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Comment by hckr_news | Hacker News Reader

My friend’s brother-in-law used this service a couple months ago for his engagement and wedding, and had a celebrity basically wish them congratulations on the wedding and even mentioned the couple by name (I think you just give them a script of what to say, and they’ll record themselves doing it). The cool and maybe the natural part of it was that it didn’t look scripted. The celeb record themself on their own phone I believe, and sent it in the form of a video message. Something like Facebook live. When I saw the video message, it seemed very natural. I suppose for your friends who don’t know of this service, it’ll make it seem like you’re on personal terms with a celeb and you received a video from your “celeb friend” saying congrats. I definitely see a market for this service as it reaches the masses and grows.

Birthdays, weddings, anniversary milestones, bar mitvahs, high school graduation. Imagine Lebron wishing your kid happy birthday. And all You had to do was pay $5000 and send a script for a 15-second video.

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What's the root cause of this pathological behaviour.

Why is it impressive, to a large proportion of the population, rather than just sad and wasteful (as it appears to me).

I mean I get that it's an [fake] indicator of social associations that could have high value, it's more why is that impressive as opposed to people actually acquiring value. Like a "demonstration of ability to pay" but with social credit.

This seems like the social equivalent of when a brand becomes well known for having high-quality goods -- they then put their logo on lots-and-lots of super-low quality goods that people then buy to pretend they have high-quality goods.

It all makes no sense to me.

Is it something about audio-visual media that we can't use it for entertainment without our brains inadvertently treating characters as part of our social circles; then we fail at recognising actors as not being their characters; ...?

Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.

No one is insane for having different views and priorities

If someone had a cardboard cutout of a piece of amazing new tech, that they were pretending was the real thing, would you think "ooh, nice supercomputer" (or whatever), or would you think "that's a bit insane"?

I think convincing yourself a picture of a fridge full of food is as good as an actual fridge full of food is objectively a mental problem - and that this is somewhat an analogue of that.

Is it? I don't think it is. Disregarding crazed celebrity stalkers (which, to be clear, do exist but they are outliers), no one is going to be gifted a 60-second video/audio clip from their favorite celebrity, and actually believe that the celebrity knows who they are. It's a cute gift from a loved one (parent/sibling/partner/close-friend) who is observant enough to know you like a particular celebrity.

To use your analogy, this is a 10-cm tall miniature model Cray X-MP supercomputer that has blinking LEDs thats powered by 2 AA batteries and sits on your desk that a parent/sibling/partner/close-friend got for you because it's your favorite supercomputer. It's a bit nerdy to have as a desk ornament and some may judge you unfairly on, but if I went off on a rant about how that's a stupid model, it probably can't do any math, and that you're insane for having it... that rant would reflect more poorly on me than on the owner of the model.

(If you know somebody that has that level of problems with a picture of a fridge, please get them help.)

>if I went off on a rant about how that's a stupid model, it probably can't do any math, and that you're insane for having it... that rant would reflect more poorly on me than on the owner of the model. //

Touché :)

But, presumably you're not going "hey have you seen my supercomputer" and showing people a picture of your blinken-light toy on social media?

The relationship people assume to have with celebrities, actors in particular, seems different to that they share with mementos/trinkets. At no point does the person think the Cray is the real thing, but people do seem to think - at some level - they know an actor because they've seen the character the actor helps to construct on screen.

Everyone (adult) knows a person paid for the video with the Happy Birthday greeting, but still at some level there's social credit, which suggests we choose to accept the lie.

I like your analogy, and will reflect on it some more (thanks!), but at the moment it still feels like there are fundamental differences between these situations (and that's where the interest lies).

Really, no one? that's a bold claim.

I think I'm seeing it through the same lens as you. I'm really fascinated by the social phenomena of celebrity. Are you aware of any good papers or resources that explore the psychology of this?

Celebrities elicit an emotional response, similar to going to a place that has meaning to you. If you've spent twenty hours watching that person's work, and seeing them reminds you of the joy you had watching them, it makes sense that seeing them say your name would elicit a greater response.

