Why hating Kim Kardashian is played out

I am not a viewer of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I have never once played the Kardashian mobile game nor ever laid eyes on their social media accounts before researching for this article. In short I am not a fan of Kim Kardashian. Would I disparage her? Not likely.

Bashing Kim Kardashian and the other cast members of her popular reality television show is so commonplace that it is as easy and cheap of humor as making a joke about bathrooms. Not only is it overdone but it seems as though everyone accepts the premise of these statements and criticisms without face. Society hates the Kardashians. Kim in particular. Common criticisms are that they are famous for nothing (or famous for being famous), contribute nothing to society, are dumb, bland, plastic, fabricated, or even downright immoral and dangerous. I believe that not a single one of these things are true. If anything, Kim Kardashian may just be one of the smartest business women around today.

Reality television is a huge industry. It requires massive amount of support and dedication (often upwards of twelve hours of filming a day) for periods lasting as long as five months at a time. In an industry that has only been around in the cultural conscious since the inception of Survivor some decade and a half ago and that is evolving rapidly, Keeping Up with the Kardashians has managed to remain relevant and popular. That takes incredible adaptively and a deep understanding of American interest, culture, and expectations. It’s business. A stellar example of Kardashian’s business is her foray into the mobile market, where quality games are few and far between (a product of their typically cheap or free nature, reliant on invasive ads or poorly utilized microtransactions). She released Kim Kardashian: Hollywood that contained fair and optional microtransactions and is projected to have made upward of two hundred million dollars. This demonstrates her knowledge of the popularity associated with technology far better than her tweets and Instagram photos, both of which receive thousands of likes and reposts due to her follower count of over twenty-four million on Twitter alone. The latter alone would’ve been impressive. People care about the Kardashians. The cast isn’t famous for being famous. The cast is famous because people enjoy their personalities and the storylines that are fabricated around them – no different than the rise of YouTube and podcast celebrities. The only difference is that they are praised as ushering in a new medium and someone like Kim Kardashian is relentlessly ridiculed.

So what is the real reason people take such offense to Kim Kardashian? They believe that is their business to disparage her based off her sex tape. They believe that her decision to document her own sexual experience was released by the pornographic film company Vivid Entertainment. Their logic is that a third party making a unilateral decision, which she fought against and took to court, against her subjects her to blame and somehow devalues her. That’s the only real reason why people dislike her.