Pete Davidson: The Last American Export the World Actually Wants

Pete Davidson: the United Nations of Heartbreak and Hickeys
By Dave’s Locker, International Bureau of Schadenfreude

When the rest of the planet fretted about inflation, energy grids, and whether the Arctic would still exist next Tuesday, Pete Davidson was quietly becoming the only export the United States still managed to deliver on time. From Staten Island basements to Riyadh brunch tables, his face—equal parts sleep paralysis demon and Labrador puppy—has sprouted on screens in 190 countries, proving that soft power now comes tattooed and visibly exhausted.

Global trade routes used to run on spices; today they run on gossip, and Davidson is the contraband everyone pretends not to crave. In Seoul, stock-market analysts run sentiment algorithms on paparazzi shots of him leaving Nobu with yet another staggeringly famous woman. In Lagos, WhatsApp voice notes dissect whether his rumored engagement is bullish or bearish for American comedic output. The man has become a floating currency, a human Dogecoin whose value spikes whenever TMZ refreshes.

Europe, still pretending it’s above celebrity culture, has responded with the stiff-upper-lip equivalent of a feeding frenzy. French intellectuals on late-night talk shows compare him to Serge Gainsbourg, if Gainsbourg had been raised on Monster Energy and Lexapro. German tabloids, never ones to miss a chance for precision, have coined the term “Davidson-Effekt” to describe the sudden spike in poorly advised neck tattoos among men under thirty. Meanwhile, British MPs have asked parliamentary questions about why their own island can’t produce a single exportable himbo.

In Latin America, where magical realism is just called “the news,” Davidson’s serial monogamy has been reimagined as a telenovela subplot. Brazilian Twitter has already cast him as the tragic gringo boyfriend who dies in episode 47, only to be reincarnated as a talking skateboard. Across the Andes, his face adorns bootleg T-shirts that read “El Bicho de Brooklyn,” which roughly translates to “The Brooklyn Bug,” a nickname locals insist is affectionate even if it sounds like a venereal disease.

Asia, never one to waste a merchandising opportunity, has gone further. In Tokyo’s Harajuku district, capsule-toy machines now dispense miniature vinyl Davidsons in various stages of emotional undress—collect all five stages of existential dread! Thai pop-up cafes hawk “Pete’s Potion,” a charcoal latte that tastes like regret and menthol cigarettes. And in Mumbai, Bollywood producers have optioned his life rights for a musical titled “Pyaar Aur Patchy Beard.” The soundtrack drops before the monsoon; advance bookings are already sold out.

The Middle East, perpetually caught between tradition and TikTok, has responded with the diplomatic equivalent of a shrug-emoji. Dubai influencers stage desert photo shoots wearing knock-off Yeezys and caption them “Big Davidson Energy.” Meanwhile, Iranian state television denounces him as a Western psy-op designed to distract the youth from uranium enrichment—an accusation so magnificently paranoid it’s almost flattering.

Yet beneath the memes and the merch lies a darker, more universal truth. Davidson is the canary wheezing in the coal mine of late-stage fame: proof that celebrity has become a renewable resource mined not from talent but from vulnerability. He metabolizes his own trauma—dead father, Crohn’s disease, borderline personality disorder—into content the way other people turn plastic into fleece. The world watches, half-horrified, half-thankful it isn’t them.

In that sense, he is every nation’s guilty mirror. We mock the 12-foot security perimeter he now needs to buy cereal, then stream his stand-up specials in 4K. We clutch our pearls about parasocial relationships while refreshing DeuxMoi for updates. International law may not yet recognize the Davidson Doctrine, but the global economy already runs on it: attention is the last fossil fuel, and Pete is the fracking rig nobody asked for but everybody subsidizes.

So as COP28 delegates argue over carbon credits, perhaps the real summit we need is on Davidson Credits—how to offset the emissions of a single man’s dating history. Until then, the planet spins on, one regrettable neck tattoo at a time. And somewhere, in a dimly lit greenroom, Pete Davidson checks his phone, sighs, and books another flight to a country that just learned how to pronounce “Staten Island.” The world keeps turning; the punchline never lands.