vast wasteland
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Why this former inmate is struggling to rent a home, even with Kim Kardashian’s help
I think Kim and Kanye probably have a spare bedroom in that huge house, maybe this gentleman would want to come to LA.
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Brought Lewis Carroll to mind:
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Kendall Jenner's Latest Belfie Is Her Most Wild Yet - and It Stars Kourtney Kardashian Too!
This must have been after Sunday's church service?
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So it's not just to demonstrate her vacuousness?
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36 minutes ago, Showthyme said:
TMZ has to be on the Kardashian payroll. TMZ doesn't report on any other reality celebrity or show unless the celebrity gets into some kind of legal trouble. Rarely does a day or two go by without a Kardashian being featured. TMZ is an infomercial for the Ks.
Good call, showthyme:
A Theory of How TMZ Landed the Kardashian Pregnancy Story of the Year
QuoteIn 2013, TMZ founder Harvey Levin appeared as a co-host on Kris, the ill-fated daytime talk show hosted by Kris Jenner, matriarch and founder of the Kardashian empire. “I think people have this preconceived notion that we don’t get along,” Jenner said as a manner of introducing Levin, who went onto explain that the two have been “old friends” since 1994, when he was working as a TV reporter in Los Angeles. Jenner, Levin said, “had her tentacles, as she does, in everything,” but especially, at that time, in the O.J. Simpson trial on which Levin was reporting. (Jenner was close with Nicole Brown Simpson.) “I lasered in,” Levin said with a nervous giggle, to which Jenner replied flatly, “Yeah, you did.”
The two have gone on to enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship, with Levin’s website helping give rise to the family, and the family providing an ample amount of material for the website, including suspiciously well-sourced exclusives, creating an unceasing feedback loop that has helped make each enormously rich and famous. It is with this relationship in mind that we will attempt to untangle the mess of news regarding the apparent cheating scandal involving the at the time very pregnant Khloe Kardashian and her basketball playing boyfriend Tristan Thompson—news that has blanketed gossip websites for days, and gives us a unique peek at how America’s real first family attempts to judiciously control its narrative, and what happens when it appears to briefly let that control slip.
It all began on Tuesday, April 10, when the Daily Mail acquired amateur video of Thompson and a then-unidentified woman kissing each other at a party in New York this past Sunday, April 8. Shortly after the Daily Mail’s article, photos appeared online of Thompson and the same woman outside the Four Seasons in Manhattan, where he was staying with his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were in town for a game against the Knicks. Those photos did not appear on TMZ, but a short time later the gossip behemoth wrested control of the news cycle with even juicier footage, posting video from last October taken by a security camera inside a hookah lounge in Washington, D.C. The video shows Thompson hanging out with three women, two of whom eventually engage in mutual groping with the basketball star.
A mere nine minutes after publishing that six-month-old hookah lounge footage, TMZ also published the first video of Thompson and the woman walking in and out of the Four Seasons this past Sunday. (She was later identified as an Instagram person named Lani Blair; Blair does not appear to be one of the two women Thompson fooled around with in D.C.) That these two incidents took place almost seven months apart but were publicized by TMZ on the same day, only nine minutes apart, is almost certainly not a coincidence. Levin and Jenner are old pals, and Jenner is notorious for having complete command of her family’s gossip. When it comes to Kardashian family secrets, “Kris Jenner doesn’t care that you know everything,” Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote in a 2015 New York Times Magazine profile of Jenner. “Kris only cares that you heard them when and where she decided you should.”
Gossip publications have long been known to obtain incriminating material on the people they cover, only to hold it until it can be best used to the publication’s advantage. In many cases, they don’t ever publish the material, a method known as “catch and kill,” a practice that has become more public in the wake of Donald Trump’s (alleged) encounters with various women who were not his wife. TMZ, for instance, held a video of Justin Bieber using the N-word for at least four years, reportedly as a manner of forcing Bieber to cooperate with their reporting and appear in their videos.
Under that logic, it’s possible, if not likely, that TMZ had the hookah lounge footage of Thompson more or less immediately after it happened. (TMZ is, of course, the place one would go to sell such a video.) Security camera footage is typically wiped from hard drives after a short period of time, but this video obviously made its way outside of the lounge. That it wasn’t published until this week suggests that TMZ might have been waiting for something.