Thanks, but I don't really grok the analogy - does anyone have as their special place a fictional place created on a film lot by landscapers and set designers.

It all makes people happy, and I'm definitely for that, but it's a lie built on a lie - living vicariously through celebrities, and constructing lies in which we choose to rest our notions of self-worth .. I don't know about that.

Now, excuse me whilst I go tell my children that Jedberg responded to me online ;o)

It's not an analogy. It's just psychology. Your brain is wired to activate areas that are attached to each other. A smell from your childhood evokes a physical response in the brain that makes you happy (or sad, depending on the childhood).

It's the same with a celebrity. You physically feel good when you see that celebrity because in the past you felt good when you saw that celebrity.

> Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.

in a sense, much of the world is insane because they pursue narcissistic types of social status.

but I also do think this is just fun - putting aside the idea of getting a cameo as a status symbol, it's just fun to get a message from some public figure whose work you admire.

Status symbol? Maybe for highschoolers, but if someone showed me this IRL, as an adult, and actually paid real money for such platitudes I would question their maturity level. What an exploitative model.

yeah I would feel sad for someone who's not rich who paid thousands for a shoutout from someone

It's nowhere near thousands. It's usually like a hundred bucks. E.g. I've had friends do one from Chris Hansen as a joke for a large age-gap couple in our group, for the cost of $50.

thats genuinely hilarious, money well spent

We are primates guided by emotions. Our brain responds to incentives similar to those of other living beings (checkout mammals and other monkeys).

Our consciousness is freeing itself from this situation via computers. The transition seems weird but digital systems are just implementing tricks we've been playing on each other for millenia.

It's just weird when you see Black Mirror type of stuff.

> Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.

You're missing something. They're not insane, and neither are you.

Imagine you've loved a certain musician your entire life and you could pay them to sing a song with your name in it.

Or, imagine you and your spouse saw a certain movie on your first date, and you think it would be funny and thoughtful to have one of the actors (or characters) from that movie wish your spouse a happy birthday.

Or, imagine you have followed a sports team for years and have the opportunity to talk to one of the stars.

There is nothing strange or new about celebrity. Touching fame is interesting and exciting to people. There are celebrities who are genuinely meaningful to people -- maybe their work helped get through a tough time.

You don't have to understand it, but it's not hurting anyone, so there's nothing insane about it. It's just a form of personalized entertainment.

Just about the very last thing I would do to a musician whom I admire would be to debase them like that.

I feel like this is the point that gets missed. For these people that are famous for a skill or craft, Cameo turns them into an Organ Grinder Monkey. Obviously if the celeb is doing it, nobody is forcing them, but the whole thing just feels so cheap and degrading.

Who ever would have thought you'd say "I'll pay you $500 to wish me a happy birthday"

All of these celebrities regularly take appearance fees to show up at nightclubs, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, etc. It's extremely common. You don't hear about most of them because they're private events.

Why do you consider this any more degrading than any other form of patronage? Why is paying a musician to wish someone happy birthday somehow more shameful than demanding they sing and dance for me when I show up to their concert? In both cases, the artist gets the funds to keep making their art and the audience gets to continue enjoying that art.

"I'm paying you $500 to engage in your art form as you see fit, in exchange I'd like to hang out and enjoy you play."

"I'm paying you $500 to sing Happy Birthday to a 12 year old child who has the musical appreciation of a deaf dog."

It's the difference between being asked to design and implement a system, and hammering nails into planks. One respects agency, one doesn't.

There are a lot of concerts that are demeaning to the artist too. I am reminded of this clip from a documentary on Katy Perry[1]. Her marriage was falling apart while she was on tour until eventually her husband asked for a divorce over a text message. She was left in tears backstage and had to force herself into a dress with pinwheels on her breasts and fake a smile for the thousands of tweens and teenagers in the audience. I have also been to a concert in which a band felt compelled to play their biggest hit to both open and close a show because that 3 minute song was the only reason a majority of the audience came to the show. I can't imagine either of those was a great situation for the artists.

