Hating Kim Kardashian Is the Most Boring Thing You Can Do

So news breaks that Kim Kardashian was bound, gagged, threatened at gunpoint, and robbed in the Paris residence she was staying in for fashion week. We're told "she begged for her life." That she pleaded with her attackers, who were masquerading as police, to spare her because "she has babies at home." Reports surface she was terrified they were going to rape her.

And the public response is sickening.

Of course there's the intrigue. Minute-by-minute updates in the tabloids, entertainment news programs offering up the most horrifying experience in this woman's life as some sort of salacious drama.

It feels kind of gross, but it's also par for the course. Kim has built an empire on commodifying her life. She is a public figure whose currency is human drama.

What truly makes the stomach turn is something else, something darker that's largely playing out in the comments section of news articles and Twitter. Drips of vitriolic bile follow Kim around the internet. But in the wake of this robbery, it seems the flood gates are well and truly open.

We're to believe Kim either paid people to rob her for publicity, or she deserved it. And there are already enough think pieces out there about why both of these responses are fucked up—how they reflect some dangerous attitudes about women and fame.

What isn't being said is just how dull and expected these responses are. Of course if we listen to the mutterings of a dumb planet, we'll hear Kim Kardashian had it coming. The internet rages at everything that isn't them. It formalises, intellectualises, and amplifies all the bullshit humans have rattling around in our silly, proto-neanderthal brains. All that unfocused rage and twisted obsession with status, apprehension of women, and weird sexual tension that underpins so much anti-Kim sentiment. Of course that's what came out.

Why you hate Kim Kardashian isn't interesting. You're angry that she's rich. Sure, it sucks that some people in the world are obscenely wealthy while others are really poor. Unfortunately, Kim played no role in designing the modern global economy that led to these vast disparities. She was not present at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, nor did she repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.

Kim Kardashian is not a political figure, she's just a celebrity who made millions marketing things that you're buying. Or your daughter is buying, or your friends, or Sharon from accounting who plays that Kim Kardashian: Hollywood app obsessively.

To argue that Kim didn't earn her fortune—the money that bought her all the jewellery that got stolen—is boring too. What do you mean she didn't earn it? Who do you think earned it?

You could say genius marketers, but she's the one paying their salaries. And without the Kim Kardashian brand they could never hock all those cheap handbags, skinny tea, and boring iPhone games. People want to buy what she's selling. There is no trick.

Maybe your boring hatred of Kim Kardashian is more of a moral abhorrence. You hate that she rose to fame off the back of a sex tape. Of course you do. Raking people over the coals for things they did in their early 20s is fresh. Holding a grudge against a someone for a sex tape, leaked without their permission nearly a decade ago, makes total sense.

And I can't think of anything more exciting than reading another comment about how Kim Kardashian is "disgusting." Does anyone else want to offer up an opinion about how her posing for magazines naked, or semi-naked—or even if she's fully clothed but you can just make out the edges of the female form if you squint—is "actually destroying society"?

This sect of hardcore Kim haters has always been kind of surprising. Have guys with seven likes or less on their Facebook profile photos always been the exclusive arbiters of morality in society?

But what's just as boring is another "In Defence of Kim Kardashian." She really doesn't need it. She has a massive fortune, two kids, a loving husband, a strong family, and a massive fanbase. What's needed is a bit of self-awareness. Can you hear yourselves?

There's so much energy being poured into screaming at this woman in 140 characters or less because… I'm not sure why. Because she's succeeded where you failed? Because she has money and you want more money?

Maybe you need a new hobby.

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