Ok, I’ll admit it, this has got me stumped for a while now but “WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE BACON?!?” there isn’t a day without someone in my social networks mentioning or referring to ‘bacon’ in some way, there even is a bacon day, a bacon society and a bacon ipsum generator. Searching for answers I came across the most eclectic collection of bacon-products imaginable.

I even posted a question about this in a Skype chat I’m part of. That resulted in one of the weirdest conversations I ever had (edited it a bit to make it somewhat coherent)

<Me>: Ok, at the risk of sounding very blond, or ignorant or both…. But what is this fascination with bacon all about?!? I constantly see people on FB and Twitter making references to it and so called funny remarks…. I’m sure I’m missing something here but what’s up with that or is it just my imagination???
<UK-girl>: I like bacon, but not to that extent. Marmite – well that is a different matter
<Me>: Ok going from the weird to the disgusting here… 😉
<UK-girl>: noooooo! Marmite is AWESOME
<US-guy>: Mmm. Bacon.
<UK-girl>: marmite bacon .. double mmmmm
<Me>: Mmm… Not getting very far this way, do I 🙂
<UK-girl>: you think you are going to get a serious answer out of people talking about bacon?
<Me>: And why not??? Arggg, really getting confused about bacon here
<US-guy>: Bacon is serious. And good with anything, including chocolate. I fully admit that I am from the South, so loving bacon is genetic.
<Me>: Ok so it is just in my head that I see all these bacon references and think there is a second meaning to it that I don’t get?!?
<UK-girl>: no .. there is lots of bacon, I noticed it too
<US-guy>: True. I would say Canadians are also misguided, but then they actually call theirs ‘peameal’.
<Me>: @<UK-girl> Ah! So I’m not alone in noticing!
<UK-girl>: nope
<Me>: But no clue why?
<US-guy>: It is important to not think about where bacon comes from, but instead just worship the awesomeness. 😉
<Me>: Hope we didn’t offend the gods of Bacon then with this conversation… 😉
<UK-girl>: they will be getting ready to fry or grill us 😀

Right…. after a good chuckle I gave up on the idea of ever getting a serious answer from this group as you can imagine.

But it does highlight an important factor and that is that we all bring certain cultural or social aspects and concepts into the mix that others might not be familiar with. Nothing wrong there but it could lead to misunderstandings and confusions.

Now me not understanding the US/Canadian bacon mania is one thing but misunderstandings in communications can cause serious problems, especially where people from different backgrounds get more direct interaction with each other like in social business environments. Take for instance Belgium and The Netherlands. In both countries Dutch (Flemish) is spoken and geographically spoken most foreigners won’t even know where one ends and the other starts. Our cultural etiquette though has some very distinct differences. Dutch are often seen by their Belgium neighbors as too direct and harsh where the Dutch sometimes perceive their Belgium counterparts as unnecessary formal and overly cautious. Nothing wrong there if you are aware of this but sometimes it can be a good idea to give new social platform users that are not familiar with communicating through social platforms or with people in other cultures a bit of an explanation and awareness of social etiquette before turning them loose.

After all the whole idea of getting people to adopt social business is to get them more productive and ‘bringing home the bacon’, not burn it.