Meanwhile Cameos can be incredibly meaningful for the people who receive them. They provide an intimate human connection to people they might otherwise have no chance of ever seeing in person. They also give the person fulfilling the Cameo complete control. They can be filled wherever or on whatever schedule they want. I would bet a lot of entertainers on Cameo are perfectly happy with the setup.

I don't think it is right to assume a feeling of morally superiority over the people who participate on either side of this service.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oB21JklYnQ

They provide an intimate human connection

But that's just it... It's not intimate. It just tricks us into feeling that way, but there is zero reciprocity.

Reciprocity is not a requirement for intimacy. These people are talking directly and exclusively to you. That is intimate.

Is it? So any two people speaking directly and exclusively to each other are 'intimate'?

I'm with the others in that Cameo seems like a fine platform for debasing and exploiting b-listers and past-their-primes. It's the 2020 version of game show or infomercial cameos.

There will always be a market's worth of people with enough vanity to think that the kind of service Cameo provides is morally sound. They are probably the same folks that keep the National Enquirer and Daily Mail afloat.

Let's not kid ourselves with fancy imagery about how good it makes someone feel or how beautiful it is that it satiates someone's desires. "I'm just building what people want" is the classic amoralist's cop-out.

Definition 2 of intimate: of a very personal or private nature.[1]

These video messages or both personal and private therefore they are intimate.

I don't know why disinterest in using this service is almost always coupled with condescension to the people who do use it. It isn't doing any harm to anyone. There are no negative externalities. Just let the people who are interested in the service have their fun.

[1] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate

I won't go so far as the other detractors and say that it's necessarily a debasement of a celebrity to get paid to record a scripted message. It's actually kind of a cool service, especially if there's a price point or agent contacts for commercial messages. In that regard it's not so different from ordering an inscription on a custom artisanal kitchen accessory.

But what I find sad is the commentary it makes on the state of humanity's collective emotional development if commercial celebrity endorsements and falsely personal birthday messages have so much more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives. Separating fiction from reality is one of the early lessons we teach children. It's not the mere existence of this service that is the problem, it's that it belies a deeper issue with culture in general.

> But what I find sad is the commentary it makes on the state of humanity's collective emotional development if commercial celebrity endorsements and falsely personal birthday messages have so much more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives.

This is what you're failing to understand. The celebrity messages don't have more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives. You don't pay for messages from people who are in your life because you already get a lot of contact with them for free.

But if you think paying $50 for a message from a celebrity is too much, that it overvalues celebrities relative to people who you actually have a meaningful connection with... just remember that people pay tens of thousands of dollars for (scam!) messages from people who were once important to them personally, and are now dead. The demonstrated value of the personal relationship is near-infinitely large compared to the celebrity pseudo-relationship.

If your son likes basketball, and you commission a painting of him playing against Lebron James, that lets him imagine himself being a part of that world. If you commission a birthday message to him from Lebron James... that lets him imagine himself being a part of that world. What's the difference?

>But what I find sad is the commentary it makes on the state of humanity's collective emotional development if commercial celebrity endorsements and falsely personal birthday messages have so much more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives. //

Yes, this. What we laud and prioritise often seems so hollow.

I think there's an assumption being made here about how snobbish or desperate artists are.

Many artists and celebrities actually get a great deal of joy and fulfillment out of making individual people feel special through a personalized experience. Realistically they just cannot do it for everyone. Using a service like this, they now can do it and you can compensate them for their time, so everyone wins.

If an artist feel like they're being disrespected or having to compromise on their artistry, they can always just reject the request, simple as that.

I definitely appreciate your sentiment, and that wasn't my intention with the initial comment, and, of course, nobody is ever forcing an artist to join Cameo.

I have no problem with an artist wanting to make a fan feel good. I do have a problem with a society that promotes celebrity for celebrity sake, and I believe as an extension of that, the true craft/gift of the artist/performer/etc is not what is being appreciated.

