Fake it til you break it (democracy, that is)

2023 has been the year of fake everything, and George Santos is its poster child

Yasss, queens. Source: Midjourney.

Just when you thought this timeline we're all trapped in couldn't get any weirder, allow me to introduce you to George Santos, video star.

As reported by many outlets, the former Brazilian drag queen turned Congressperson from Long Island with a slightly embellished resume [1] has a brand new gig: Cameo spokesmodel.

(FYI: Cameo is a website where you can send video greetings from D-list celebrities to your friends and enemies. It was big during the pandemic. Not so much now.)

For just $200 $350 you can pay George to send a brief video ($10 $20 for a text message) saying pretty much whatever you want him to say.

Pennsylvania senator and fashion icon John Fetterman has already availed himself of Santos's services, paying him to deliver a message to the twice-indicted Democratic senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez. [2]

Apologies for the shaky camera work. Couldn’t figure out a way to download this.

Cameo is apparently where disgraced-yet-shameless former public officials go to grift. Perhaps the most notable of these is Rudy Giuliani. Here's a classic bit you might enjoy.

Just when you thought America's Mayor had hit rock bottom with that Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, he digs deeper. [3]

Make America Grift Again

Interestingly, before I fully immersed myself in Rudy's moving Little Teapot performance, I got to watch a one-minute ad for a company offering free gold bars with the face of Donald Trump on them.

There's a voice-over for this ad that might be Donald Trump, but probably isn't. The picture carved into the "gold bullion" doesn't look like much like him either. The bars, which look to be the size of a key fob, are being given away by a website (wewillbegreatagain.co) for the cost of shipping and handling, or roughly $13 per bar (plus a $10 rush fee if you absolutely must have it right now).

There's a disclaimer on the bottom of the order form that reads:

By clicking the "Go To Step #2" button above you also consent to receive email at the email address you provided, as well as prerecorded messages, autodialed phone calls and SMS text messages at the phone number you provided from Entremax Inc, and other 3rd party partners standard rates may apply.

And if you go further down this rabbit hole, you end up at a site called My Tactical Promos, "your one-stop-shop for all things tactical and survival gear!" [4]

The real scam is not the $13 shipping fees for a gold painted key fob. It's building lists of people who are stupid enough to hand over their credit card and contact information to these fraudsters. That's worth at least 10 times that amount.

Fake is the new black

We are now living in the golden age of fakes (note: not actual gold). It has gotten to the point where I can no longer tell what is real and what isn't. For example: Is that really George Santos in those Cameo videos, or a George Santos impersonator? I honestly don't know. [5]

AI, of course, is making this even harder by making fakes even easier. Here, for example, is a snippet of Elon Musk doing his spoken word interpretation of The Ramones, created by digital artist Patricia Lupton (aka Omerta22pl).

(I understand he also does a mean version of "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat.")

That is obviously a fake. But only because the artist wasn't trying very hard to fool anyone. There are much more convincing ones available on the Interwebs.

There's also a cottage industry of software services that can (allegedly) tell you what is fake and what isn't. At least a dozen companies have entered this space over the last year, and some of them look really fake.

Like this one, for example:

I uploaded a recording of George Santos's Cameo message above. Deep Fake Detector decided it was 92.07% AI generated, and 7.65% human voice. [6]

So, to recap: Video from a fake Congressperson analyzed by a fake fake detector that (falsely) decides it is fake. This is the world we are living in now: a Russian nesting doll of falsehoods.

And yes, people like me will warn you "watch out for deep fakes in the 2024 election cycle," and it's good advice. But it's also not very helpful. Because the damage goes much deeper than that.

Seeing used to be believing. Now it's not. Everything is now suspect, and nothing is truly 100 percent verifiable. Just as with "fake news," any audio or video can be declared a "deep fake" by people who want to believe what they want to believe.

George Santos was the inevitable byproduct of electing a con man as president. Now he is us, and we are him (or her, depending on the outfit).

Can you believe your eyes or ears any more? Share your trustworthy thoughts in the comments below.

[1] Among the list of embellishments: George was a college volleyball star, a "jew-ish" graduate from Baruch University and/or NYU (who was also Catholic), a "seasoned wall street investor," descendant of holocaust survivors, son of a woman who died inside the World Trade Center on 9/11, a multi-millionaire, employer of people who died in a mass shooting, a victim of a mugging, a lover of dogs. And, oh yeah, his first name isn't really George.

[2] AKA, Gold Bars Bob.

[3] Thus proving there is no basement for debasement. Thanks, I'll show myself out.

[4] From the site's About page: "As an American company, run by American workers, we believe in supporting our local economy and our country by using American-made products whenever possible." The best part is that they get the name of their own website wrong four times in five paragraphs.

[5] Santos's Twitter/X account links to his Cameo page, which I guess means that it's really him. Unless that account, which has 100K followers and a blue "verification" check, is also fake.

[6] Math nerds will observe that leaves 0.28% unaccounted for. Rounding error? Sales tax? Or maybe just not very good math from scammers who are nearly as dumb as their intended victims.