I'm still not entirely sure who Kim Kardashian is or why people know all about her

As far as I can tell the lamest thing she's done is wear fur. I don't know her & don't really want to speculate about her worth as a human being; I know we're supposed to hate rich people but really I don't care. Maybe I'd be actively annoyed by her if I lived in southern California. I'm more inclined to direct my ire at the people who leaked her sex tape.

is it really that much of a leap to believe that the tape was leaked on purpose? esp given that she watched paris hilton turn into a major celebrity exactly the same way, this seems like...not the craziest conspiracy theory.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/x-files/images/f/f6/Trust_No_One_tagline.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070529000016

The sex tape would never have been released unless Kardashian and Ray J both signed contracts and got paid. Everyone whose sex tape is released by a company has signed paperwork and accepted payment. There's a second Pamela Anderson tape, featuring Bret Michaels, which has never been released because neither of them wants it out there.

really? KK sued the company, right? Was that just a ruse?

what usually happens is that they sue then come to an agreement (since the tape is already out there they might as well make money off of it)

Melissa Smith, better known by her stage name Melissa Molinaro,[1]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f6/f3/9b/f6f39b95d46824f3ae324781d99b89a9.jpg

Am I supposed to know who the guy LOLing at Kanye is or why people know all about him, if indeed they do

The other thing about being famous for being famous / Kim K not having a specific industry is that it's usually people with an existing career who make it to that plane, because it costs a lot of money.

And it's different when you start from the money, because a) class except no-one ever talks about class and b) there's a different attitude to people when they're being rich with their money vs being rich with ours. People still have to buy Kanye's records, or go see Dakota Fanning's films. Kim doesn't need our attention, she could just go back to being incredibly rich, and that drives some people nuts.

Except of course she does need our attention - people who genuinely don't need it do not as a rule host reality TV shows. So there's a weird control-at-her-behest thing which leads to some ugliness. Also, sexism and.. racism? I think there's a thread around here with Lex vs DJP on whether Armenian counts as white.

xp it's David Bowie.

xxp no. no one knows who he is or all about him.

(some of these Thoughts may have been mechanically recovered from previous Thoughts about Paris Hilton, but you could probably tell)

you guys ARE UNFORGIVEN TOOOOOOOO

Am I supposed to know who the guy LOLing at Kanye is or why people know all about him, if indeed they do

only Canadians know all about him

"She does what she likes"

Tired of ppl using this to justify behavior. It's a wholly meaningless phrase. Everybody does what they like.

I bet Bowie is a Kanye fan

The sex aspect of the sex tape makes people completely unable to form cogent arguments

She's not famous for fucking ray j on tape, she's famous for being beautiful — and there's a tradition of both women and men being famous for being good-looking that goes back probably centuries

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Antinous_Ecouen_Louvre_Ma1082_n3.jpg/1024px-Antinous_Ecouen_Louvre_Ma1082_n3.jpg

the KK of his day

She's not famous for fucking ray j on tape, she's famous for being beautiful

I'd never heard of a sex tape until this thread tbh

there are people who are famous for eating hot dogs really fast.

i've been known to watch the kardashian show on occasion. i don't like it or dislike it, but the most interesting thing about kim, for me, is that she is by far the dullest figure on the show. kris, caitlyn (formerly bruce), khloe, scott, and the younger siblings are all way more dynamic and the plots of most episodes really deal with them. kim and to a lesser extent kourtney are more like spectators of the action. they have conflicts with each other and the other characters but they always seem emotionally flat, the kinds of people who will say "i am so angry right now" in the same tone that they would say "i am so happy right now."

anyway, i think there is something to kim's dullness that makes her both intriguing and infuriating to america. even in her own reality show she isn't really there. i'm sure she is more interesting than she is letting on (everyone is) but on the show she presents herself as a total blank slate. imo.

Anyone know if she ever commented on the political situation in Bahrain? I'd imagine she was just saying the landscape itself was beautiful but some said she was praising the regime too. Is this true?

I was half expecting Jodorowsky to wed Kim and Kanye like he did with Manson and Dita.

