George Santos, Ziwe, and the Insatiable Internet Content Machine

About 15 minutes into her interview with disgraced former Long Island congressman George Santos, comedian Ziwe Fumudoh asked a question on a lot of people’s minds lately: “What can we do to get you to go away?”

Santos, smirking with his hands and legs both gently folded, responded with a clarity that was otherwise absent throughout much of the sit-down. “Stop inviting me to your gigs,” he said. Reaching for an awkward moment that has become expected of her, Fumudoh, who goes by Ziwe professionally, then asked a follow-up for clarification, “The lesson is to stop inviting you places?”

“But you can’t,” he replied, “‘cause people want the content.”

The interview came to pass the same way many of Ziwe’s interviews do: With a public tweet in which she asked him to come on, adding that he would be an “iconic guest.” The tweet received 29,000 likes, a solid number, but one bested by Santos’ own reply: “Let’s do it,” which received 36,000 likes.

Ziwe’s satirical interviews have become a kind of rite of passage for celebrities and the recently canceled—celebrity chef Alison Roman and accused scammer and general internet person Caroline Calloway come to mind—a forum for the sort of self-flagellation that can show one has become in on the joke.

Santos’ interview was no different, and it made for good copy, or content, depending on your medium of choice. Under duress, he recited Nicki Minaj lyrics. He admitted he didn’t know who James Baldwin and Harvey Milk were (jury’s out on his familiarity with Marsha P. Johnson). He expressed his admiration for Rosa Parks, which allowed Ziwe to quip: “How else are you like Rosa Parks?”

But maybe the joke is on all of us. Since he was expelled from the House of Representatives earlier this month after a frankly impressive series of fabrications, lies, and deceitful activity that have earned him labels ranging from “The Fabulist” to “a walking campaign-finance violation,” Santos has transformed from a congressman into nothing more than content, an ethereal internet slush that lives in our broken brains.

Santos drives clicks. He sells books. He gets eyeballs, and our inability to look away has gifted him with a power he has been able to wield with a disconcerting self-awareness. Santos rose to political power through lies. That power is gone now, but he has retained the spotlight through a continued manipulation of the media that shows just how willing we are to be spun for a laugh.

Santos, in his currently distilled form, makes us feel better about ourselves, in the same way that drunk reality TV stars do when they throw a drink in a friend’s face, and he knows it. His (very serious) alleged crimes—ranging from wire fraud to aggravated identity theft—already appear to be fading in the political memory with every comedy show appearance and Cameo video, a small but unambiguously fabulous victory for him.

Santos’ political career is over, but his content career could well just be beginning. He understands the incentives at play. So long as he talks, the internet aggregators will transcribe his words. Everything is copy, and Santos’ copy is easily transformed into a quick fix of digital dopamine.

The interview inarguably served Ziwe well. It was the first video posted to her YouTube account in three years, and, more critically, the first since Showtime canceled the television version of her show earlier this year. As of publication, it has already been viewed more than 800,000 times since its release on Monday, a number that doesn’t reflect its total reach throughout the social web. If it was fun for Santos, it was more critical than that to Ziwe. On her Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, her bios all now identically instruct people to “watch my interview with george santos now,” a link nearby.

The business of these interviews is clear as day: bring on the content machine, pull out words, clip video, edit, and advertise. This is not to say that Ziwe is the problem. She is playing according to the incentives in front of her, and perhaps further exposed Santos as a scammer for the three remaining people who still needed to be convinced.

The problem is the insatiable content machine, and the people like Santos who have figured out how to manipulate and otherwise exploit it, if not for personal gain, then to muddy the waters—to make you hear the name George Santos and laugh, not shudder.