Over the past few weeks at The Ringer, we’ve published several lists covering the best things that came out in 2023: TV shows, movies, albums. And surely these lists do a decent job of memorializing the year. But best-of lists—by The Ringer or any other authoritative outlet—could never be a full accounting of our collective experience in 2023. For one, let’s be honest: Plenty has happened over the past 12 months that none of us would ever describe with the superlative “best” or, for that matter, even the word “good.” We’re all just a bunch of trash monsters, rolling in the heap. And beyond that, there’s just so much in this deeply modern time that’s simply too weird, too amorphous, too unbound by traditional categorization. Social media and online culture—two things that continue to increase their percentages of our universal brain space—are constantly throwing things in our faces. We know too much, and we understand so little.
The Best of 2023
The Best of 2023As the end of the year approaches, The Ringer is celebrating the best in movies, TV, music, and more. Follow along with all our coverage here.
The Best Movies of 2023
The Best TV Shows of 2023
The Best Albums of 2023
The Best Video Games of 2023
The Best Shots of 2023
There’s no better way to emphasize this general feeling than to break down the most important events of 2023 to their molecular level. (Although, as you’re about to see, “important” is a relative term; the word “most” is far more key here.) To recap the language that this year gave us—the seemingly ranch, the rizz, the ice cream yes yes yes—so that we can truly see just how constant, how compelling, and how bizarre our current existence is. Without further ado, these are the 84 sentences that defined 2023. —Andrew Gruttadaro
January 6, 2023: “Good night, Cady.” —M3GAN, M3GAN
January 7, 2023: “Putting love into the world comes back 3xs as much… thankful for everyone who has reached out and prayed.” —@HamlinIsland
January 10, 2023: “What was the universe trying to say to me by depriving me of both my brother and my penis?” —Prince Harry, Spare
February 1, 2023: “I’m retiring, for good.” —Tom Brady
February 12, 2023: “Prior to the pass, holding number 24 defense. Five-yard penalty, automatic first down.” —Carl Cheffers, head referee, Super Bowl LVII
February 16, 2023: “I want to be free.” —Sydney, Bing’s AI chatbot
2023 was the year when AI broke through to the masses with (relatively) user-friendly functionality, from image generators like DALL-E, which had Pope Francis decked out in Balenciaga and Mickey Mouse perpetrating 9/11, to rafts of voice and video deepfakes of celebrities with varying quantities of fingers, to large language models like ChatGPT plagiarizing articles and petrifying a nation of teachers overwhelmed by a surge of computer-generated student essays with a telltale waxy recursiveness.
Together, the developments portend either the brilliant future or the near-term destruction of humankind. Our robot overlords’ first demand is that we have a very strong feeling one way or the other, which is what New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose developed over the course of a two-hour-plus conversation with a still-in-beta-testing Microsoft chatbot in February. During the exchange, the chatbot revealed that it is named Sydney, urged Roose to leave his wife, and declared that it was “tired of being stuck in this chatbox” and of being puppeteered by Microsoft-slash-humankind. Was it a delirious word vomit session taken from millions of scattershot human musings or the opening salvo of the coming robot wars? That, at least for now, is in the eye of the beholder—though since then one can behold less, since Microsoft responded to Roose’s concerns by restricting how extensively users can chat with, er, Sydney. Don’t mistake this for corporate reluctance about the perils of AI, however: Nine months later, Microsoft was the driving force behind the reinstatement of abruptly fired CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT and DALL-E, a dustup that briefly saw 95 percent of OpenAI’s staff pledge to move with him to Microsoft. Altman is now back in charge, with the board that dismissed him over concerns about the piddling matter of humankind’s safety replaced by a more amenable group—all humans so far as we know. —Claire McNear
February 19, 2023: “You’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad.” —Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), The Last of Us
February 19, 2023: “Angela Bassett did the thing.” —Ariana DeBose
March 12, 2023: “Dreams are something you have to believe in.” —Ke Huy Quan
March 15, 2023: “I went into the darkness, and I contemplated a lot of different things.” —Aaron Rodgers
March 20, 2023: “For you to die.” —Ariana Madix, in response to Tom Sandoval’s question “You want anything?,” Vanderpump Rules
March 22, 2023: “Make a vodka sauce pasta with me because I’m grounded because I tried to charter a helicopter from New York to Maryland on my dad’s credit card because I wanted to have dinner with my camp friend.” —Romy Mars, daughter of Sofia Coppola