I suspect that we will arrive at a point where the value drops to near $0 when anyone can just go and guy a greeting/message from a celebrity.

The "celebrities" aren't being compelled to participate. Where is the lack of agency?

The problem is, no one will pay $500 to "hang out and enjoy you play."

I pay for several musicians on Patreon and even $5/month seems excessive to me, all the while I think this is just not a living for the musician when I see their subscriber count. And I'm probably one of the few that pays for this. It's a bad model even though I wish it wasn't.

But, there are a few people who will pay $500 to that musician for a personalized message.

The math is better with the latter. You just need a few people to do that to make a living. There is just not a way, despite Kevin Kelly's great article about 1000 fans, to make it work.

I bet most artists would argue that money in their bank account is worth much more than "respecting agency." Musicians have to be feeling a lot of pain right now with live venues shuttered indefinitely.

Sure, people have to eat.

But that's kinda a base thing to build a cultured society around. Can't we do better than that yet, what progress has humanity made?

Agency is what artists need to perform their cultural function in society. Sure there are demands for music and images that don't care for the cultural role of art; but most artists seem to want at least some agency, though the need to do bread-and-butter work (baseline earnings) is something that hits early in any artists career.

So I'm actually in a place much like you where I contribute $5 or so to a few different artists or personalities who I engage with.

However, I feel it's very worthwhile for me:

+ Most of them have some kind of discord or community where you can interact both with them and other fans, and contributing gets you special status or a special channel

+ Usually you get a few extra things that don't get released to other people, whether it's sitting in on a practice session or some media that didn't make the final cut

Admittedly, I am still ultimately paying for some kind of attention, though hopefully it's agency respecting attention and not treating an artist like a vending machine.

And yeah a bottom line matters, everyone has to eat to survive and pay their bills, but as long as you can do that most people will quickly choose a happier life over a more profitable one. Sure, you can do worse work and make more money (or the same money faster) but I don't think that's the tradeoff the majority want to make.

One of the personalities I contribute to has changed their thing a few times. They abandoned ASMR and switched to just videogame streaming, and they were pretty honest that it was going to be a part time thing because it wasn't paying the bills fully. Yet, they still kept their community, they still have the same fan base. and at this rate I've probably followed them for 3 or 4 years. They've gained the freedom to do the things they find interesting, instead of the things that make the community happy.

> but the whole thing just feels so cheap and degrading

What do you propose as an alternative?

These are mostly people who aren't getting work anymore. What dignified career do you imagine for them, when there are a million younger, cheaper entertainers to take their place?

It would be great if they all had college degrees and the ability to be hired in a stable white-collar job, but that's rarely an option after a life in entertainment.

Orrrrrr they realize it's just another way to entertain people and make them happy. If they didn't want to entertain, they probably wouldn't have chosen that career in the first place, now there are "micro-gigs" they can take too to get an extra level of personal-ness.

They choose to be on Cameo to do it. So who cares? They make it worth their time. LeBron might do it for say $50,000 and say that all of it goes to charity. That sounds good to me.

I think it is a good service and might actually feel good for the celebrity even outside of the money aspect. I used it to have a minor celebrity from my wife's favorite show wish her a happy birthday. She loved it. I would be interested to hear how a celebrity feels about doing that kind of stuff but I would think it feels good to make someone's day better.

Many celebrities have an "appearance fee" meaning they'll meet for a certain number of hours for whatever you pay for (within reason). So, for example, if you're rich enough you could get in touch with their agent and book your favourite celebrity for a lunch or dinner. This just takes it to a scale that wouldn't be possible before.

500 dollars for a 1 minute happy birthday? That's a cool 7.8m per year doing it "one hour" each day during the week.

Just in case anyone wondered why these celebs would "debase themselves" thus.

Yes, thank you. I hope to never see anyone I respect on that site.