Thompson’s public dalliance in New York provided an opening, even if TMZ, and perhaps the Kardashians themselves, were caught flat-footed. The Four Seasons video published by TMZ was not actually taken by TMZ. Instead, it, and the still photos previously published by other outlets, were shot by Splash News, an agency that provides paparazzi footage of celebrities to whichever publications are willing to pay for it, either à la carte or by subscription. Splash News appears to have first provided the photos of Thompson and Blair outside the Four Seasons to the popular Instagram gossip account the Shade Room, which posted them as an “exclusive,” in two separate posts on Tuesday. From there, the story was picked up by other publications, with TMZ once again managing to regain a handle on the news cycle by posting the full video footage, which it presumably purchased from Splash.
This process would seem fairly cut and dry—TMZ reigning in the news cycle, perhaps with the guiding hand of Kris Jenner—if it weren’t for an Instagram post by Khloe from Monday, which shows her and Thompson, shot by a professional photographer, kissing each other as he holds her pregnant belly. “We are ready whenever you are little mama,” reads the caption. The Kardashians, like almost all very famous people, take great care in how they present their relationships to the public. Though their empire is based in part on a constant flow of relationship drama (triggered by a parade of cheating men), Khloe—and by extension the family—seemed to be making a pretty clear statement about the status of her relationship with Thompson.
The revelations of Thompson’s cheating make that presentation look, at best, confusing, and, at worst, farcical—an unusual hiccup for a family that has burnished its image into a nine-digit fortune. Given Jenner’s relationship with Levin, it’s more than possible that at least some of the Kardashians have known about the video of Thompson canoodling in the hookah lounge for some time. What they might not have anticipated was Thompson being so flagrantly open about his romancing of other women that the paparazzi (Splash News) and media (Daily Mail, the Shade Room) were able to break the story before Khloe and her family could get ahead of it. (It is also possible that Jenner and the family knew about all of it, and Khloe decided to post photos of Thompson anyway, for whatever reason.)
Regardless, TMZ was there to help right the universe. The immediate publication of the hookah bar video helps hammer home the characterization of Thompson as someone willing to cheat on his pregnant girlfriend on multiple occasions. There are now enough potential storylines to fill an entire season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. TMZ is getting something out of it, too: an IV drip of hour-by-hour news updates. On Tuesday afternoon, the site reported that Khloe—who’s been staying in Cleveland, where Thompson lives—was having early contractions as she waited to give birth to their child; on Wednesday, it broke the news that Thompson would be “allowed in the delivery room.” TMZ’s six most popular articles as of this writing are about Khloe and Tristan.
Of course, that was all merely a prelude to the news of the baby’s actual birth. Back in February, when the Kardashian family last had a closely-watched birth to herald, Kylie Jenner announced the arrival of her daughter on Instagram, and then with a YouTube video, which was picked up dutifully by the major gossip sites, including TMZ. But this time around there was no note to fans or home video footage; instead there was TMZ. “Khloe delivered a baby girl early Thursday morning — around 4 AM EDT — at a hospital outside Cleveland,” the site exclusively reported, attributing its scoop on one of the year’s biggest celebrity pregnancies to “our Kardashian sources.”
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Khloe Kardashian posted about 'loving thy racist neighbor' and her fans are not loving it
How about Thy Cheating Friend, Khloe? Didn't show her a lot of love, did you?
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Lip service: what Kylie Jenner really sells us is a brush with fame
Quoten the spring of 2015, girls started sucking shot glasses. They would put their lips into the glass, and then they’d suck, creating a vacuum which drew blood to the surface of their lips to create a swollen, puckered pout, and then they’d post a selfie on Instagram, hashtagged #KylieJennerChallenge. Kylie Jenner had been 10 when she first appeared on Keeping Up with the Kardashians eight years earlier, alongside her siblings and parents, Kris and Bruce (now Caitlyn), and she grew up on screen. On “screens”, really: she built a following of millions on social media, where her selfies became a brand of their own.
The popularity of the hashtag caused ripples, and those ripples made waves. There was controversy surrounding the injuries sustained by the teenage participants, and discourse on the sexist and racist politics of lips – all the Kardashian-Jenner sisters have been accused of altering their bodies to look more like black women, in countries that objectify their features but ignore their achievements. There was debate, too, about whether the pout everyone was copying had actually been achieved with lip fillers rather than mere gloss. When she was 17, Jenner denied having had surgery. And, as pressure mounted, she spoke out against the challenge: “I’m not here to try and encourage people to look like me.” Finally, she admitted that, actually, yes, she had had her lips augmented.