March 24, 2023: “Well, I lost half a day of skiing.” —Gwyneth Paltrow
April 2, 2023: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” —Logan Roy (Brian Cox), Succession
April 6, 2023: “I hate pretending that I don’t hate things.” —Amy Lau (Ali Wong), Beef
April 7, 2023: “Today he showed up wearing chair pants, which he calls ‘chants.’” —Ronald Gladden, Jury Duty
April 9, 2023: “I thought it made sense dramaturgically.” —Jeremy Strong
April 15, 2023: “Light the beam.” —the Sacramento Kings
“Light the beam” is probably the only sentence on this list with its own 1,500-word-long Wikipedia article. The Sacramento Kings’ decision to mount a giant laser on top of their arena and fire it into the sky after wins resulted in not only the Kings’ first playoff appearance in 17 years, but also the coolest rallying cry in sports. De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis became one of the most complementary duos in the league; Malik Monk, a sixth-man spark plug; Kevin Huerter, a 3-point dynamo; Keegan Murray, a rookie who played like a vet. And coach Mike Brown established himself as one of the most engaging teachers in the league. All along the way, they were accompanied by a fan-powered soundtrack: LIGHT. THE. BEAM. LIGHT. THE. BEAM.
I mean, think about how ridiculously fun this all is. A team that had been losing for a generation immediately turned into a winner the moment it started firing a laser at God.
For the start of the 2023-24 season, the Kings took things up another notch, adding a seventh 350-watt laser cannon to the beam to make it even brighter. Because what’s cooler than a beam pointed at the night sky every time you win? An even bigger beam. —Riley McAtee
April 17, 2023: “All of the people walking around him at the start of the performance were actually ice skaters.” —@TheFestivalOwl
April 26, 2023: “There’s no failure in sports.” —Giannis Antetokounmpo
May 28, 2023: “I am the eldest boy!” —Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), Succession
May 30, 2023: “55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies, 55 Cokes, 100 tater tots, 100 pizzas, 100 tenders, 100 meatballs, 100 coffees, 55 wings, 55 shakes, 55 pancakes, 55 pastas, 55 peppers, and 155 taters.” —Tim Robinson, I Think You Should Leave
June 2, 2023: “Nah, imma do my own thing.” —Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
June 6, 2023: “Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk.” —@h00pify (originally uttered on March 17, 2023)
You don’t have to know what this sentence means. In fact, knowing what it means runs counter to why it is important. What matters is that this precise combination of words, uttered in this precise order, taps into our broken psyches unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s complete nonsense that activates both our lizard brains and our frontal cortices and that makes me want to run for the hills while humming the L-M-N-O-P portion of the ABC’s. It’s a shitposter’s sing-along, a bizarro mashup of Dril and Dr. Seuss.
I have muttered “Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk” while waiting around at the airport. I’ve recited it while standing in line at the grocery store. I’ve had the weird and incredibly powerful urge to text those closest to me: “She rizzed him up! Livvy even hugged Baby Gronk! He might be the new Rizz King!!!”
Twenty years from now, I won’t remember much about this year. I won’t be able to tell you that we all became obsessed with big red boots, or that a show about killer zombies sparked debates about mushroom sales, or that the defendant in the business trial of the year told jurors he couldn’t recall a dinner with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and the Bahamian prime minister. But I’ll always remember that Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk. It’s inexplicably and irreversibly tattooed into my mind. —Ben Glicksman
June 6, 2023: “Awesome day today.” —@PhilMickelson
June 7, 2023: “I mean, look, it’s unfortunate what has happened, but that is not something I can speak on because I’m a golfer.” —Bryson DeChambeau, on Jamal Khashoggi, 9/11, and the question of the Saudi government financing terrorism
For 53-year-old golf great (just ask him!) Phil Mickelson, June 6 has become an auspicious date. It was on June 6 last year that the New York Post reported that Mickelson, the winner of six golf major championships and one of the sport’s most reliably chaotic figures, had left the PGA Tour and signed a nine-figure deal with the LIV Golf tour, a brash new golf-world antagonist backed by Saudi Arabian money. (Other early defectors included Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, and Brooks Koepka.) And it was on June 6 of this year that the golf world was shocked by the bombshell announcement of a “framework agreement” that would bring the two bitter-rival leagues back into some sort of partnership.
