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👋 Hey dumdums,
Last week I tried to impress my wife by assembling what I believed was a charming, rustic charcuterie board.
In my head, it was effortless elegance. A symphony of cured meats and cheeses casually draped across a plank of reclaimed-wood.
In reality, it looked like a meat tornado that crash-landed on a cutting board.
She stood over the wreckage for a moment, took it all in, and then said, very kindly, that it was “brave.”
And yet:
Cheese-fluencers have turned this dairy nonsense into a high art and high-income hustle.
On paper, it sounds like a joke. People who “professionally arrange dairy for the internet.”
But the deeper I go, the more it starts to feel like performance art meets neurotic snack wizardry.
And that makes them the perfect case study in our ongoing question:
Can something as dumb as a “cheese influencer” actually be a goldmine?
Grab a toothpick. Let’s find out.
Marissa Mullen, better known as @thatcheeseplate, didn’t start out trying to build an empire. She just liked making pretty snack boards. Then she invented "Cheese by Numbers," a color-coded step-by-step visual system that turned intimidated cheese-newbies into confident curd composers. Her account exploded: 1M+ followers, brand deals, even a book.
A New York Times editor once muttered,
"I didn’t know ‘Cheese by Numbers’ could be a career path."
Yet Mullen's grids boosted cheese board kit sales by 400% on one e-commerce partner site.
And wait, it gets weirder…
She now runs cheese-board workshops at tech conferences.
Yes, there is a TEDx for manchego.
Tenaya Darlington (@mmefromage), a former poetry professor, is now a full-time "cheese courtesan." (Her words. Sort of.) She gives "cheese seduction" classes, pairs pecorino with Prince albums, and refers to gouda as "a bass note in the symphony of bite."
Her blog, Madame Fromage, started as an attempt to sound smarter at dinner parties. Now she curates cheese-focused travel guides, judges international cheese competitions, and gets sent entire wheels of experimental dairy from Alpine monks.
One marketing exec rolled their eyes and called her a "curd cult leader." But she helped a small Vermont creamery go viral with a 3-minute video about "barn funk" that quadrupled their sales in 72 hours.
Then there's the backlash with these three knuckle-heads.
In 2024, influencer-backed cheese brand Lunchly launched with celebrity names like MrBeast, Logan Paul, and KSI.
Their concept? Fancy adult Lunchables.
But within weeks, TikTok flooded with photos of moldy packs, and kids biting into rotted-cheese. Yikes.
Critics pounced on influencer ethics.
"Should a YouTuber sell cheese to children?" asked one parenting blog.
Sales tanked, trust eroded, and the phrase "content cheese" started circulating with all the charm of a foot fungus.
And yet…
The real cheese influencers continue to thrive because their followings aren’t built on hype. They were built on craft, taste, and community. (Also, probably some very good crackers.)
Brain-Science B-Side
Cheese influencers might secretly be happier than the rest of us.
A 2024 study titled “Creating Arts and Crafting Positively Predicts Subjective Wellbeing” followed nearly 500 participants and found that people who regularly engage in creative activities—especially tactile, hands-on ones like crafts—report significantly higher life satisfaction. They also score higher on happiness and the feeling that life is worthwhile, even after you account for age, income, and health.
What’s wild is that this boost comes not from grand creative achievements, but from humble acts of making. The kind of slow, sensory, slightly obsessive rituals that cheese influencers practice every time they layer prosciutto next to gouda. It’s not just an aesthetic thing. Apparently, it’s also a great way to build a mental infrastructure for joy and happiness. 🤷♂
So if you’ve been feeling stuck, maybe don’t journal. Don’t meditate. Just go build a tiny weird board of food. Color it. Shape it. Eat it. Then do it again.
Dumb Word of the Day: “Tyromancy”
Pronounced: TY-ro-man-see
Meaning: The ancient art of divining the future by observing cheese.
Back in ye olde times, fortune tellers would stare at holes in Swiss or note how curds curdled to predict war, marriage, or goat infestations.
After watching cheese influencers turn stilton into seduction and mold into marketing, it’s hard not to think they’re practicing tyromancy in a modern form.
In fact, I bet Marissa Mullen can probably predict your break-up timeline based on your board layout.
Use it in a sentence: "I don’t trust astrology, but my roommate does tyromancy and honestly, she’s never been wrong."
(should you choose to accept it)
Make a Cheese Tarot
Pick 3 cheeses from your fridge. Don’t overthink it.
Assign them archetypes. (e.g., Cheddar = The Rationalist, Brie = The Flirt, Goat = The Escape Artist)
Ask a big question (like "Should I quit my job?") and interpret the cheeses' "answer" based on their vibes.
Bonus points if you post it and tag a real cheese influencer. Double if they respond.
🎤 YOUR TURN
What’s your weirdest cheese habit? Favorite board disaster? Hit reply—I read every curd.
Til next cheese,
David 🎉
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