But, rather than causing outrage, her admission was read as a kind of vulnerability, a door opening. That summer, she capitalised on the attention by launching Kylie Lip Kits, which sold out within minutes. Last year, Kylie Cosmetics made $360m (£275m). And last week, Jenner, now 21, knocked Mark Zuckerberg off the top of Forbes’ list to become the world’s youngest ever self-made billionaire.
The reaction to this has been noisy and layered, a multi-storey car park of opinion. “It’s not self-made, it’s because her sister made a sex tape,” claimed Piers Morgan. There was curiosity about how a teenager, even one from an entertainment dynasty such as the Kardashians, could make a billion dollars out of lip gloss.
With every purchase of lip liner, fans buy access to a covetable life, an ever-moving soap opera of babies and breakups
What her sister did for bums, Jenner has done for lips. That is: focused attention on them, enabled them as fetish objects, promoted the idea that they can be reshaped seasonally. Reporting on the increase in buttock lifts last year, I heard Kim’s name in every room; similarly, Kylie has been named as the inspiration for a huge rise in women getting lip fillers. A day after she admitted her pout was the result of regular gel injections, one British clinic reported a 70% rise in inquiries. Lip augmentation was the most popular non-surgical cosmetic treatment of 2016 – Elle magazine suggested it had become as “routine as teeth whitening”. Jenner’s lip kits could be read as an entry-level drug – they are marketed as “your secret weapon to create the perfect Kylie Lip”. A lip best known for being … fake. And yet the success of Kylie Cosmetics pivots entirely on Jenner’s manipulation of social media.
“It’s the most authentic thing I’ve done in my career,” Jenner said of her cosmetics line, in an interview with her sister Kim Kardashian. “I was insecure about my lips, and lipstick is what helped me feel confident. And I feel like people could see that it’s authentic to me.”
She’s right, despite the fact that the authentic life she’s reflecting is a swimming-pooled, white-rugged, celebrity-partied, infinitely broadcast life cushioned by credit cards and the impossibility of failure. Her one-year-old daughter, Stormi, has a net worth of $8m, suggesting that Jenner has learnt from her own mother, who has been managing her children’s careers since they were born. In this family, the day you secure your first sponsorship deal is the day you become an adult. “I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything,” Jenner told Forbes of her many millions of followers on Instagram and Snapchat. They would have bought whatever she was selling. Because, of course, what she is really selling is herself.
With every purchase of Coconut lip liner and Yesss Girl gloss, fans buy access to a covetable life, one filled not just with crystal-studded tchotchkes but an ever-moving soap opera of babies and breakups, and theses about body image. Their family is a machine that makes more machines – reports on Jenner’s billionaire status drive readers to her website, and their cosmetics (all production and sales are outsourced – she runs the company from her phone) continue to sell out. She was born into a brand, and, using its built-in influencers, has franchised it to glittering success.
The key to Jenner, and the modern business model, is that word “authenticity”, a word that shifts in meaning according to whose shadow it stands in. For her, it means that, even though her sponsored Instagram posts are valued at $1m each, they read less like ads and more like the check-ins of a girl who would be sharing these selfies even if she were not promoting “all-new” setting powders. For her, it may not mean relatability: in that same interview with her sister, Kardashian asked what her last text message had said. It was a message to her security guard to buy her apples. One day she will post a swimsuit picture; the next, she’ll talk about her shyness about her body – the push-pull of exposure and its effect, and the commodification of such anxieties, have been part of her life since she was born. This is authenticity, albeit of the 1%.
The machine keeps whirring; her wild success inspires debate. Last year she stopped getting lip fillers. “Now that she’s made her fortune?” tweeted activist Brittany Packnett. “Those lip fillers came out. The fake tan disappeared … She’ll exploit black culture and black people for as long as it’s profitable, and then return to the comfort of whiteness.”
Both Jenner and the world’s richest woman, 65-year-old L’Oréal heir Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, are in the cosmetics industry. Which, for some, undermines any potential message of feminist empowerment. But it is possible to enjoy the expressive potential of makeup and also to wonder if both fortunes rely on female panic, a pursuit of uncatchable perfection. Both also profit from what’s described as the “lipstick index”, the observation that lipstick sales tend to be inversely correlated to economic health.