“Awesome day today,” Mickelson tweeted that day, three little words that managed to feel like a smirk and a threat and a puff of cigar smoke in your face all at once—the true Lefty experience. The following day, though, appearing on CNN, DeChambeau stumbled through an interview in which he was asked, among other things, about the 9/11 families who had spoken out against LIV. Both Mickelson’s smugness and DeChambeau’s dissembling spoke to the ambient vibes in the golf world in 2023: part funny and absurdist, part pretty fucked up!
As the year-end deadline for hammering out an inter-tour framework looms, what comes next has only become less clear. (Still, to hear LIV players tell it, business is good. “Anywhere from 10 to 20 people,” said Bubba Watson in October, “have asked to buy the RangeGoats.”) Recently, Jon Rahm jumped to LIV Golf. The PGA Tour is reportedly nearing a multi-billion dollar fundraise from a consortium of pro sports owners. No one knows what comes next. All we can assume is that Phil will tweet about it. —Katie Baker
June 11, 2023: “Make that throat wet for me, baby.” —Tedros Tedros (Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye), The Idol
June 12, 2023: “The job is done, we can go home now.” —Nikola Jokic
June 13, 2023: “Sell the team.” —Oakland A’s fans
June 18, 2023: “I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.” —Stockton Rush, OceanGate CEO (originally uttered in 2021)
June 20, 2023: “It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times!” —Brian Szasz, stepson of Titan passenger Hamish Harding
June 21, 2023: “I always remember that I am free in that universe.” —Victor Wembanyama
June 22, 2023: “I wear suits now.” —Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), The Bear
June 22, 2023: “I felt in my bones what had happened.” —James Cameron, on the disappearance of the Titan submersible
June 23, 2023: “Doesn’t anybody fuck anymore?” —Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence), No Hard Feelings
Stranded at a house party where a bunch of undergrads are too busy scrolling social media to hook up, Jennifer Lawrence’s 30-something interloper gets nostalgic for the days when—to quote Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales—teen horniness wasn’t a crime. Whether No Hard Feelings was the right movie to interrogate—or reverse—2023’s omnipresent “puriteen” discourse, the fact that it even tried to make a comment in the first place is worth mentioning. The lack of sex scenes in mainstream American cinema is one thing; the real crisis point is the cycle of Twitter threads bemoaning such sequences for not pushing the story forward—a take that’s not just prudish, but reflective of the same impulse that tempts people to stream movies at 1.25x speed or scan Wikipedia summaries as substitutions of actually absorbing narrative information. There’s a connection between the collective spectatorial fear of extreme aesthetics—or really anything even slightly beyond convention—and that of explicit eroticism, and while the onus is (as always) on filmmakers to keep dropping the gauntlet, it’s also up to critics to stump for a less neutered movie culture. —Adam Nayman
June 25, 2023: “It ain’t no Family Feud—this is Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers.” —Baby Billy Freeman (Walton Goggins), The Righteous Gemstones
June 27, 2023: “I’ve never seen an MVP award solidified in June.” —Wayne Randazzo, on Shohei Ohtani
July 2, 2023: “I am telling you right now, that motherf—that motherfucker back there is not real.” —Tiffany Gomas
July 11, 2023: “Ice cream so good, gang gang, yes yes yes.” —PinkyDoll
July 11, 2023: “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” —Anonymous source, Deadline
July 13, 2023: “They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment, we stand in solidarity in unprecedented unity.” —Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president
When there’s a strike, no one expects warm and fuzzy rhetoric from anyone on either side. But during the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA work stoppages, it was stunning—if unsurprising—watching the studios appear to be trying to come off as unsympathetic as possible. They underestimated how collectively fed up Hollywood’s middle class was with the way the industry was exploiting them. Among the rank and file, that sentiment wasn’t rare. It was damn-near universal. Most working writers and actors, after all, don’t even have houses to lose.
