Let's Talk Crock Pot Girls

As a busy working woman, I'm definitely a fan of crock pots, even though I usually spend a good portion of the day wondering if it's going to burn down my condo while I'm gone. Last week, I noticed a bunch of my friends liking a page on Facebook called "Crock Pot Girls." I like crock pots, I like my friends and I'm a woman, so I decided to like the Crock Pot Girls too, in hopes of expanding my already ridiculously large recipe collection.

When I joined they had 800,000 fans, a few days later there were well over 1 million. I didn't think anything of it - just figured that lots of people like crock pots.

Scandalous!

Then I read this article - the author had been spending some time looking into the truth about the Crock Pot Girls. Now I'm officially fascinated -- internet bots, purchased Facebook fans. This is some juicy stuff!

I did notice that my Facebook News Feed said that 10 friends liked Crock Pot Girls and when I became an actual fan, it only showed that 2 mutual friends were fans. I'm wondering if there might be some sort of lag - a friend told me she liked it on Wednesday but she is just now showing up as a mutual fan.

I don't know that I care either way - I try not to post anything too personal on Facebook so I'm not concerned about that and I find myself vastly entertained at the idea of someone going to all sorts of trouble to buy millions of crock pot fans.

Crazy Crock Pot Ladies

I also find myself amused by the ardor of these fans. I like my crock pot. I also like my Kitchen Aid mixer and my stove and my wok. I have equal love for all of my kitchen appliances. Some of these crock pot ladies are crazy. I feel like they're about the lynch the haters with cans of  cream of chicken soup and blocks of cream cheese.  Here are some of the comments:

From "friends" of the girls:

• These girls are precious and the real deal. (Precious? Ick!)
• They are just 3 small town, church going, moms of young kids ('Cause no church going person has ever committed a crime. I'm not an avid church goer and I'm pretty crime-free.)
• If you read Rachael Ray's success story, hers was completely accidental too, it just didn't happen on Facebook, and not quite as fast. (I'm pretty sure Rachael developed her own recipes - she didn't just post a recipe exchange.)

From "fans"

• This site has helped a lot of working mothers and working wives. (In the three weeks it's been available?)
• I am thankful for CPG, a working mother with three children that play every sport needed something to simplify my life. (And a recipe exchange on Facebook is that thing? I prefer vodka)
• You should have a Food Network show! (Um, I think you need to develop your own recipes to do that!)

Honestly, I don't know if the Girls are legit are not - I found a Bacon-Wrapped Chicken recipe I'm dying to try, so I  got what I came there for.

The Truth

Let's be realistic:

• This site sprang up three weeks ago - it's not exactly life-altering.
• Unless you're not capable of leaving Facebook, you can find crock pot recipes on pretty much every single food website. There are tons of them out there - in fact, there's a great blog by someone who used her crock pot every day for a year.
• The Girls aren't even the ones posting the recipes.  Other people are posting random crock pot recipes that they took from another source (usually not giving credit.) 
• As a recipe site, this one sucks. There's no search engine, the page shows about 10 minutes worth of posts so it's impossible to find anything AND there are no ratings. 
• With that said, for instance, I had no idea you could make french fries in a crock pot or that you could wrap things in bacon.  That's worth the price of admission for me! 

I'll keep watching all the drama because it's as good as a novel. I'm waiting for the Lifetime movie.  I think Christopher Walken should play the Internet Bot.  And if I can find even more recipes with bacon, I'm good to go!