Mark McGrath has zero interest in becoming the face of "breakup Cameo"

Almost a year of quarantine has forced a lot of us to get super creative when it comes to connecting with our friends, family, and colleagues. A beer within arm’s length can turn a Zoom chat into a virtual happy hour. Loved ones can arrange a drive-by caravan in lieu of a potentially dangerous birthday party. Even Cameo has found its groove in all of this mess as more users flock to the app to commission random celebrities for star-studded messages that they can gift to others. Sure, we’re barely holding it together as we descend further and further into the dystopia we’ve only read about in YA novels, but getting a video from Fran Drescher congratulating us on making a few deadlines might lift our spirits just a little a bit.

Cameo is also a pretty nifty tool for breaking connections, which The New York Times explored in a recent deep dive into the burgeoning culture. Nobody knows that more than Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath, who went viral in 2019 for a very measured, damn-near uplifting video of a breakup message he was hired to deliver to a presumably fictional sap named “Brayden.” (As NYT explains, the request was ultimately part of a far-reaching prank that had public figures like Anthony Scaramucci and Home Improvement’s Richard Karn making videos for similarly phony solicitations.) The two-and-a-half-minute message became one of Cameo’s most viral sensations and led to a flood of requests for McGrath from people searching for easy exits from their own relationships.