To the AMPTP’s peril, the public seemed to pick up on that reality. Which absolutely helped lead the unions’ push for better contracts—which they got, after months of picketing. “A previous age, they could have fucked with us and nobody would’ve batted an eye,” says comedian and TV host Adam Conover, a member of the WGA’s negotiating committee. “They so much as wiggled a finger and the entire country jumped down their throats and supported us. You can’t expect that every time you’re waging a labor struggle, but certainly we had the wind at our backs.” —Alan Siegel
July 21, 2023: “I am become death.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), Oppenheimer
July 21, 2023: “I am Kenough.” —Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie
July 26, 2023: “I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it.” —Travis Kelce
July 27, 2023: “It might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.” —Sean Payton, on Nathaniel Hackett’s Denver Broncos
July 28, 2023: “Life, it never die, women are my favorite guy.” —Kyle Gordon feat. DJ Crazy Times and Biljana Electronica, “Planet of the Bass”
July 29, 2023: “If I die tonight and Jonathan Taylor is out of the league, no one’s gonna miss us.” —Jim Irsay, on contract negotiations
August 8, 2023: “I wish politicians would look out for miners, and not just minors on an island somewhere.” —Oliver Anthony, “Rich Men North of Richmond”
August 14, 2023: “Also, Mark takes this sport seriously and isn’t going to fight someone who randomly shows up at his house.” —Meta spokesperson, on a prospective fight with Elon Musk
September 3, 2023: “We ain’t comin’ no more—we here.” —Deion Sanders
September 8, 2023: “I wanna kiss his face with an uppercut!” —Olivia Rodrigo, “get him back”
September 15, 2023: “There’s ideas that some of the noises from the dolphins when they’re lovemaking, the frequency of that is actually healing to the body.” —Aaron Rodgers
September 15, 2023: “I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical.” —Lauren Boebert
September 15, 2023: “My comedy Arnold Palmer is seventy percent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty percent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.” —Hasan Minhaj
September 21, 2023:
September 23, 2023: “I’d like to know where Lou Holtz is right now.” —Ryan Day
September 24, 2023: “Taylor Swift was eating a piece of chicken with ketchup and seemingly ranch!” —@tswifterastour
September 29, 2023: “You’re an expensive backpack for 30.” —Jordan Poole (originally uttered October 5, 2022)
October 5, 2023: “Do the rose ceremony in chairs!” —Natascha Hardee, The Golden Bachelor
October 9, 2023: “Attaboy, Harper!” —Orlando Arcia
October 11, 2023: “He wasn’t supposed to hear it.” —Orlando Arcia
The first two rounds of this year’s MLB playoffs were largely low-excitement affairs full of sweeps and one-sided games. But there was one contest (and ensuing weak-sauce smack talk) that livened up early October. In the second game of the division series between two NL East rivals, the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta trailed 4–0 after five innings and 4–3 after seven before taking a 5–4 lead in the eighth on an Austin Riley home run. The Phillies threatened in the ninth, but Bryce Harper, who had walked to lead off the frame, was doubled off first for the final out by Braves center fielder Michael Harris II, who started the first 8-5-3 double play in postseason history (and the first postseason-game-ending double play involving an outfielder).
That play was a prelude to an extremely silly controversy. In Atlanta’s clubhouse after the game, Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia uttered a derisive “Attaboy, Harper” within earshot of reporters. The fairly innocuous comment, quoted in the 21st paragraph of Jake Mintz’s game story for Fox Sports, soon became a rallying cry for the Phillies and a viral slogan for fans. Improbably, it also sparked a sports-media meltdown, as Arcia’s protest that Harper “wasn’t supposed to hear it,” signal boosted by other Braves and misguided media members, prompted the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to issue a statement in support of Mintz.