B and C list celebs have been doing autograph signings and meet and greet for decades. Performers travel to cities in the middle of nowhere and stay there for hours before shuttling off to another location. I think it is a bit silly to single out quick video messages, that they sign up for and can set their own price for, as debasement.

I wouldn't pay $5,000 for a celebrity message but I paid $50 for an actor who played a minor Game of Thrones character for a birthday message for my dad (a GoT fan) that will be delivered along with a 3D printed brass polished Hand of the King pin. It's just a really fun way to create a personalized gift for someone close to me, which is important because I have a really hard time coming up with meaningful gifts - it's usually just easier to throw money at it, and the personalized celebrity message is more meaningful with the same amount of effort.

The specific service I used sends the money to the charity of the celebrity's choice (which they display before you buy) and no one will see the message except my family. I think the wedding example is just a little more public than how people normally use these things. This is the first time I've heard of them charging four figures but no surprise.

Would you mind naming the service you use? I struggle to think of good gifts in the post-stuff era and that sounds like a nice one to add to my toolbox.

I used https://www.celebvm.com/

At a glance, quite a few of the celebrities on this site are also on Cameo.

If you Google “parasocial relationships” you might find some interesting content.

I've brought this term up a handful of times before, but nobody I know personally feels the same way I do about this. I find this kind of thing incredibly strange, but it is just the norm for so many people.

Celebrity culture just makes no sense to me. They were in a movie and are now rich so now I have to care what they have for breakfast? It just seems so backward.

I think the idea is that the way we are wired it’s a pretty natural thing that happens when we are exposed to depictions of other people (real or fictional). One thing I read also suggested that the content we get from media figures is very conducive to this kind of bonding because they often share very intimate facts about themselves, they establish reciprocal relationships with their audience where the audience likes/subscribes, buys merch, etc.

Might be kind of like dopamine and variable reward cycles where technology is able to hijack a response that came to into existence in a very different environment.

So far most of what I’ve read indicates that parasocial relationships are viewed as benign or positive by mental health specialists because they can genuinely supply some of the social needs people have and contribute to positive personal resiliency, stuff like that.

Very interesting and weird and probably only more relevant as time goes on.

Humans are wired for reinforcing social hierarchies by proximity and repetition - to confer "status" via all sorts of methods which may or may not be grounded in anything "tangible" to health, longevity or knowledge.

Media and Celebrity in general hack this system for profit.

The root cause of all pathological behavior is your brain.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430590/

People tend to make negative associations with poverty.

To survive in social circles, we tend to mask such negative associations -- Because sometimes it does have genuine negative consequence, regardless if it is fair or logical. It comes from the same idea that certain topics aren't appropriate to discuss on first dates, with your extended family, with children present, etc.

So to guarantee social survivability, in this mindset, you must offer something that creates a positive association.

Lying is a risky way to create that association. It's social cheating, in a way. If you're convincing enough, your lie might as well be real, as far as your relationships are concerned, and you gain the social benefits of that; Intrigue, mystery, perceived power. But if you get caught, you are labelled as someone who will lie for these benefits.

Many of us can look at these consequences and say it isn't worth it -- Some of us look at those same consequences and say it is worth it. This doesn't make sense to you because you perceive the consequences as the former, not the latter.

Personalization of consumption is the final frontier for consumerist capitalist culture.

I certainly see that deepfakes will take us to a place where we can "choose the actors" to be compiled in to a film.

But that strikes me as potentially being the death of celebrity actors. If an actor's contribution can be downplayed in that way, then the actor's person becomes relatively unimportant. More akin to a puppeteer, still a vital role but the puppet takes the limelight somewhat.

I'm not sure Hollywood will choose this direction, it goes against their financial benefit I feel.

An anecdote: a good friend of mine just found out she's pregnant with her first child. She's a huge Harry Potter fan, and her favorite characters are the Weasley Twins.

For not-all-that-much money, I was able to get James and Oliver Phelps (the actors who played the twins in all 8 movies) to each record a separate video message (about 1 minute each) wishing her congratulations by name and wishing her and her baby well.

