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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

Cameo is one of THE WEIRDEST service I've ever seen, but it shouldn't surprise me at all that it exists I guess.

Looking through the list and seeing that I can get the To Catch A Predator guy to say almost whatever I want for $50, Diamond Dallas Page for $85, The Mooch for $50... it's unbelievable.

The service practically markets itself too, as the more people that share the videos they buy, the more it'll spread. No idea what the end game is here, but it feels like something right out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.

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For me Cameo, more than any of the celebrity zoom calls, twitter sing alongs etc... has busted the bubble of celebrity.

For better or worse, society forces celebrities to live in this superposition of untouchable and relatable. Cameo kills the untouchable part because it's putting a price on their time - which to the layperson like me feels invaluable - even if we know that there is certainly a dollar figure to it.

$30 per second [0] is unreal money for anyone - If the numbers are right Hasselhof has made $11,000 for doing 51, 30 second videos. So it's certainly a benefit from each side, obviously! At that rate he could work ~30 minutes per day during the work week (2 videos per day, a couple of tries, login and upload) take a full month off a year and still make $140k.

I think for me it comes down to the realization: "I can't believe these huge celebrities have time for this" - but it could just be an artifact of quarantine.

[0]: https://www.cameo.com/davidhasselhoff

Money is a bonus but the part a big time celebrity cares about is getting their face out there and look like they are relatable and nice people. Helps when they have a new project.

That's exactly my point though. For me personally, the more relatable celebrities are, the less they are able to create the distance and mystique that is in my opinion the foundation of what celebrity is.

I think most people want to continue to be able to pretend that their favorite celeb doesn't have bad breath in the morning, binge watches bad TV or leaves their dirty towel on the floor in the bathroom.

And then they see the celeb's tweets.

I think the opposite. It's all about that authenticity now. Look - they're vlogging! They're just like me! Or whatever.

I think it would be pretty interesting to scrape the site for celeb prices over time and analyze them. At the least it would be a hilarious stock ticker to put in a waiting area or restroom

This might be a good data analysis play- run it and then sell your research to agents, venues, casting agents and booking agencies.

To Catch A Predator guy saying almost anything for $50 sounds like the greatest service ever.

Those rates seem really low, for some reason. Anthony Scaramucci, who was a big-time trader at GS and then started his own fund, will record one of those messages for fifty bucks? I don't get it. And just being on this platforms seems to put a specific dollar figure on one's dignity.

Think about how many clips they can do in an hour. At say, < 5min/clip you can maybe do 10/hr.

Have a few hours on a morning/evening spare? Easily a few $1000

But would Scaramucci notice the extra $500 from devoting an hour to reading scripts? I doubt he gets an enormous number of requests anyway. If it's an ego thing, surely that's cancelled out by the amount people are actually willing to pay for his greetings being substantially less than the cheapest Pro voiceover actors on Fiverr.

Might make a lot more sense for the sort of artists that get a lot more TV/radio/YouTube exposure than actual income, but even some of them might wonder if they're devaluing their ability to charge much bigger bucks for endorsements and ads

For “The Mooch” it’s probably an addiction to attention that’s driving his Cameo participation.

He could also just be getting paid $200 for his $50 cameo. Why would this be any different than the other VC subsidized consumer focused services?

I hadn’t thought of that, you could be exactly right. In fact that should be the default assumption.

Some of these lower tier celebrities like interacting with fans, like a lot of celebrities aren't that popular or rich enough to have people manage their social media for them and are the ones actually interacting with online fans... or critics.

it's just a form of signed memorabilia for the virtual property age. Like getting a CD cover or photo signed with a greeting.

I suspect it says something about the somewhat dystopian lives celebrities often lead.

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