Jenner’s business thrives in bad times and benefits from controversy. So, if the critics continue poking, we can expect her billions to double by Christmas.
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Women can build positive body image by controlling what they view on social media
QuoteCeleste Barbour runs an account on Instagram where she parodies the images celebrities post on their own social media.
https://www.instagram.com/celestebarber/?hl=en
Social media use is often described as being problematic for mental health and body image. But is all social media use bad?
Our new research shows that viewing bodypositive Instagram content may actually improve women's body image, at least in the short term.
With more awareness, social media users might be able to curate a social media environment that promotes positive body image by unfollowing or blocking idealised accounts, and following more body positive accounts – possibly including more Celeste Barbour – on Instagram.
Chasing 'the ideal'
Body image concerns are common among young women and can have serious negative consequences. Most young women use social media daily, and researchsuggests that viewing idealised appearance-focused content is associated with poorer body image.
That is, following accounts like the Kardashians/Jenners, fitspiration, or influencers and friends posting glamorous bikini shots, is associated with women being more preoccupied with their appearance and less satisfied with their own bodies. As a result, women may engage in unhealthy dieting or exercise strategies to try and achieve "the ideal" they see in their social media feeds.
The rise of BoPo
Recently, a new trend has emerged on social media called "body positivity" (or "BoPo").
Body positivity aims to challenge narrow beauty ideals and encourage acceptance and appreciation of bodies of all shapes, sizes, and appearances. BoPo accounts such as @bodyposipanda (with over 1 million followers), have become particularly popular on Instagram.
A search for the hashtag #bodypositive returns almost 9 million posts, and #effyourbeautystandards (popularised by body positive activist Tess Holiday) generates almost 4 million posts.
A recent content analysis of body positive content on Instagram shows that these posts do indeed depict a broad range of body sizes and appearances. Content includes:
selfies of women proudly displaying their belly rolls and cellulite
before and after photos of "real" vs "edited" bodies, encouraging awareness of the common use of Photoshop on Instagram
self-compassion quotes
images focusing on body functionality (what the body can do rather than what it looks like).
But do women feel better?
Although body positive content is intended to make women feel better about their appearance, there had been no research confirming whether this was actually the case.
In our new study, 195 young women (18-30 years old) viewed either body positive content, idealised content with thin women, or appearance-neutral content taken from Instagram.
Before and after viewing this content we asked women to rate their mood, body satisfaction, and the extent to which they focused on their appearance (known as self-objectification).
We found that brief exposure to body positive Instagram posts resulted in improved body image and mood in young women, compared to idealised and appearance-neutral posts.
Women who viewed body positive posts felt more satisfied with their bodies, were more appreciative of the unique functions and health of their bodies, and had more positive mood. In contrast, those who viewed idealised Instagram posts had poorer body image and mood.
Although this study found positive results for body image, it also showed that body positive content can make women more focused on their physical appearance over other aspects of themselves.
This has been a criticism of body positive accounts in the past, with some suggesting that it may be better to focus on aspects of the self that are unrelated to physical appearance in order to improve well-being.
We need more research to determine the effects of body positive content over time and to explore what types of posts are more helpful than others.
Curate your own environment
Given the popularity of social media among young women, we need to understand the type of use that may be helpful or harmful for body image. Unlike traditional media formats (like magazines and televison), social media users are active content creators and have agency in what they post and view.
Interestingly, another recent study found that showing women humorous, parody Instagram content (@celestebarber) resulted in improved body image and positive mood, compared to viewing traditional thin celebrity posts.
So, maybe social media is not necessarily all bad? Rather, we need to be more mindful of the content we are consuming. Considered choices about who we follow, and the messages they promote, might actually help us feel better.
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How to Create Nonstop Content Like a Kardashian
Quote...
Somehow, in the span of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians tenure (KUWTKfor Pete’s sake), Kim Kardashian, and her sisters, became legitimate business women. I’m equal parts horrified and in awe.
I’m horrified because the pervasive image of all of the Kardashian-Jenners is one of excess- over sexualized and under intellectualized.
But. These women wrote the book on content creation. They’ve each gone so far as to have intense plastic surgery to keep people talking about them (c’mon, look at that photo above… Khloe and Kylie don’t even look like the same people anymore).
Khloe’s baby shower last year was sponsored. By Amazon. Seriously.