I made the two Cameo requests on a Friday night, and had both videos by Sunday morning. Both were warm, friendly, and seemed to be genuine and happy for her (obviously to the extent that they know her: "name is X, first-time mom, huge fan".

She was absolutely over-the-moon happy about receiving them.

This and other responses show where this service shines: as a gift to others. It's only sad if there's deception for money.

I think the key thing is knowing the "deep cuts" of your friend's fandom. You can get a lot of minor actors (one of whom is surely a recurring character on your partner's favorite under-appreciated TV show) for cheap.

But is it not deception (to ourselves) to believe that these celebrities somehow acknowledge and maybe even like us, when they required money to do so? (Never mind the concept of someone becoming more special than others by being good at pretending to be not themselves.) I realize I sound grumpy to many people but the whole thing seems like such a sham.

The thing is, without some sort of barrier, they would be completely swamped by the public trying to get them to record these, and then would be practically forced to stop doing it.

They will be forced to stop when it becomes more popular anyways, unless some sort of lottery systems gets introduced or fees get bumped up into a $1000 range. But even then I think most will pull out of it after a while, especially if it gets popular, hard to imagine it is an exciting activity to do hundreds of such video messages every day.

They could add a "lottery" element to it. A less evil implementation of that would be to ask the performer what size stack they want and just keep a list of the latest n requests (or requests up to m days old). Automate a reply "sorry you weren't able to get a message from $celeb, blah". You'd need heavy filtering to avoid abuse (automated re-requests).

It’s not a sham to me. a celebrity says your name and wishes you a happy day, and someone paid them to do so. It’s fun - That’s all that’s to it.

You must not like places where the wait staff show off their bodies and flirt for tips. That's basically the same thing but cheaper and more sexual.

Another use case, for my daughters first birthday I had a Elmo impersonator (this guy was spot on, you could not tell the difference) make a video with a puppet for her. It was a private thing we shared together not something I publicly shared but her face lit up when "Elmo" said her name and wished her a happy birthday. It's weird to do this for yourself, however it makes a thoughtful gift under the right conditions.

> Why is it impressive, to a large proportion of the population, rather than just sad and wasteful (as it appears to me).

Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia on humans, which triggers the release of endorphins which targets the pleasure center of the brain.

There are so many dimensions a service like this can be used in powerful (and postive) ways.

My father turns 73 next week how great would it be for me to send him a personalized recording of song from a famous Tamil musician? That would be $50 better spent than the $50 wireless food thermometer I got him instead.

Or for my soon to be 5 year old son, have one of the voice actors from his favorite tv shows, record him a personalized birthday greeting? Better than $50 worth of toys that he will forget about in a years time.

> This seems like the social equivalent of when a brand becomes well known for having high-quality goods -- they then put their logo on lots-and-lots of super-low quality goods that people then buy to pretend they have high-quality goods.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this suggests an alternate form of IPO is being reinvented, where the currency of issue was branded social capital, and actual cash is a kind of leveraged instrument instead of the primary medium of exchange.

I also feel like this might be a well known pattern in behavioral economics and I just don't know the proper name for it.

"social proof" is what you're looking for.

> Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.

Difference in taste based on class-related norms & values, mostly, is what I'd say you're missing. Can make a thing really impressive/desirable to one group of people, and simultaneously gauche/disgusting to another.

> Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.

Different people have different tastes. Relax and let them enjoy what they enjoy.

Comments like this often appear to be the exact sort of status-seeking they claim to hate. "I don't even own a TV," etc.

I really don't think the logical leap between "people like [person]" to "people think it's cute to pay a couple hundred bucks to get a unique message for someone from them."

And then if you want to get into "but some people spend thousands..." - then we're still just criticizing the extremes of the market, and not so much the concept. Like making a show of freaking out about the fact that some people pay $LOTS for a bottle of alcohol, vs the person who claims they can't understand why others would enjoy alcohol in the first place.

