The Ye Effect.
World famous American rapper, Kanye West, has always been one of the most talked about celebrities in the world. He has a long history of controversy and is known to speak his mind no matter the repercussions. From interrupting Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Music awards, to running for president in 2020, West has always been someone with something to say. In the last several years, West’s controversies have taken a dark and hateful turn. West has recently been making consistent public statements and posts on social media where he glorifies government conspiracies, racism, and antisemitism. These extremely hateful and damaging comments have taken over the internet. Not only are his words hurtful to many different communities all over the world, but they are even inspiring his massive fanbase, who are now going out and further attacking these affected groups. The influence that Kanye West has and the damage he has caused is unimaginable. So much so, that billion dollar companies that once sponsored and collaborated with Kanye; Adidas, Balenciaga, The Gap, have pulled out of their agreements. These companies have stated that they are no longer working with West and are pulling all items off the shelf that are in collaboration with him. This removal of sponsorship has reduced Kanye from being a billionaire to a millionaire. Kanye’s detrimental comments, loss of sponsorship and reduction in overall wealth all have huge impacts on our society, the increase of hate crimes and hate speech towards impacted groups, and the stock market.
Kanye has been on Wikipedia since 2004 and since then his page has been edited and updated rapidly as his career grows. I am choosing to focus on Kanye’s most recent edits regarding his antisemitic comments which resulted in the loss of sponsorships, and how editors on Wikipedia have handled these updates. Kanye’s page has 10 main editors that over the past 10 years have been making the most consistent changes to the page. His top editor, known on Wikipedia by their username “Saginaw-hitchhiker”, has edited 8.6% of the page themself, adding close to 30,000 characters. Overall Kanye’s page has had 5,366 contributors that have worked together over the last 18 years to create the page we see today. On average the page gets edited over 760 times a year, but 2022 already has over 880 edits. Using these statistics, my primary goal for this analysis will be to determine how Kanye’s antisemitic comments in the last year have affected the number of contributors on his page.
October of 2022 was when Kanye West hateful antisemitic comments became trending on Twitter. Kanye tweeted “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jews also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone who opposes your agenda”. This tweet took the internet and news by storm and people were outraged by the celebrity’s comments and how dangerously influential he is to the public. It didn't take long for Wikipedia contributors to add this tweet and other instances of Kanye demonstrating antisemitism to his page. In October of 2022, there were 94 different changes made to Kanye’s Wikipedia account, and in the last 30 days there have been 368 edits made to his page. As you can see this tweet and Kanye’s other actions that took place in October have caused a boost in the Wikipedia community updating his page.
This visualization showcases the top ten main editors of Kanye West’s page and the percentage in which they contribute. Additionally the top and longest bar showcases all other accounts that edit the page and the percentage they edit combined.
This graph shows us the months in 2022 and the amount of edits made in each month. As you can clearly see, October is by far the month with the most edits and I believe that that is due to the controversy regarding the loss of sponsors because of Kanye’s discriminatory comments made on Twitter in October. Most of the other months are pretty low, having between 10 and 20 edits, while October consists of over 90 edits.
These findings reveal that Kanye West’s tweets, instagram posts, and interview comments that consists on antisemitic comments, has greatly influenced the amount of revisions and contributions on Kanyes Wikipedia page. Overall, Kanye West’s influence on the primarily younger generation is massive and the impact that his actions will have on society and the stock market are yet to be fully uncovered. We as a society need to remember that when a person with substantial influence broadcasts their stance on a subject matter, others blindly follow without critically analyzing the reality of the situation. We must hold each other to a higher standard to educate ourselves and prevent falling into “The Ye Effect”.