So, what can we learn from this? That we should all have plastic surgery and live in the limelight as “Influencers”? Absolutely not. I think from a brand perspective, we can take home a few key points.
Four Things We Can Learn About Content Creation From Kim Kardashian:
Create content that is valuable. Hey, Kim’s app Kim Kardashian: Hollywood may not be my bag, but millions actively engage with it. She launched it years ago as people wanted more and more access to her and monetarily captured some of her first fans that way.
Always have a call to action. Part of Kim being able to monetize people’s interest was to have something she could steer them to. The sell piece started subtle with the Kardashian/Jenners and they’ve continuously leveled up. If you ever watch shows like Ellen or Jimmy Fallon, the celebrities on the show are usually promoting something- their new movie, a new makeup line, a decor line at Target, etc.
Create streams of revenue around the content in unique ways. Last year Kim debuted ScreenShop that allows people to easily search online retail options of fashion in screenshots.
Leverage, leverage, leverage. Kim debuts a product, Kylie debuts a Kim-partnered product, Kanye debuts his fashion line by Kim wearing the clothes in paparazzi photos.
The Kardashians entered the reality tv scene around the same time as many others that we no long pay any attention to. What’s made them stand the test of time (and make hundreds of millions of dollars in the process) is their master-level content creation and seemingly endless ability to leverage. Other businesses can take note and learn from these strategies to grow revenues or increase visibility, even if our own personal values contrast with those of the Kardashians.
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Plastic surgery rates rise again: 18 MILLION Americans got procedures last year
QuoteDr Linder says one way that clearly shows the normalization of plastic surgery is the lack of shows on TV.
'Besides Botched on E! there's few to no shows on plastic surgery anymore,' he said.
'I used to get called every month to discuss plastic surgery on Extra or Access Hollywood. But they don't call anymore because it's so mainstream - there's no more "wow factor".'
Dr Rowe says that the impact of celebrities and social media - namely the Kardashians - on the rising numbers can't be ignored.
'Celebrities and social media have a dramatic impact,' he said. 'In 2019, we're looking at our faces and bodies more than ever before.
'Now you look at yourself hundreds of times a day in selfies, [patients] want to look like Kylie [Jenner], they want to look like Kim [Kardashian], so that's one aspect.'
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Kim Kardashian shows face covered in psoriasis
QuoteDespite appearances, not even Kim Kardashian is flawless.
The “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star has long documented her struggle with psoriasis, and it appears that her skin disease has spread to her face. Kim, 38, snapped a selfie before her family’s Sunday Service to show the red patches sprouting across her cheeks, chin and eyes.
Instagram
“Morning psoriasis,” she wrote over the photo.
Kim has been open about her treatment methods, trying just about everything from topical creams to UV light treatments, but flare-ups continue. In December 2018, Kim tweeted that she was finally considering prescription medication.
“I think the time has come I start a medication for psoriasis,” she wrote. “I’ve never seen it like this before and I can’t even cover it at this point. It’s taken over my body.”
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Meagan Good Addresses Old Halloween Photo Of Khloe Kardashian Walking Her On A Leash
QuoteMeagan Good recently addressed a disturbing photo of herself and Khloe Kardashian, which features a dog leash.
In light of all the Jordyn Woods and Kardashian drama, many took to social media to dig up dirt on the 34-year-old who accused Woods of breaking up her family. A Halloween picture was discovered of the socialite dressed as a pimp while holding onto leashes clasped around the necks of Meagan Good, her sister La'Myia Good and twins Malika and Khadijah Haqq.
An Instagram influencer known as Chaka Bars shared the photo with a caption warning Black men about the dangers of dating women like the Kardashians.
"Explain yourself. I know you will see this eventually. So basically you are just trying for hype for you next show @khloekardashian all Black men reading this, if you end up with a Kardashian you are lost to the Black community," he captioned his post.
"They will chew you up and spit you out & don’t expect us to take you back. Black women don’t allow this family to use you as props to make themselves relevant. They aren’t relevant to Black people," his post continued.
Good responded to the post, calling it a mistake that was made over 15 years ago when she was young.
“That one time on Halloween when you were young and dumb…and clearly didn’t think 15 years ahead lol smh. Well, mistakes were made," she wrote in response.
