Wake Up, Mister West
Trigger Warning: Antisemitism
Kanye Omari West, also known as ‘Ye’ and ‘Yeezus’, is the epitome of a larger-than-life persona, with his undeniable musical talent and creative genius often clashing with his outspoken personality and controversial statements.
Selling over 160 million records worldwide and winning 22 Grammy Awards, Kanye is one of the world’s most successful artists. From feuding with popstar Taylor Swift to announcing his presidential campaign, Kanye consistently maintains his captivating and infamous reputation in popular culture through a very frivolous use of social media. His online presence ranges from cryptic posts bordering on the unhinged to offensive outbursts on podcasts. This intrusive glimpse into his life unsurprisingly lands him in very deep water, but it has also helped him amass a loyal fanbase who crave the entertainment stemming from his erratic behaviour.
Parasocial Relationships
The story below comes from Kanye’s (now banned) Instagram page which had millions of followers, and is one of many instances where Kanye shares his conversations with ex-girlfriend Kim Kardashian to the public. Let’s be honest, no sane person would ever want their intimate conversations to be known by strangers around the world, but Kanye’s evident disregard to Kim’s wishes for privacy helped him gain even more popularity with his fans who fanned over his online presence.
Kanye was also open to sharing his despair at breaking up with Kim, posting a slightly (!) ill-suited Instagram story during the Queen’s death.
Good luck making sense of the next story below!
It is clear that Kanye makes very good use of his Instagram as a way to personally communicate with his followers, to the point that he publicly rambles about whatever he’s thinking about. This enables parasocial relationships, defined as fans developing nonreciprocal emotional connections with celebrities, to blossom immensely because Kanye takes this act of showing the public his personal life and activities to the extreme.
Antisemitism
A massive blow to many fans, Kanye showed his true colours with his recent antisemitic comments, communicating through a variety of mediums to promote antisemitic tropes and conspiracies.
In the clip below, Kanye praises Adolf Hitler on Alex Jones’ podcast, saying he sees good things in his character.
Doubling down, Kanye continues this trend of being completely brazen in his social media use in this Tweet threatening Jewish people, alluding to going ‘death con 3’ (referencing the United State’s Defcon military alert system).
A way of measuring an effective online presence could be through checking any impacts it has in the real world, which is unfortunately true in this case. Since Kanye’s comments, the Anti-Defamation League’s report shows that at least 30 antisemitic incidents referencing Kanye were recorded since October 2022, with some examples including the desecration of Jewish graves and graffiti on the sign of an orthodox synagogue.
Consequently, his Instagram and Twitter accounts are currently suspended. Kanye’s online presence is effective and influential because he provides very private and interesting content that you just don’t see with other online creators. Mix in discriminatory ideas, then you’re bound to see reports about Kanye everywhere.