I can't speak for the commentor that you're replying to, but I also found the whole "only $5,000" point to be a hard to identify with. I've personally never had $5,000 at one time in my entire life, let alone $5,000 to spend on a short video. For me (and quite a few people that I know) that would literally be life changing money, so it's difficult to grasp.

I don't personally think the commentor was "making a show" with his question. In fact, if expressing opinions on this topic counts as "status seeking", wouldn't your defense of this business model count as the exact same thing you're decrying?

By my understanding of what you've just said, (paraphrasing here) "I can't imagine spending money on this" seeks to establish a status, but "I do not have a problem with people spending money on this" does not seek to establish a status. The way I read it, if "status-seeking" is at issue, the main difference is between the status you attempt to seek vs the status you perceive the other person to be seeking, not an indictment of the practice as a whole.

Edit: typo

That was a bit of joke on my part with the 5k dollars. But who knows, people might just be willing to pay that if it makes their spouse/child/parent a little bit more happier or give them some memory they’ll cherish. But rates on the app range depending on the status of the celeb, and the lowest I believe is 25-30 dollars.

It's still quite the leap to me. I'd think most people who like another person would want a genuine social connection with that person if they want anything at all. I'd think that most people who observe a social connection lose respect for it when it's revealed to be highly transactional.

I'm criticizing the very concept of paying something of material value for a social connection, something that society looks down upon in general. When the matter is important, we call it "corruption" and "bribery". When it's not, we call it "sucking up", "selling out", "prostitution/escort-service", "fake".

The point is, paying for a social connection makes it fake. And no one likes a faker.

I kind of agree with some of your points (I wouldn’t pay for this service and if someone paid so I’d get a message I’d find it hard to be appreciative) but I also feel it depends on penetration. After a while this deviance from the norm becomes normalized and accepted and it becomes like paying someone to prepare coffee for you. It doesn’t feel icky.

You probably don't like wrestling either? It's fake.

I used to dislike it (and again don't care for it today), but as a youngster, when I expressed disinterest due to its phoniness, a friend pointed out that... "so what?"

Yeah, it's fake. So are movies and TV shows. It's just for fun, and it's not a big deal. People suspend disbelief all the time. When you choose not to, the ones who do always look pretty silly.

Let's break down the "people like [person]" premise a little - people like the character a person played in a constructed role. Then they think they know the person.

Your bottle of alcohol analogy is not good. It's more like you pay for a bottle of water with a Grey Goose label freshly stuck on and everyone pretends it's alcohol and pretends you can't see the glue on the label is fresh. People understand getting drunk.

Some people buy cheap stuff with expensive labels. I don't find that healthy for society.

If you have tons of money and aren't obsessive about your spending, then this is a fun and funny way to spend some cash and entertain your friends.

If you're taking out loans and piling up credit card debt so the Soup Nazi can wish you a scripted "happy birthday", you may have a problem.

It reminds me of the episode of Community where Abed kept compulsively hiring celebrity look-a-likes for his own entertainment.

EDIT: After browsing the site, I totally see the appeal. Most of the actors cost around $100 or less and there are pages full of familiar faces, including some personal favorites. There is a 50% chance I end up buying this as a gift for someone!

This is an easy and somewhat scalable way for celebrities to provide a virtual "meet & greet" experience. It's like people who go to a comic-con and pay for autographs and a picture of their favorite star. This is probably going to take off even more in the Covid era.

Yes, I see how it works, I question really whether it's healthy.

People will even get a picture with a celebrity lookalike, which is like a third-level lie. Then other people are a little "impressed" (or that might be the fourth level of lie).

It's all v. strange to me.

I never got celebrity stuff either. I mean I guess I think Elon Musk is really cool, but I still realize he's a person and wouldn't want him to record a birthday greeting for me.

So somebody I think is a good actor, like Keanu Reeves says "Happy Birthday, Narrator!" in a video. All I can think of is "How much did he get paid or that?" A normal person sees Keanu and they recall how cool he was in The Matrix, the emotions of admiration overwhelm them and "Happy Birthday, Normal Person!" overwhelms them with joy. Is this what happens, Normal People?

