In what can only be described as a blockbuster scandal with the plot of a doomed dystopian telenovela, a horde of Europe’s most technologically wayward malcontents have taken a break from overcooking ramen in their parents’ basements to create the scandalous, the salacious, and, frankly, the deeply, deeply uncalled-for: politician-themed fake-smut websites! Yes, you heard it right. If you ever thought, “Hey, what if my elected representative was starring in a movie called Parliamentary Sessions: After Dark?”—well, congrats, sicko, someone out there heard your fevered sleep-murmurs and said, “Let’s make this nightmarish reality digital!”
The number of targeted politicians is now so high that the next European Parliament meeting may need to be held in a witness protection program tent, and the only way to get a committee chair might be by submitting your own deepfake prototype as proof of entry. The list of affected officials is said to be so long, even Santa Claus is taking notes for his next round of Naughty or Nice evaluations—and surprise, surprise, it turns out women are almost exclusively making his Naughty list. Male politicians, meanwhile, are just as likely to show up on these sites as they are to be spotted giving birth to unicorns in the Strasbourg coffee queue.
Apparently, one researcher, Benjamin “Sherlock Stock Photo” Shultz, has given up his lifelong ambition of counting grains of rice to count the numbers of official heads pasted onto, let’s say, *imaginative* scenarios. Instead of unlocking the secrets of the universe, he is unlocking a perverse digital sticker book that absolutely nobody asked for. Upon discovering the scale of these sites, politicians across the continent have begun staring intensely at their webcams, cursing modernity, and burning their baby photos just in case some online troll is currently photoshopping them into the background of Eurotrip 3: Unfashionably Naked.
One Dutch MP, Suzanne Kröger, was heard shouting, “What the actual government-issued heck is this?!” before storming the nearest windmill in a fit of legislative outrage. She, and her many, many female colleagues, have collectively filed a new motion called “Please Make It Stop.” The male MPs, on the other hand, are just relieved to find an online database that doesn’t star them as the bumbling sidekick.
Then there’s the content itself: these digital miscreants have created complex databases that would frankly put most library catalogues and at least three European train ticketing systems to shame. Next to every biography is a link to what appears to be magic undressing buttons—yes, like every Bond villain dream sequence, except budget-conscious and built using Javascript tutorials from 2015. The user-friendliness is so streamlined, it’s like someone tried to make oppression available via one-click shopping.
Naturally, all of this is designed with the world’s worst intentions. Any hopes that the creators are simply misunderstood performance artists were dashed when it became clear the end goal was not to hold a mirror up to society, but to shove everyone’s face into the digital mud and cackle from afar. This sort of thing, researchers warn with the gravity of Shakespearean ghosts, may stop women from running for office altogether—which is honestly part of their evil master plan: thin out the candidate pool so the only folks left are the dudes who think Norwegian death metal is a personality, and the bots who made the sites in the first place.
Finally, the experts have spoken, jaw muscles sore from dropping. If the 21st century is the information age, then the next election cycle is the misinformation talent show, and our contestants are politicians, perverts, and a handful of researchers frantically waving spreadsheets. Meanwhile, the rest of us can only hope for an update to Europe’s privacy laws—and for the internet to one day grow a conscience, or, failing that, an off switch. Until then, politicians strike a new pose: the pixelated fetal position.