Kim Kardashian is Terrible At Snapchat
If you’re following Kim Kardashian on Snapchat (and you should be if you aren’t, so how dare you), you’re likely coming to terms with the obvious: Kim Kardashian is just like us.
And I don’t mean in an Us Weekly “They carry baskets, too!” sense of the term. I mean that between her total mom joke about giving away Kylie’s lip kits for free (#LOL) and posting videos of she and Kanye West dancing in a car to the pregnancy scare, Kim Kardashian is showcasing the human side of herself we seem to have forgotten in the wake of nude selfies, reality television, and excessive wealth. (Not to mention she tried to bring back ombré hair in 2016, too.)
Which could be a terrific PR move, admittedly. For all we know, Kim could be a Snapchat genius, fronting like she’s technology illiterate despite having a billion-dollar app and a book dedicated exclusively to the selfies she takes with her phone. But at the same time, when Kim is good at something (see: taking photos of herself and/or being famous), she doesn’t shy away from it. If she were a creative mastermind who used Snapchat as her canvas, she’d embrace the title accordingly — and we’d be writing about that. But instead, she’s taking selfies, narrating the ins and outs of her day, and recording Kanye without him knowing. In short, she is using Snapchat like a regular human because that’s exactly what she is.
And that’s something I think we need to be reminded of — and why her social media campaign to put her awkwardness on display couldn’t be better.
“Are you guys following me on snap? LOL” she tweeted when she first got Snap. “I’m not telling u to follow me lol since I hate when people tell me who to follow”
“Buuut if you are following me, do you like my snaps?” she continued. “I feel like everyone has a snap personality.”
And this is my favourite part:
“My Instagram is definitely my expression and what I love to show the world. My snap is like my silly sarcastic alter ego. Twitter is where I can freely talk and have conversations with anyone and everyone! I feel such a connection on Twitter. And my app is a mix of it all! I can write blogs, live stream, share bts pics and really show u guys what I’m passion about!”
“I love social media! #SocialMediaAppreciationPost”
And that, my friends, is humanization in action.
Back in March, Kim’s nude selfie morphed into a crusade about the rights to express one’s self — and also how not to react to someone’s Twitter post. (Tip: if you aren’t into somebody’s photos, you can unfollow them, and then carry on blissfully with your life.) And then in the crossfire of one-liners and vitriol and think pieces, Kim-Kardashian-as-human-being failed to be a factor in anything. Instead, she became a target or a punchline or a mouthpiece for a larger, more pressing cause, and we forgot that Kim is a human with feelings and thoughts and insecurities and flaws just like anybody else. So, since we (as a people) didn’t show any signs of remembering any time soon, Kim opted to help us by putting herself — like, her “I literally don’t know how to use Snapchat” self — out there. Which has been as refreshing as it’s been important.
And not just because we’re all kind of bad at Snapchat (I literally learned how to use filters two weeks ago, and I’m still nervous about them). No: Instead, Kim K has parlayed our discussion about her rights and her body into a casual conversation about social media, on which her persona is completely transparent and she’s just there, ombré and all, chatting about what she’s up to that day. It’s so normal, and it’s so human, and it’s so #relatable — but less because of her day-to-day activities (which are less normal, admittedly), and more because she’s exposing her inner nerd and vulnerabilities. We’re getting to watch Kim master Snapchat, and it’s hilarious because her learning curve looks exactly like all of ours.
So I’m into this era of Kim-Kardashian-as-human-being. I’m ready for us all to recognize that behind the perfect facade and reality TV editing is a regular person, who — like me, and probably you — still hasn’t figured out how long Snapchat videos are, or that regular selfies should have an Emoji or two (because otherwise just upload that shit to Instagram). I’m ready for ombré in 2016, and for mom jokes at the hands of one of the world’s most famous ones. Kim Kardashian: Human, you guys. I feel so passionate I could Snap about it.
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