I guess we just have a different psychological makeup than most people. It's probably that emotions don't easily transfer from other people, especially in recorded media. It's probably evolutionary to prevent a few mutants from going along with the crowd.

I am curious what you think is valuable use of spending money... I am sure whatever you say, I could describe it in such a way that it sounds vacuous and wasteful.

Instead of focusing on why you think it is ridiculous, maybe try to think of why it wouldn't be. You might understand others better.

> What's the root cause of this pathological behaviour

Our monkey brains are hardwired to think that it's vitally important to keep track of what the high status monkeys are doing?

I'm with you. poor(er) people paying rich(er) celebs for the satisfaction of getting a 30 second shoutout sounds extremely dystopian.

>Is it something about audio-visual media that we can't use it for entertainment without our brains inadvertently treating characters as part of our social circles; then we fail at recognising actors as not being their characters; ...?

Reminded me of a passage in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"They became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears of affliction had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."

The professionalism of the celebs varies widely. Some can turn a 50 word prompt into a four minute, fun, natural video, others read instructions verbatim or fail to read the instructions at all

Yeah the couple’s video was about a minute long, and was quite a heartfelt message wishing them congrats and sending well wishes.

Candidate for least professional one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORpBAIB9j64

Oh, that's a hard video to do. Johnny Depp plays such deep characters that it often takes me until the middle of the movie before I realize it's him.

What kind of character can he be to make a PSA?

Yeah, I've seen a few. Some just read your words staring straight into the camera and some have fun with it.

The last one I saw, my friend said, "please wish my husband a happy father's day". She sent it to the actor who plays his favorite character on his favorite show.

The actor turned that prompt into a 30 second in-character monologue that was just brilliant. It was totally worth the cost just for the entertainment value to both him and the rest of us (she shared it on Facebook for us).

The reason it looks natural is because it's new. If it gets popular, it'll be commodified and it'll be the same "radio station bumper" sound you've always heard. As your wedding DJs plays the Brad Pitt, "I heartily congratulate you on your celebration or achievement. Congratulations[static] Wanda and Billy" generic message they sit down once a month to hammer out 300 of.

I guess it will be a mark of status among celebrities that one hasn't had to do this.

> Imagine Lebron wishing your kid happy birthday

This makes sense if the service is relatively unknown on small. But if Lebron is mass-producing birthday wishes, and if everybody knows he's mass-producing birthday wishes, then wouldn't the coolness actor diminish somewhat?

Lebron would likely charge $2k or more per message so not everyone would have access to that.

I don't think Lebron rolls out of bed in the morning for anything less than 10k. This is just beneath him, frankly.

Think of it this way. To rake in 4 million, Lebron would need to do two thousand (!) Cameo videos, each costing $2,000.

Or he could just sign on the dotted line for some hotel in Abu Dhabi that his agent brings him, show up at a shoot, agree to let them use his name and likeness, maybe show up at an event, and make that much in a week.

And he can lock down the terms of the contract - he doesn't have to worry about 1 of those 2000 customers trying to get get $4,000,000 of endorsement value out of it.

Past a certain point, this becomes a dumb deal. If you're A list there's not enough money, and too much reputational risk.

>This makes sense if the service is relatively unknown on small.

Or does it? The kid wouldn't know Lebron had no idea he existed until he got the cash and the script, and would not remember the day after. An adult should.

"We paid this guy to wish you a happy birthday". How awesome is that.

I rather run an open source AI algorithm to generate a celebrity's face and voice for free to deliver the message.

Someone on here could probably whip something up like that on a weekend and start charging money. Those AI generated fake Obama videos as an example. Can’t imagine it’s too hard to make it say “Happy birthday so-and-so”. Although can already see the lawsuits if someone is making money off the likeness and image of a celeb without permission.

I'm still waiting for someone to actually run this as a business. It seems like a pretty obvious use case I wonder why we haven't seen it yet

This is so cringeworthy though

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