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The Judge In Blac Chyna’s Lawsuit Against The Kardashians Wants To Talk To Ryan Seacrest
QuoteThis past week, Randolph M. Hammock – the judge in Blac Chyna’s lawsuit against the Kardashians – said during a hearing that Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Rob & Chyna executive producer Ryan Seacrest “very likely” has “insider knowledge” about the abrupt cancellation of the KUWTK spin-off. And, he will soon have a decision about whether or not Seacrest should be deposed in the case.
“My instinct tells me he [Seacrest] has information about the cancellation of the show,” Hammock said. “You would think, as the executive producer, he would know something. He’s kind of an insider … and probably has a relationship with the Kardashians. It seems if anybody would have information, it would be Seacrest.”
Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna have seemingly come to an agreement in the custody battle over their daughter, Dream — find out what they said!
According to Radar Online, Hammock said he should have a decision in a few weeks.
Blac Chyna’s attorney, Lynne Ciani, claims that when Seacrest tweeted a congratulatory message to Rob Kardashian for the Season 2 renewal of Rob & Chyna, it proved that he knows what led to the show being canceled. Ciani also says that she has text messages between Rob and Ryan that support her claim.
As fans know, the show never had a second season, and Chyna believes that it was because Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Kris Jenner had the E! Network replace Rob & Chyna with Life of Kylie.
Seacrest’s attorney Crystal Jonelis argued that he does not have any information about Blac Chyna’s case against the Kar-Jenner family because he was just an executive producer in “name only.”
Jonelis also asked Judge Hammock to consider a “less intrusive” option for obtaining information, instead of deposing the American Idol host.
The judge said he does believe it is possible that Seacrest knows something since he has a prominent position in the entertainment world. And, he is inclined to grant the motion to compel Seacrest to testify, but he would probably limit the scope and time.
“I’m thinking two or three hours,” said Judge Hammock.
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Wrong thread, moved to Khloe thread
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Fan Or Not, The Kardashians Have You Trapped In Their Scandalous Web
QuoteSince 2007, the Kardashian family has been reeling in millions of viewers, eager and sometimes desperate, to get a closer look at the too-crazy-to-be-true lives of one Calabasas-based family. These women — along with their partners, children, and inner circle of friends— have arguably spawned more businesses, cultural moments, and franchises than any other group of people in the 21st century. As a unit, they’re an inescapable, flawlessly contoured juggernaut.
But being the most watched and talked-about family in America (that isn’t in the White House) comes with its own set of burdens. How do you stay relevant? How do you not only maintain a fully dramatic lifestyle, but also generate different drama each season, all with the same cast? (The core family has remained consistent — save for Caitlyn Jenner’s departure from the series in 2017.) In the first few months of 2019 alone, the family has faced more “scandals” and career-defining moments than most other celebrities do in a year: Travis Scott performed at the controversial Super Bowl and may have secretly proposed to Kylie Jenner while there. Kylie threw daughter Stormi Webster the most insane first birthday party. Kim Kardashian West announced that she and West are expecting a fourth child. Tristan Thompson cheated on Khloé Kardashian with Kylie’s now-excommunicated best friend (and former roommate) Jordyn Woods. Kourtney Kardashian might be dating Blink-182’s Travis Barker. Kylie is the youngest “self-made” billionaire to ever exist.
It’s only March.
As an avid consumer of all things Kardashian, I’ve come to notice that these huge “scandals” tend to go down before the season premiere of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the family’s long-running E! reality show. (March 31 marks the series’ 16th season debut. Let that sink in.) The go-to joke is that the devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder — but is it true? Is there a pattern for a Kardashian scandal? And does it work? There’s only one way to find out.
Much like the roll out of a new album, it’s becoming clear that every recent Kardashian "drop" follows a distinct, but loose, timeline: The first inkling of a rumor is leaked on a tabloid site, where it then enters the public sphere. Other outlets begin to pick up on it, and mass speculation turns the tiny spark of rumor into a full-blown fire. The sisters then take to social media to weigh in on said scandal, confirming and denying aspects of it that build a narrative. (For instance, with the Tristan-Khloé scandal, Khloé pivoted the narrative from Jordyn being a “homewrecker” to the 21-year-old model being a victim of Tristan’s infidelity.) Building on the original chatter, supplementary stories about the family come out, keeping the fire ablaze. This only lasts a few weeks, until the fire is extinguished when Keeping Up With the Kardashians premieres and the family introduces new plot lines for fans to pick up. They’re spoon-feeding us our daily intake of mindless gossip, and like Pavlov’s dog, we are left salivating for more — even if we don't actually watch the show. Four weeks of non-stop Kardashian news, and we’re sucked back into their lives. It’s insidious as it is brilliant.
