Somewhere in a rented apartment, a man who once claimed to have graduated from Baruch College, worked at Goldman Sachs, and lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting is now available to record a personalized video for your mother's birthday.
Forty-five dollars, more or less, depending on how the market feels that week.
He will say your name — probably the right one — and he will look into the camera with the confidence of a man who has never once been embarrassed, because embarrassment requires a functioning relationship with the truth.
George Santos lied his way into the House of Representatives, got expelled, got indicted, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and then — instead of disappearing into the fog of shame that used to claim figures like him — monetized the whole thing.
The inevitable memoir that no one will fact-check.
And here's the part that should bother you more than the man himself: it's working.
Not spectacularly, not in a way that buys a penthouse, but well enough that the machine keeps running.
Some are buying the videos as jokes, some as genuine curiosities, and some, presumably, because they believe the story he's still telling.
Whatever the reason, the money is real even if nothing he says is.
A country that spent the better part of a decade learning that attention is the only currency that never devalues will eventually stop asking whether the person holding the microphone is honest.
Santos understood this before most of his colleagues did.
He didn't lie because he thought he'd get away with it forever.
He lied because the lie itself was the product, and the audience was already there.
There's a version of this story where he fades into a quiet life of plea deals and probation check-ins.
The winning version is the one where a man convicted of identity theft sells you his identity, one thirty-second clip at a time, and you click buy because it's funny, because it's cheap, because nothing matters enough to be serious about anymore.
This is what a collapsing civic culture looks like up close.
A marketplace where integrity is optional and audacity is a business model.
But understand what you're participating in.
Final Thoughts
You're funding the next one — and the next one is watching to see exactly how well this pays.