Valentina Gomez is a Bitch.

The first time I came across Valentina Gomez was on Twitter, where she’d posted a video of herself staging the execution of a dummy. The point, she said, was to warn pedophiles and rapists.

I remember watching it and thinking what most people probably thought: Oh, this is one of those people. Internet politics has trained us to shrug at extremity because it’s often hard to tell whether you’re watching a genuine threat or just another person auditioning for attention. 

But I followed her because at the moment I found a hot woman with extreme antics to be interesting.

Gomez didn’t stop with the stunt. Her rhetoric escalated. Her posts became louder, harsher, and far more explicit. Soon she was referring to all Muslims as terrorists and rapists. No qualifiers, no nuance, no interest in history or reality. Just blunt-force bigotry, delivered with the confidence of someone who mistakes provocation for courage.

She also planted herself firmly on the MAGA bandwagon, despite being an immigrant from Colombia. The contradiction is so obvious it almost feels intentional, as if coherence itself were the enemy. There’s something surreal about watching an immigrant candidate echo the most exclusionary impulses of modern American politics while pretending not to notice who those impulses are usually aimed at.

What’s striking, though, is how little weight her words actually carry. If a white male candidate with institutional backing were making these statements, they’d be treated—correctly—as dangerous. Instead, Gomez lands in a different category altogether: not frightening, just exhausting. More nuisance than threat.

Part of that has to do with how she presents herself. She’s a woman, she’s young, she’s attractive, she’s Hispanic, she’s an immigrant—and the political ecosystem she’s trying to shock simply doesn’t know what to do with that combination. Her extremism doesn’t register as power; it registers as performance. And I suspect she knows it.

Nothing about her campaign suggests someone seriously trying to win office. It looks far more like someone who understands she’s unlikely to prevail and has recalibrated accordingly. If you can’t win votes, you can still win attention. You can still go viral. You can still dominate a niche corner of the outrage economy.

That may be good for clicks. It’s terrible for public life.

Valentina Gomez may not be taken seriously as a candidate—and I’m not convinced even her supporters believe she will win—but the environment that rewards her behavior is very real. And that’s the part worth worrying about.