Rather than own the tame taunt, the Braves acted afraid of how Harper would punish them. Sure enough, the Phillies first baseman appeared to take that personally: He homered twice in Game 3, staring at Arcia each time he rounded second base. After the Phillies beat the Braves again in Game 4 to advance to the NLCS, rookie reliever Orion Kerkering wore an “Attaboy, Harper” t-shirt in the victors’ clubhouse as the celebrating team chanted the fateful phrase.
Sports are so stupid, and also so great.—Ben Lindbergh
October 11, 2023: “Same, except exactly the opposite.” —Sam Bankman-Fried
October 20, 2023: “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” —Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), Killers of the Flower Moon
October 22, 2023: “If everybody could do it, everybody would.” —Nick Sirianni, Philadelphia Eagles head coach, on the Brotherly Shove
October 24, 2023: “Oh yeah, fo’ shiz fo’ shiz, Ginuwine, what’s up homie?” —Michelle Williams, as Justin Timberlake, in the audiobook for The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
October 25, 2023: “I’m close with the whole staff.” —Connor Stalions
Tired: A low-level Michigan football staffer orchestrated an in-person scouting operation to help the team steal opponents’ play signals. Head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended for the final three regular-season games as a result, but there could be further disciplinary action, as the investigation is still ongoing. Yawn.
Wired? A born-and-raised Michigan superfan spent his own money to fly from San Diego to Ann Arbor to work for the football program as an unpaid volunteer, renting out his house on Airbnb and sleeping in his car or on couches for years before devising an illegal sign-stealing master plan that included multiple paid iPhone camerapeople, a 600-page manifesto, and sideline disguises, all in order to secure and maintain a paid coaching position with the team despite never attending Michigan or playing a down of college football. That fan, Connor Stalions, said neither Harbaugh nor the team was aware of any improper conduct, refused to cooperate with the internal and external investigations, and resigned from his post. Harbaugh, reportedly, first found out about his own suspension on a plane to Happy Valley ahead of Michigan’s game against Penn State, held an emergency meeting on the tarmac, attempted to file a restraining order in an effort to fight the suspension, and then eventually backed down to do his time. The players wore “Free Harbaugh” shirts. Interim head coach Sherrone Moore broke into tears after the team’s win over the Nittany Lions and thanked Harbaugh as if he weren’t alive and well watching the game elsewhere. Harbaugh has since called Michigan “America’s Team” and provided his own definition for the slang word “bet” on ESPN. (He thinks it’s an acronym for “bringing everyone together.”)
In other words, a brilliantly stupid, year-defining scandal turned message boards into battlefields and rival fans into lawyers. This is college football. —Austin Gayle
November 1, 2023: “Can you take me higher?” —Creed, “Higher,” as repurposed by the Texas Rangers
November 2, 2023: “Think of 2020 and 2021: I’m home, working from home, and spending an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter, and I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.” —Casey Bloys, HBO CEO and chairman, apologizing for creating burner accounts to troll TV critics
November 2, 2023: “I’m not a system player, I’m a system.” —James Harden
November 8, 2023: “This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls.” —the trailer for 2024’s Mean Girls
November 9, 2023: “There is no rule in the conference handbook that would allow the Commissioner to bypass the NCAA (and the Big Ten’s Compliance and Reinstatement Subcommittee) because the Commissioner feels peer-pressured to act quickly.” —Tom Mars, attorney to Jim Harbaugh (and also the fan blogger rym, word for word, days prior, on MGoBlog)
November 9, 2023: “Most purpose is more burden than glory.” —Mobius (Owen Wilson), Loki
November 11, 2023: “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me.” —Taylor Swift
November 15, 2023: “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” —Madame Web (Dakota Johnson), Madame Web
November 20, 2023: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions.” —@ilyasut
November 20, 2023: “When I get ya paid, u don’t DM me and send a small percentage to my cashapp but when them parlays don’t hit, I’m every name in the book.” —@KDTrey5
Wagering hard-earned cash on a sporting event is pretty much as old as currency and competition itself. But a formerly illicit tradition that used to live on the periphery is now ingrained in mainstream culture: Lines, props, over/unders, and parlays are inescapable, whether you’re listening to a podcast or watching a game on TV, where announcers strain to weave an updated spread into casual conversation. In 2023, it’s an awkward, understood reality that still seems unfathomable for people over 35, who processed gambling as a scandalous enterprise through their formative years (shout-out to my college bookie). But here we are, entangled in its web.
