good ideas

Why Not Communicate With Your Friends Solely Through Celebrities?

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Like anyone without access to a bottomless well of money, I frequently find myself thinking about the funny things I would do if I were one day granted access to a bottomless well of money. (This is better than other things you can spend time thinking about, you must admit.)

Do you think about this? For example, I would commission large-format oil paintings of my dog to give to family members as cumbersome, unwanted gifts. And I’d buy all of my co-workers handsome jean jackets — very stylish, particularly considering the ornate embroidery on the back that would read: “KELLY!” And definitely (this is a great idea I had recently) I would communicate with friends as often as possible through the celebrity video shout-out service Cameo.

Wouldn’t you, now that you’ve heard the idea?

Cameo, as you may know, is a service through which you can hire varying levels of celebrity to say things to friends and loved ones, in videos made with the celebrity’s front-facing cell-phone camera. You can get them to say things like, “Happy graduation, Susan!” or “Your mama loves you, Susan, happy birthday!” or “Join the DSA, comrades!” The price-per-video is relative to the height of the person’s celebrity (Brooke Hogan, daughter of Hulk Hogan, is $50; Adrian Grenier is $1,000) and it seems like a great job. I wish I could do it. It’s your girl Kelly from the-cut-dot-com wishing you a very Merry Christmas. It’s not about the pasta, as James Kennedy would say! I love you! ($75.)

Anyway, this is an idea for anyone out there with a bottomless well of money. (Also you may give me any amount of money you wish, to show your appreciation for this idea.) The idea is: Hire celebrities from Cameo to say things for you all the time, for the purposes of normal communication with friends.

I think this would be a very good gag. At first your friends would think it was funny: Ha-ha, Jen hired Rebecca Black to tell us she was going to be late for the party. What a novel use of Cameo! And then it would become weird: Ha-ha … uhh … why is Jen still sending these? Why can’t she just ask us if we want to see Vice this weekend herself, instead of getting Sean Astin to do it? Is she okay? Then, once it is cemented as your “thing,” it would become funny again: Omg, of COURSE Jen got Eagles running back Corey Clement to ask us how our day is going! Ha-ha, omg, I love her, she’s so funny.

The only problem is that it sometimes takes a few days for the celebrities to record the video, so on-demand purchasing — to tell someone you’re running late, etc. — would be impossible. But this could be solved by thinking ahead. Eventually, you’re going to be running late. Why not purchase a video from Ben Higgins explaining your momentary absence in advance? “Hey, this is Ben Higgins from The Bachelor season 20. Your friend Carla is gonna be about ten minutes late. I certainly don’t give the MTA my rose, ha!” Then you can just keep it for when you’re running late.

It is just as likely that you’re going to, eventually, be running on time. In this case you could get someone like Tommy Lee to say, “Hey, Leah! It’s Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe. Just wanted to let you know Lisa is running on time. She’ll be there when you guys agreed to be there, rock on!”

Here are some other things you can hire celebrities to say for you, if you have a lot of money and are interested in this idea:

• You can get Perez Hilton to ask if your girlfriend wants to order take out and, if so, what kind?

• You can see, via Hal Sparks, if your friend thinks you should start watching The Sopranos.

• You can have James White tell your mom that you’ll give her a call this weekend, maybe Sunday afternoon?

• In a very appropriate move, you can hire Scheana Shay to say to your friend, “Did you see the new Vanderpump Rules? No spoilers because I haven’t.”

• You can have Drake Bell say to your group chat, “Did you guys hear the gossip about Patrick?”

Ideally, if you’re a bottomless-well-of-money sort of person, this idea will catch on in your bottomless-well-of-money friend group and for a period you’ll all communicate with each other exclusively through Cameos. It would take a lot of time to acquire the videos for each person’s response to whatever the conversation is, but, in that way, it would sort of be like letter writing.

And wouldn’t that be nice?

Why Not Communicate With Your Friends Through Celebrities?