a security,” he said. “It’s something that’s there 24 hours a day. I heard of someone who said they looked at it before bed and found it a nice, comforting thing. You should really talk to a psychologist.”
Comforting or not, the cheese is oddly compelling (and you have to look at the cheese once you know about the site). It may not be an artistic accomplishment, but Cheddarvision is a stroke of marketing genius by a group of farmers that call themselves West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers. The site lures visitors with the promise of cheddar video. Once there, buying the group’s cheese, or finding a store that sells the cheese, is a click away.
Cynthia Brumfield at 5:29 AM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
