Today's 'Keeping Up' Economy
Why I'll keep DeKonstructing the Kardashians even though I'm Tired
Welcome to the Kardashian Kolloquium substack, DeKonstructing the Kardashians.
If you are here, it means you liked my social media material enough to pay for more. Know this: I am really humbled by your investment in this project. My dream, all along, has been to write. Without you, I’d just be hollering into the void.
Soon enough you’ll be semi-regularly reading about my contempt for TikTok and its terrifying algorithm (I promise Facebook isn’t paying me), but for the purposes of this intro, I can admit that my early era on the app was golden. I gained a six-figure-sized following in mere months —the dopamine flood induced by all those notifications felt fantastic —and back then I still blissfully believed that most of my followers understood my mission.
There was hate, too, of course, but it wasn’t yet wearing me down.
One woman in particular did NOT get Kardashian Kolloquium. She didn’t even appear angry (as so many people quickly become upon being put off by something they’ve seen online). This woman was plainly puzzled, and left comments beneath my “deep dives” asking:
What is the point? Why are you doing this?
Thanks to its “stitch” and “reply” features, TikTok catalyzes reactions: one “take” begets another from someone else, and so on.
And anytime a creator made a video citing my ideas, I’d again encounter that Confused Commenter — the same woman — in their comment sections. She was still struggling to find answers to a question that seemed to have become, for her, an existential matter.
We’ll get to my appreciation of her bewilderment in a minute.
But for now, I have to confess: over the course of months following that golden era, burnout has seriously embittered me. Remember, in his controversial Netflix special, when Dave Chappelle used the word “brittle” to describe post-Stonewall queers? Among plenty of things about the special that both provoked and troubled me was his use of such a specific and unique word. Brittle.
Since the end of 2021 at least, I’ve been burdened by a growing suspicion about myself: I’m brittle. Maybe not in any way that had to do with Chappelle’s harsh diction, though it had been a helpful descriptor to rediscover. I am sapped of vitality and easily upset.
Why?
Many of you already know. Major names in establishment media who Keep Up with my account have mimicked my theories and citations in their own work without extending any credit or capital. Other gatekeepers have been bullies. Certain edgelord-y meme accounts saw the embarrassing earnestness of my intellectual curiosity about The Kardashian family as an opportunity to replace virtue-signaling with nihilism-signaling and posted mocking memes (ultimately exposing their own failure to comprehend the numerous ways we were ideologically aligned). It sometimes seems as though a faction of my social media followers mostly like me because they think I’m serving them some special form of “celebrity tea,” one fortified by big words, thereby justifying how much pop culture they consume. Conversely, other critics seem to fear that my application of fancy-sounding French theory to the Kardashians is inherent flattery of the family’s intelligence, and that would be BAD because The Kardashians are DUMB, and we can’t ever FORGET IT.
Not to mention the inherent hellscape that is life online: invasive surveillance and relentless rhetoric and miserable division and constant distraction and coercive consumption, all at a head-spinning pace. We swim in it like Marshall McLuhan’s fish that doesn’t know it’s in water. The more I figure out about the way it all works, the angrier I feel every time I open my phone.
Sure, notifications probably still trigger dopamine in me, but it’s dopamine tinged with abiding dread. I realize that my once-cute, mega-Aquarian IRL vibes have deteriorated by the day. I face friends, family, and even work with…yep. Brittleness. Something has to change.
Where to start? Well, I can honestly say…I remain completely endeared by Confused Commenter.
Shouldn’t I follow that feeling?
She just doesn’t get why I study The Kardashians, and she honestly wants to understand. Fair enough. It’s my job as a writer to convince her.
Why do I feel that the Kardashians’ masterful relationship with media should matter to us all?
DeKonstructing the Kardashians will be an ongoing answer to such questions.
Here’s the introductory explanation, one I have made many times before:
The Kardashian family is historic, influential, emblematic.
Jean Baudrillard conceptualized Disneyland in his theories of postmodernism, Roland Barthes singled out the social significance of Professional Wrestling, and countless writers have waxed poetic about the metaphor for America that is the city of Las Vegas. It shouldn’t be so weird and wrong to assert that the Kardashians, too, can be a cultural fractal. Better yet: their mass appeal makes them the perfect Trojan Horse for teaching critical thinking in a media landscape that has all but annihilated it.
Said simply: I seek to establish, today, the larger cultural conversation I am convinced we’ll be having in twenty years, and I hope to invite more people into it.
(I’m also not the first one to try this: Dr. Meredith Jones organized a whole symposium devoted to interdisciplinary Kardashian inquiry, but the public remains resistant)
That conversation, which I personally prefer to root in postmodern philosophy and media theory (though The Kardashians can be a prism for just about every aspect of modern American life), completely converges with considerations of the hellscape I described earlier.
(The tyranny of surveillance capitalism, the at-times agonizing struggle to discern between real and fake, the infinitude of self-reflexivity made so possible by modern media, that John Berger notion of “manufacturing glamor,” and so much more…)
This blog will, at best, feel like the stylish and stimulating parties I — as a chronically online suburban adolescent — dreamed of one day being invited to: generative discourse, a bright undercurrent of urgency, a cool sense of community.
More realistically, it’ll feel like skimming the unhinged notebook accidentally left out for everyone to see when the party’s host (me) smokes too much weed, gets socially anxious, and skips out on the night: recaps, research bits, scribbled notes, and occasional personal anecdotes. If a better glimpse at my hodge-podge of ideas helps you think about things in new ways, then it’ll be worth the face-palm.
Even as I write all this, a fresh feeling has begun to break the brittle one I’ve been so bummed about all year: this writing journey has potential to feel really good. Something already feels healing about letting words flow, uninhibited by caption character limits or fear of judgment or paranoia of theft. Is it cringe to call it “healing?”
That’s the thing about owning your own space and questioning the conventions of the internet. Do I really care about whether my enthusiasm for making connections is “cringe?”
What I really care about is that I make Confused Commenter proud! More than that, I hope you enjoy this space, and I want to encourage you to participate in it too. The connections are the best part.
Thank you again for joining me here.
substack is a great medium for you because engaging with the posts requires an investment of time, they can't just be "scrolled" past - can't wait to see what you come up with :)
Finally got a moment to subscribe and start reading. So glad I did! I’m proud of you for sticking to this and not letting the people who don’t get it win! I love your writing and analysis, it keeps me interested instead of jaded with modern media—well, I may still be jaded, but at least I better understand *why* now. ❤️❤️❤️