Ground zero of most Kardashian scandals is TMZ. This tabloid site is notoriously the first to “break” any Kardashian news, based on inside sources and direct contact with someone who knows a lot more about the family than you or I. “Trustworthy” and “TMZ” may not be two words commonly associated with one another, but regardless of their sleazy headlines, the site’s almost always right. When it comes to news about this family, Harvey Levin’s Hollywood gossip site is the spigot from which the tap flows. As the New Yorker wrote in a 2016 exposé on TMZ, many celebrities come directly to the site with tips and, more importantly, an angle.
In fall of 2017, TMZ broke the news that Kylie was pregnant with a short post, late on a Friday afternoon, only two weeks after rumors dropped that Kim and Kanye were expecting their third child. Neither Kylie nor her sisters commented on the legitimacy of the claim. Instead, the notoriously public 20-year-old hid out at her house to experience her pregnancy in private — and Khloé Kardashian stepped up by announcing that she, too, was pregnant with her first child with Thompson. Kylie would not confirm her own pregnancy until Super Bowl Sunday — February 4, 2018 — three days after giving birth. On February 6, she uploaded the first photo of Stormi, which would become the most liked Instagram post until the "Egg."
And what was happening during all this pregnancy news? The tenth anniversary of the series. On October 1, after Kylie’s pregnancy was “leaked” to TMZ and speculation on the matter ran wild, the series premiered to higher-than-normal viewership.
Here’s the actual timeline:
September 6, 2017: TMZ reports KimYe is expecting third child, their first via surrogate.
September 22, 2017: TMZ leaks that Kylie is pregnant with Travis Scott.
September 26, 2017: US Weekly leaks that Khloé is pregnant with Tristan Thompson.
October 1, 2017: Season 14 of KUWTK premieres higher than average viewership, according to RatingGraph.com.
During this period of great speculation by the media (and fans at large), no one from the family confirmed or denied any of the rumors. According to a Forbes article from January 2018, season 14 ratings have been improving in tandem with the scandals. (The most watched KUWTK episode to date was Kim’s 2011 wedding to husband-of-72-days Kris Humphries, which brought in 10.5 million viewers.)
Let’s compare the timeline for Kylie’s pregnancy to the cheating scenario that just unfolded.
February 19, 2019: TMZ reports that Jordyn Woods made out with Tristan Thompson at a party. Khloé Kardashian immediately reacts on social media, cryptically commenting on a post about the rumor.
February 20, 2019: Kim Kardashian West is the first family member to officially react on social media.
February 26, 2019: Khloé Kardashian directly addresses the drama with a tweet.
March 1, 2019: Jordyn Woods goes on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table TalkFacebook show.
March 3, 2019: Khloé Kardashian blames, then apologizes to, Jordyn Woods.
March 4, 2019: Travis Scott reportedly caught cheating on Kylie Jenner.
March 31, 2019: Season 16 of KUWTK premieres.
Sure, pregnancy and infidelity are different types of drama, but when comparing the 2017 and 2019 timelines, a clear strategy emerges: both situations unfold a month before the season premiere of the show. But, in 2019, instead of greeting the rumors with silence, the family enters the ring to directly confirm or deny rumors on social media. As we’ve seen the past month, Khloé and Kim are liking, tweeting, and answering fans’ questions about the Tristan-Jordyn brouhaha. If something is true, they’ll weigh in. If something’s not, they will let 👏 us👏 know. And the whole rigamarole is whetting fans’ appetites for the new season of KUWTK. Which seems to be the whole point.
Since three is a trend, let’s look at one more major Kardashian moment from 2018, right in between Kylie’s pregnancy and Khloé’s cheating heartbreak: the sister feud. Remember when Kourtney, Kim, and Khloé decided that they all hated each other? And Kourtney went to therapy, and Kim made fun of her for it? And Kourtney’s therapist convinced her that her mother Kris was the root of all her issues in her adult life? This feels like a Fake Feud. Unlike the 2017 and 2019 scandals, this one was teased purely in promo clips and trailers for season 15 of the series. It was August 2018 — the baby news was all out in the open, Kanye West wasn’t making regrettable comments about Donald Trump yet, and a simple sibling feud was an easy, attention-grabbing narrative to latch onto. It worked. Outlets noted that Kim and Kourtney hadn’t been in photos together recently, and speculated that the relationship was degrading before our eyes. Kim essentially called Kourtney basic (the ultimate insult), and even their momager chose sides (#TeamKim).