^ a man

"i'm sure she is more interesting than she is letting on"

SHE IS SECRETLY INTERESTING

speaking of which

http://www.aux.tv/2015/06/paris-hilton-might-be-a-vintage-radio-enthusiast-and-a-nice-person/

I love that

And Scott, I didn't mean that Kim is likely more interesting than the average person, just that I think she is deliberately suppressing her personality in order to be seen as an icon/ambivalent metaphor for our cultural moment rather than a person

Her affect is just so flat. She talks s o s l o w. It feels like a performance.

just that I think she is deliberately suppressing her personality in order to be seen as an icon/ambivalent metaphor for our cultural moment rather than a person

question of her 'blankness' was the subject of the papermag article/ interview with the infamous nsfw photos

nb nsfw

http://www.papermag.com/2014/11/kim_kardashian.php

huh, i hadn't read that before. thanks drash! This piece is very well written, i like the writer's prose style

I only read kk nsfw sites for the articles

The sex aspect of the sex tape makes people completely unable to form cogent arguments

She's not famous for fucking ray j on tape, she's famous for being beautiful — and there's a tradition of both women and men being famous for being good-looking that goes back probably centuries

she's not 'famous for' the sex tape, but it was a publicity coup that turned her into a public figure.

shes famous for being hot and having big tits and a huge ass

#lockthread

she's actually the American Putin, got big via behind the scenes coup, stayed popular by successfully manipulating the media / taking her shirt off

Kissed boy like kitten.

but can she wrestle a bear

i've been known to watch the kardashian show on occasion. i don't like it or dislike it, but the most interesting thing about kim, for me, is that she is by far the dullest figure on the show. kris, caitlyn (formerly bruce), khloe, scott, and the younger siblings are all way more dynamic and the plots of most episodes really deal with them. kim and to a lesser extent kourtney are more like spectators of the action. they have conflicts with each other and the other characters but they always seem emotionally flat, the kinds of people who will say "i am so angry right now" in the same tone that they would say "i am so happy right now."

This is so OTM. I really like the first two seasons of KuwtK before the fact they're super-famous and super-rich starts having visible effects on the way they live their lives (as in, it changes: the privilege at work is obvious from the start). The dynamic is fascinating. Scott using "Patrick Bateman" as a pseudonym in an early episode also makes me wonder just how self-aware the different characters ("stars" seems false in this context) of the show are.

Also I can't believe nobody has posted Kim's amazing* one-off venture into pop music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHp7sq1Tzn0

Wow, according to the YouTube annotations, that's a charity single ("all proceeds go to St. Jude Children's Hospital")!

the kinds of people who will say "i am so angry right now" in the same tone that they would say "i am so happy right now."

https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfa1/t51.2885-15/s320x320/e15/11287784_1614846928759984_661900556_n.jpg

Kim's 17 year old stepsister Kylie over the past month or so has had her father undergo sexual reassignment and then find out her boyfriend has been romantically linked with a transsexual model spanning over the past 3 years.

To me, that makes for much more compelling reality TV than a bunch of sisters going to the spa or designing clothing lines for Target.

people went apoplectic that she was on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me a few weeks ago (the NPR show), threatening to stop giving NPR money, etc. Ridiculous; I'm more offended that Prairie Home Companion is still a thing that is on the radio. Likewise, she did this talk in the Bay Area referenced above, through the Commonwealth Club, and lots of people got pissed that she was being 'elevated' to some status.

My wife is armenian so I've known a fair amount about them and have watched all the shows because we watch a lot of crap TV. She is overexposed, no doubt, but I still don't get the hate since she has never been as outwardly offensive as Paris Hilton was in her prime. Armenians all claim to hate her but follow her every move; and she got some credit for bringing attention to the genocide centenial.

yeah i don't follow the kardashians much but recently it was like, kim is labelled as shallow but she's using her platform to talk about genocide and trans issues...

also she tried to break the internet...gotta admire that.

She said someone nice about my band once.

aw.

https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/3069340928

any explanation for how that happened?

Haven't read it in a while but Caitlin Moran's celeb column in The Times on Friday p/much had an item on Kim/Kayne every week - the whole column is hilarious but that's how I was made more aware of them than 'this is some person idk of as I'll never see the thing they are in', which happens with many people.

any explanation for how that happened?

Our bass player was working as part of Kim's media team* and ghost wrote her blog entries. Eventually Kim took over writing her own stuff** and one "hey, can you tweet something about my band" later... Isn't a high-level celebrity sponsored tweet worth 30 or 40 grand now? Anyway, that tweet translated into exactly two iTunes purchases.

*all celebrities at this level have social media teams that optimize all this stuff. Was told that "Team Britney" was to be feared.

**or switched teams (they are all "teams")

http://www.stereogum.com/1815850/sinead-oconnor-says-music-has-officially-died-because-of-kim-kardashian/wheres-the-beef/