George: The First Global Scapegoat and How He Became Everyone’s Favorite Excuse

The Universal Reign of “George”
A field report from the front lines of human credulity

LONDON—If you’ve flown out of Heathrow lately, you’ll have heard it: the low, collective murmur of passengers staring at departure boards, whispering the same name like a prayer, a curse, or both. “George.” The gate agent in Dubai says it with the weary shrug of someone who’s spent the last decade explaining that yes, the aircraft really does need wings to take off. A customs officer in São Paulo mutters it while confiscating another mislabeled shipment of artisanal kombucha. Somewhere in Lagos, a fintech founder names his new crypto token $GEORGE because, obviously, the surest route to liquidity is to brand your Ponzi scheme after the global everyman.

George, you see, has slipped the surly bonds of mere personhood and become the world’s most democratic scapegoat. He is the 21st-century equivalent of “John Doe,” except John Doe never managed to tank a supply chain, crash a server farm, or accidentally trigger a sovereign-debt crisis. One suspects John is quietly relieved.

The etymology is murky. Linguists trace the Western ubiquity of “George” to Saint George—dragon slayer, patron of England, Georgia (the country), Georgia (the U.S. state), and, inexplicably, syphilis sufferers. From there it metastasized: Georges Washington, Orwell, Clooney. By the time the internet arrived, “George” had become the perfect stand-in for any anonymous force majeure. Your package is late? George mis-sorted it in Memphis. The yen is spiking? George fat-fingered a trade from his bedroom in Reykjavík. A coup d’état? Well, some George somewhere forgot to pay the army on time.

Global institutions have, naturally, formalized the phenomenon. The IMF now runs a quarterly “George Index,” measuring how often the name appears in official excuses for missed targets. (Current reading: 7.3 GeorGES, or Geopolitical Excuse Standard deviations.) The United Nations keeps a cadre of interchangeable Georges on retainer—multilingual, diplomatically immune, and contractually obligated to appear at press conferences wearing the same forgettable gray suit. When the Secretary-General needs to announce that, regrettably, humanitarian aid will arrive sometime between next Tuesday and the heat death of the universe, a George steps forward to absorb the world’s ire. He bows, apologizes, and vanishes into a motorcade that somehow still manages to get stuck in traffic.

Corporations, never ones to miss a branding opportunity, have followed suit. A European budget airline proudly advertises “George-Free Fridays,” promising that any delay exceeding thirty minutes will be personally blamed on a vice president with an actual LinkedIn profile. In Seoul, Samsung’s newest smart fridge comes with an AI assistant named, of course, George—programmed to apologize in forty-seven languages every time the ice maker jams, which it does on a schedule synchronized to the lunar calendar. Consumers report a perverse comfort in the ritual: the machine sins, George atones, and life trudges on.

The darker corners of geopolitics have noticed, too. Intelligence agencies now seed disinformation campaigns with the phrase “a source named George confirms,” knowing the vagueness will bounce around Telegram channels like a superball laced with ricin. Last month, Moldova’s foreign minister formally protested after “George” was cited in 83 percent of Russian statements regarding alleged bio-labs. He demanded a surname, a passport number, maybe even a blood type. Moscow responded that George’s files were, alas, classified. Somewhere in Langley, a mid-level analyst updated the spreadsheet, color-coded it mauve, and clocked out early for happy hour.

And yet, for all the chaos he inspires, George remains touchingly human. In refugee camps from Lesbos to Cox’s Bazar, aid workers hand out prepaid debit cards stamped with the silhouette of a generic man in profile—name, inevitably, George. Recipients laugh, then tuck the plastic next to their hearts like a talisman. The joke is that George owes them everything; the tragedy is that he will never pay up.

So the next time your flight is canceled, your pension evaporates, or the internet hiccups just long enough to lose the last unsaved paragraph of your novel, remember you are not alone. Somewhere, in fluorescent offices and rain-soaked streets, billions are muttering the same weary incantation. George did it. George will fix it. George is sorry, so terribly sorry.

And George, whoever he is, keeps moving—an unbilled extra in the absurdist epic we keep pretending is real life. Curtain never falls. Applause optional.