Here’s how it went down:
August 3, 2018: KUWTK teases the feud.
August 22, 2018: The feud continues both on the show, and IRL. Kourtney and Kim bicker on Twitter after each episode airs.
September 27, 2018: Kourtney curses out Kim for being a clown and a snob.
October 31, 2018: Kim ends the feud.
After a nine episode arc, where the fight lubricated an otherwise dry season (that is until episode 12, when the first Tristan Thompson story broke), the hyped-up conflict ended. Kim and Kourt went back to privately resenting one other’s narcissism instead of hamming it up for the camera.
These three different timelines all involved the Kardashians' inner-circle; they all broke a month before a new season of the show; and they each made the public pay closer attention to the family again.
What’s interesting, though, is that the stories breaking right before a season premiere won’t actually be discussed in the series because of the way filming works. For example, season 16 can’t address Thompson and Woods at all because it was already filmed earlier this year, prior to the news breaks. It will presumably only set the stage for the more drama by hinting that Khloé wants to end things with Thompson, or even (I’m really hoping for this) revealing that Khloé actually has her own secret man. But this is producer-talk (hello, Chris Harrison and Ryan Seacrest: I am very good at this) — all of these timely scandals are meant to build long lead plotlines for the show. We can bet that season 17 will take a closer look at Khloé’s reaction to Jordyn kissing her man, and if Kourtney is really dating the drummer of everyone’s favorite teen angst band.
In reality TV, it’s more difficult to create these season-spanning plotlines and keep them interesting — unless, like The Bachelor, you’re constantly changing out the cast to keep things fresh. So, the Kardashians have improvised.
The drama isn’t exactly fake — it’s just strategic, if you know what you're really looking at.
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Kylie Jenner And Travis Scott’s Amazing Careers Are Getting In The Way Of Their Relationship
QuoteRemember how at the beginning of the month Pimp Mama and Demon Queen extraordinaire, Kris Jenner, teased Kylie Jenner‘s upcoming subplot on Keeping Up The Clock Ticking Down To The Apocalypse With The Kardashians when it was reported that Travis Scott was maybe cheating? Well honey, that storyline might have made it all the way from subplot to main stage, as sources are still whispering their demonic songs to TMZ who will listen to anyone with tea to spill on spawn from the hell-dimension. AKA: The Kardashians.
TMZ is hearing that Kylie and Travis are still not in a great place. After she accused him of cheating on her, Travis went ahead and did the good-millennial boyfriend thing to do when your girl is mad at you for getting DMs from other girls: he deleted his Instagram account. It looked like Kris Jenner had decided to leave her daughter’s relationship alone once Travis re-opened the page, but it seems she’s not done squeezing some drama out of her youngest child’s life. 10% of a billion dollars not enough for you, Kris?
Sources are saying that while the couple are still “in communication” since she blew up on him after finding “evidence” of cheating, they’re still only talking sporadically. The source says the relationship “isn’t even close to what it used to be.” Kylie’s trust issues with Travis have been firing on all cylinders while he’s been out on tour. And the source makes sure to let us know that Kylie is also busy and is not just sitting at home twiddling her thumbs for a billion dollars. She’s “preparing for product launches” and “most of her attention is focused on that and her daughter.”
The source does give us some hint that Kris will probably let Travis and Kylie be soon, as they mention that the couple is “confident they’ll be able to work things out” when Travis is on a break from his tour. So expect a reconciliation episode of KUWTK to be filmed when Travis is on break from his tour.
I wonder if Kris Jenner will ever tire of throwing people under the bus so that she can make a dollar? How many Birkin bags is a human soul worth, I wonder? Hopefully Kris will let Kylie film her make-up with Travis the same day she films her make-up with Jordyn Woods; don’t want to force Kylie to spend more time away from designing lip kits than necessary.
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Wrong thread, moved to Khloe thread
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Damn, that is one beautiful baby boy.
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Khloe
in Keeping Up With The Kardashians
Couldn't agree more.