It started the way all modern epics do:
with me, a friend, and absolutely nothing productive happening.

We were sitting together, doom-scrolling social media like two Victorian children discovering electricity, when my dad sent me a Facebook message. Not a “how are you,” not a “love you,” but a cryptic digital artifact.

“Look at this,” he said.

Attached was a video that appeared to be Ring camera footage of a dozen bunnies jumping on a trampoline… at night… in someone’s backyard. The camera angle was bad. The lighting was worse. The vibes were deeply unsettling. It looked like the opening scene of a horror movie called Hop: Judgment Day.

Naturally, I loved it.

A few minutes later, reality tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “That’s AI.”
Fake. Generated. A silicon fever dream.

I told my dad.

He did not care.

In fact, over the next few weeks, my parents began sending me more of these videos. Horses breaking into kitchens. Deer ringing doorbells. Wolves politely waiting at crosswalks. Each one arrived with the same energy as someone discovering fire for the first time.

“This is the BEST thing I’ve ever seen,” they’d say.

And that’s when a dark, entrepreneurial thought crept into my brain:

If this is convincing my parents…
And all my friends’ parents…
How can I monetize their confusion?

So I did what any responsible person would do.
I committed to the bit.

I secretly started a Facebook page for my already very real, very fluffy, very online white golden retriever, Pesto. No announcements. No explanations. Just vibes and deception.

I treated it like a social experiment.
A Stanford prison experiment, but with dogs and boomers.

I began brainstorming the most unhinged ideas possible.

“Ring camera footage of a white golden retriever riding an alligator across the front lawn.”

Posted it.

Boom.
Grandparents everywhere lost their minds.

That’s when I learned something powerful:
Facebook is essentially a retirement home for engagement.
The audience is old, trusting, deeply emotional, and fantastic at smashing the “share” button with zero follow-up questions.

So I asked myself: What’s the most effective way to trick old people?

Answer: Love. Babies. Miracles.

Suddenly, Pesto was starring in heartwarming classics like:

• “Baby says his first word… and it’s my dog’s name”

• “White golden retriever gently places his newborn puppy next to a human baby”

Was it biologically impossible?
Yes.
Did it matter?
Absolutely not.

The comments were biblical.

Then I escalated.

Hero arc.

“White golden retriever saves baby from falling tree struck by lightning.”

Did the tree fall?
Was it struck by lightning?
Why was the baby there in the first place?
No one asked. Pesto was a hero, and that’s all that mattered.

Then I realized something terrifying:

The algorithm loves relevance.

And right then, hurricanes were hitting Jamaica.

I paused. Reflected. Asked myself the hard question:

“Am I a bad person?”

Then immediately started generating AI body-cam footage of people rescuing dogs during the hurricanes, funneling viewers to real hurricane relief donation pages.

And it worked.

Hundreds of millions of earned views.
Real money raised.
Real impact.
Fake dogs.

Ethics? Complicated.
Results? Incredible.

Then—because the universe clearly wanted chaos—the Louvre heist happened.

So naturally, I made AI security footage of Pesto stealing jewels from the Louvre, mapped perfectly to the actual hall where it occurred.

This broke France.

I had thousands of French people in my messages calling me names I assume were legally protected. Thousands more loved it. News outlets started covering it because people kept sending the videos in thinking they were real.

Now, if you Google my name and click “Images,” it’s just news articles aggressively debunking my fake dog crimes.

Which, frankly, is a legacy.

Then I found my final boss: the military community.

I started posting videos of Pesto tapping out soldiers during graduation ceremonies. Just calmly walking up and eliminating trained professionals with his paw.

These did numbers that should require congressional oversight.

Hundreds of millions of views.

And now it’s December.

This year alone, my white golden retriever Pesto has accumulated over 6 billion views.

Six.
Billion.

Without anyone knowing, he may be the most viewed dog on the internet this year.

And to answer the question everyone asks:

Yes.
It was monetized.

The bunnies started it.
The alligator sealed it.
France suffered for it.

And somewhere, right now, a parent is watching a blurry video on Facebook thinking,
“Wow. Dogs are really amazing these days.”