What would George Washington look like if he were a modern-day politician? That question occurred to George Aquilla Hardy, a musician, 14 months into the pandemic. There he was at 23, stuck in his childhood bedroom in Dorset, England, instead of playing music festivals.
Because he had nowhere to be and he was sick of "looking at the same four walls,” Hardy said, he decided to try to answer his question with Photoshop. He posted his result on Reddit on May 2.
Since then he — and others — have posted and reposted it thousands of times on just about every social media platform. Many of the comments are silly. But Hardy’s creation — which he mocked up in about three hours — has also sparked genuine interest in the question that he started with: What would the first president of the United States look like if he were living in the era of online suit ordering and Instagram campaign ads?