With a strikingly straight face, Nigel Farage, the MP for Clacton and leader of the far-right Reform UK Party, intones into the camera:

“This is Nigel Farage, wishing you a big chungus. Congratulations for being the top G skibidi alpha male. We all promise to Hawk Tuah on your bussy as it claps. And this message, James, is sponsored by Smathie, Mathie, Finn and Mo Lester.”

This inane Cameo message—disseminated across TikTok and other social media platforms—is brought to you by the man whose party is surging ahead: according to a recent poll by The Times, support for Reform UK is 10 percent ahead of the ruling Labour Party. And for $105 per video, Farage has proven himself willing to say almost anything that his growing online fanbase submits. This includes a famous mishap of him being tricked into saying “Up the ‘Ra,” and therefore unwittingly using a favored slogan of the Irish Republican Army.

Farage has earned $189,000 on Cameo, a video platform that enables customers to pay celebrities for personal messages, proving that there is a formidable audience for this nonsense. He has around 200 hours of time logged on the platform, grasping for the small change and approval of Gens Z and Alpha.

Other controversial politicians have found a safe space with Cameo, including former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. At the height of the post-Brexit fallout, Bercow wielded bi-partisan respect for his ability to peremptorily mediate fiery parliamentary debates. Now he has been reduced to yelling his trademark “Order!” call at anyone willing to cough up $98 for the honor.

One must acknowledge the effectiveness of this new method of political campaigning. Political social media—just like all scroll-heavy social media—has been mobilized to trigger dopamine and anger responses, making us thoughtlessly sensitive while simultaneously undermining our decision-making capacities.

There’s a format to it, as well: that of the streamer. Sitting on a chair in one's home or office, the speaker stares straight into the camera of a smartphone, telling us how they feel about something, what they know about something, or, in this case, what they’ve been paid to say about anything. It turns out, this is the way people these days are increasingly consuming their news.

In the past decade, TV, print and even online news sites have been trending downward in popularity. On the upswing are social and video networks. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, the growth in this medium of news consumption is up by 27 percent since 2013.

But risks abound. For one, it is completely uncurated. The audience receives their information straight from the horse’s mouth, and not mediated by a professional class of wonkish editors. This, of course, opens the possibility for misinformation. But what happens when the talking heads speaking into the cameras aren’t even misinforming, but rather wishing some guy named Brandon a “happy birth-gay”? And this line is from Farage, a man who could possibly be the UK’s next prime minister.

The generations most receptive to this product will likely be of voting age come next General Election in 2029. As pathetic as Farage’s antics can appear, crude behaviour and shamelessness have propelled US elected officials in recent years. So why not this berk?