Pop Culture and Politics

For these two celebrity portfolios I decided to compare them as they have overlapping of spikes and drops due to certain instances in their careers. Kim Kardashian is probably one of the most known and followed celebrity on the planet, from her families reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, her many business and her relationships. Kanye West also a very popular rapper, who expanded his empire into clothing and shoe design, and often seen as very controversial.

Firstly I will mention Kims followers in May 2018, where she gains 187,999 followers for the month, which isn’t considerably high for Kim and is seen more as a slight dip. I find this interesting as in this month she went to the White House and spoke to President Trump for prison reform. Kim being seen as doing something more important than her everyday work getting little recognition did baffle me, and what was even more surprising is that most articles about this spoke about her outfit over anything else. This is a theme for Kim as a lot of work she does get undermined or brushed over.

July 2018 for both Kim and Kanye saw losses in their follower counts with Kim loosing 1.6Million and Kanye loosing over 600 thousand. This came after Kanye West was a guest on the popular comedy show in America, Saturday Night Live, where Kanye starts to promote President Trump while wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat. While this was clearly a message not many people expected, it left a lot of people, particularly the black community, unhappy with Kanye. I understand why Kanye had such a loss of followers, but Kims only connection to the message was that she was married to Kanye at the time, and never once did she herself endorse that message. Here we see Kim taking a bigger lose for something Kanye did.

In October 2018 both Kim and Kanye attend the White House for a meeting with President trump this was set up to discuss prison reform in Chicago, where Kanye is from. Again, this cause major back lash for the two, causing dips in both their follower counts. Kim gaining 585, 929 followers, and Kanye gaining 209,505 followers, both considerably low for them.

Kanye has a major spike in 2020, where he decides that he was running for President this gains him over 1.3 million followers on twitter. While it was not made clear at the time if Kim voted for Kanye, she made many tweets support Joe Bidden and congratulating his win, making it clear she was in full support of him and not Kanye in this election.

One thing to two away from comparing these two is that Kanye is very spontaneous with what he does politically, and it can be hard to guess his next move or intentions. Kim seems to want to be someone part of political change, but because she is seen as an influencer people often discourage her. Kim clearly has a passion for prison reform as she is part of many campaigns helping wrongfully committed prisoners and is even began studying law, as she passed the baby bar in California state. She often relates her choice of studying law back to her father, who famously was the lawyer for OJ Simpson.