Why Cameo is the scariest thing on the internet

This is life in 2019

Charlie Sheen.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Jason Merritt/Getty Images, AndreyPopov/iStock, StudioM1/iStock, MicrovOne/iStock)

If you want to feel like you're old enough to be, well, the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, go to Cameo.com and see how many of the names you recognize under the "Browse Our Talent" heading.

Cameo is a website created in 2017 by Steven Galanis and Martin Blencowe, a former NFL agent and film producer, where people spend anywhere from $9 to $2500 to have celebrities — I use this word in the broadest possible sense — make shareable content for them. Galanis got the idea after Blencowe asked one of his clients, the defensive back Cassius Marsh, to make a short video for a friend. "The feedback that Martin had got from Brandon was literally like, 'This is the best gift I've ever got.' And it kind of made us think, if you're not that person's agent or you don't know their agent or you don't run into them in real time, it's impossible to get something like that. So at that point we started dreaming up this marketplace," Galanis told the Chicago Tribune last year.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.