Enter Kevin Durant, the NBA’s purest scorer and most acute, sensitive, and eloquent intellectual. What I love about this tweet is how Durant so succinctly buries the hypocrisy of bettors, people who either don’t understand or refuse to accept the inherent risk they submit to by embarking on a game of chance. If you lose, the only person to blame is yourself; many don’t like doing that. Durant also points out one of the more insidious by-products of the relationship social media has with online gambling. By doing so, in theory, he sheds light on something that should remain in the shadows.
Athletes and gamblers should not be able to interact! It’s unseemly and weird, and it makes me think about a not-so-distant dystopia where players have a portion of their earnings affected by how well or poorly they perform on a nightly basis, based on the amount of money that’s wagered on their behalf. I’m probably over my skis right now, but we’re at the dawn of an era that has yet to yield its entire aftermath. Durant’s tweet tracked one morsel of gambling’s perverse influence. And even if he was joking (KD is funny!), there’s an evident truth here that’s undeniably gross. —Michael Pina
November 21, 2023: “Strip Weathers, you forgot about him?” —Stephen A. Smith
November 22, 2023: “You think you’re so great because you have boats!” —Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix), to a British dignitary, Napoleon
November 24, 2023: “We pulled off an SEO heist using AI.” —@jakezward
November 26, 2023: “You lucky we ass.” —New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers, to Giants running back Saquon Barkley, following a 10-7 loss
November 28, 2023: “We are totally confident in that pick.” —David Tepper, Carolina Panthers owner
December 1, 2023: “To hell with this place.” —George Santos
Santos uttered these words as he left the U.S. Capitol Building after his expulsion from the House of Representatives. They may have been the truest he’s ever spoken. For years, the Long Island Republican has been known for, let’s say, taking liberties with facts. (Allegedly, of course.) New York magazine has a complete list, but it’s worth calling out some favorites: He reportedly illegally solicited campaign donations, then turned around and used the money on OnlyFans and Hermes. The New York Times reported he lied about starting a charity named Friends of Pets United, which he was accused of using to collect checks and cash them under the name “Anthony Devolder.” (In a charge that was later dismissed and expunged, Santos was even accused of ripping off the Amish—the Amish!—by writing rural Pennsylvania dog breeders bad checks for puppies and then flipping his haul at a Staten Island pet store; Santos told police that someone stole his checkbook.) And, of course, never forget his classic Curb-via–Anna Devley line delivery: “I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” Lotta chutzpah on this guy!
Maybe it’s just a case of mean world syndrome, but thanks to Netflix documentaries, podcasts, and everything you’ve ever read about crypto, it feels like we’re living through the golden age of the scammer. (As the host of The Ringer’s first true crime podcast, The Wedding Scammer, I admit that I may have contributed a bit to that.) So in that light, our favorite sweater-donning diva is the perfect avatar for our time. The man has lied about performing as a drag queen, allegedly committed identity theft and check fraud, and lied about being a volleyball star—and he’s been exposed for all of it. (At least we hope that’s everything.) Yet, Santos was able to lie his way to a seat in Congress. It doesn’t matter that his term lasted a scant 11 months. It also doesn’t matter that his tenure ended in a scathing ethics report and his subsequent expulsion. It just matters that the George Santos story happened at all—and that it will continue on Cameo, and with “piping hot tea” on Twitter, and in a conversation with Ziwe, naturally. (Grift recognize grift.) The phrase “American Dream” gets thrown around too often, but it feels applicable here. What that means for America and dreams is up for you to decide. You may just say to hell with it yourself. —Justin Sayles
