Cameo Is Weirder Than Anyone Expected

Pretend for a moment that your lifelong dream is to pay $400 for a 16-second video of the Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil mispronouncing the name of your charitable organization while standing in front of a Gulfstream IV. Or to exchange $150 for blurry footage of the disgraced actor Tom Sizemore comparing his innumerable career failures to your close friend’s recent cancer diagnosis. Five years ago, this would have been an impossibility. Today, thanks to Cameo, your dream is finally within reach. Oh, by the way, three more people ordered Cameos from Sizemore while you were reading this, so his price went up to $175.

Cameo is a 4-year-old videogram service that was started by three friends who wanted a way to connect regular, everyday people (bad!) to famous people (good!). Fans pay anywhere from roughly $1 to $5,000 for a roughly one- to 5,000-second (the two amounts