Kanye West

I'd hate to be the person who has to wade through the direct messages in Kanye's Parler inbox

rob otm

Key context here is that Candace Owens’ husband George Farmer is the CEO of Parler. https://t.co/guF9ByFyLQ

— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) October 17, 2022

Did not know this. I mean, why would I? But suddenly the mega/maga grift comes full circle.

this explains a lot

hard not to conclude these ideas are spreading and sticking in unpredictable ways

― rob, Monday, October 17, 2022 10:09 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Otm. Twitter is absolutely rife with white supremach and antisemitism right now. Have no idea why Elon Musk thinks Twitter is too heavily moderated because white supremacists pop up like mushrooms in every reply thread.

pessimistically, this will shine a big spotlight on something that only real diehard assholes knew about before. I also just find it generally ominous that someone as famous as him is embracing far-right extremism & racism & advocating genocide so publicly

i don't think parler is quite that niche & the republican party is already pretty much there as a whole

Isn’t truth social splitting this market? Will those two merge?

Gotta admire the hustle of Candace Owens offloading her husband's useless company. Whatever he's paying for it is too much obv. Always Be Conning.

trump has been saying "you all know the n-word, right?" at his rallies. then, after some people in the crowd say what the n-word is and some of the crowd is thrilled that they get to be even more racist in public than before, he says that the n-word is "nuclear" and tries to connect it to putin.

he also did this on television in march and in april of this year

Jesus Christ

yeah, there have been some recent op-eds that are like "btw trump has been making a joke out of the n-word at his rallies and no one is saying anything about it because the world sucks too badly in other ways, as well"

yikes

It's hard to get useful stats on Parler, but as tipsy alludes, it doesn't seem to have that big of an active user base: <2 million from one site I looked at (Twitter, among the least popular major soc med, has something like 300m). Not sure how that compares to Truth.

I agree this might not do much to increase users and it sounds like an unsurprisingly dumb decision, but I worry that Kanye appeals to both more and different kinds of people than, say, Candace Owens. idk, I'd love to find out that I'm worrying over nothing, but sometimes I think about how much of this new far right movement started with gamergate and I feel dizzy

I've heard from people who have actually signed up for those sites out of curiosity that Parler and Truth Social are like half bots

I think the alt right proliferates well enough on mainstream social media tbh.

that is very true

really nothing distinguishing this guy from every other right wing grifter shitbag anymore

Would really love to see this guy's next album get almost completely ignored by most outlets (like all of Ryan Adams' recent attempts to come back), but I know that's not going to happen.

no, they'll still be the biggest thing for like a week then no one will ever listen to them again like his last few

sure, but I'd like to skip even that week

otm

This, uh, is unlikely to end well for anyone, including the namesake of this thread.

no, they'll still be the biggest thing for like a week then no one will ever listen to them again like his last few

Not if he continues to put out albums exclusively to weird stem devices like he did with DONDA 2. Was there even much of a discourse at all for that one?

I even forgot that DONDA 2 was this year.

so did Kanye

maybe if he disappears for a few years but nah if he puts out an album next year I feel like it'll go down about as well as R. Kelly's last one

So his next album will be a Christmas album?

That's the last thing R Kelly put out.

Donda 3 antisemitic christmas album stem player available exclusively via parler

"White Christmas" may hit differently

Is anyone on Parler going to care about anything non-political that Kanye says on there?

No. The right wing has nothing but disdain for music, fashion, and design — the things he says are his passions.

The mainstream American right wing I should say. There are a handful of reactionary dandies out there I guess, but they’re the fringe.

Milo Yiannopoulos to thread

Exactly, Kanye is for some reason aspiring to be that tier of celebrity.

well, the right wing is good at some kinds of art--movies, for instance

Stand up comedy

It'll be run about as well as one of his album rollouts, it seems.

^^^ Toldja. Parler literally just gave away for free what he was buying. pic.twitter.com/OhvN7DraQ0

— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³°¹ (@th3j35t3r) October 17, 2022

Just saw the hashtag Klanye, which may be old but was new to me and made me chuckle a lil.

Was there even much of a discourse at all for that one?

not really because it didn't get a wide release and it was so obviously unfinished that i think people were expecting he'd keep tweaking it & eventually release it for real but that never happened

i pirated it but didn't get as far as double clicking any of the files

Thought this was an interesting read

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/17/damon-young-kanye-west-is-boring-too/

This is the key paragraph from that piece.

Sure, Kanye (who legally changed his name to “Ye” but will stay “Kanye” here for continuity’s sake) says and does things that are dumb, ignorant, ill formed, inaccurate, unsound, unhinged, untethered, misogynistic, anti-Black and antisemitic. But — and admittedly it feels odd to say “but” after that litany of defects — I think we sometimes conflate platform and influence. Despite his cultural ubiquity, I just don’t see how Kanye, in 2022, is still influential enough to sway or even slightly nudge people’s opinions on … anything other than Gap Inc.’s annual report. No one takes him seriously — not even the bad faith right-leaning platforms and people desperate, breathless to amplify him, ecstatic that finally someone with a Q Score above hell is on their side. Their relationship is predicated on symbiotic thirst. He’s thirsty for someone, anyone, to validate his current bluster, and they’re thirsty for Black mouthpieces to validate their hate.

On one hand yeah, he's not commanding legions of followers at this point. But on the other, having anyone as famous as him out there getting attention for saying the kind of shit he's saying still serves as some kind of validation and encouragement for other people who want to say those things or who already are saying them online or wherever.

he's lost even the fans who were stanning albums as bad as donda

having anyone as famous as him out there getting attention for saying the kind of shit he's saying still serves as some kind of validation and encouragement for other people who want to say those things or who already are saying them online or wherever

Yes, but the point is just as with the former president, there's zero conversion factor. People who agree with Kanye West about race, or the pernicious influence of the jooooos, or whatever, thought that already. Indeed, they got there before him. He's not a thought leader, he's a thought follower. So yeah, he's a famous bigot. Big deal. This is America. We have plenty of famous bigots already. He can go stand over there *vague arm wave* with all the others. Ted, this is Kanye. Kanye, Ted.

While I hope that columnist’s hunch is right (about Kanye not being a “danger to the larger culture”), I wish he had written more about these angles:

Kanye used to be my favorite artist and still might actually be because his old music is my favorite music. And I have been trying, for several years, to find the word(s) to encapsulate what he stirs in me now when I’m reading or watching one of his interviews or attempting to decipher one of his tweets (…) How does his behavior affect how we assess his old music? Are we over- (or under-) stating the danger of his words? How should we react to people who are both mentally ill and causing harm?

I definitely have some thoughts in response to those rhetorical questions, but it would be interesting to read an actual Kanye fan wrestle with them (not just raise and drop them).

(tbc, I have thoughts about rhetorical questions #2 and #3… but not #1, only a fan to begin with can get into that one.)

i don't think it really changes anything much about how i feel about his old, actually worthwhile music, its strengths & weaknesses are still the same.

like it's just a depressing reminder that he's like this now rather than anything worse