Thu Sep 10, 2020, 05:06 AM

How 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' Changed Everything

NYT Editorial, Sept. 9, 2020

This week, the Kardashian-Jenner family announced that after 20 seasons, their namesake reality TV show, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” would come to an end in 2021.

When the program first aired in 2007, the leading family was known for its late patriarch, an attorney who represented O.J. Simpson; the Olympian who married in; and a daughter whose personal life was exposed in a pornographic video leak. But within years of the premiere, the women of the family and their matriarch “momager” became, in their own right, some of the most famous and influential people in the world.

For the show’s loyal fans, its final season means the end of an era of entertainment and access to the stars’ personal lives, which the show has documented in sometimes unsparing detail. Even for non-watchers, the show’s impact may be felt; after all, the influence of “K.U.W.T.K.” on celebrity, beauty, entrepreneurship and status can be seen on magazine covers and social media, in shopping malls and e-commerce, and on people’s faces.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/style/kardashians-ending-takeaways.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Ever since the the concept was ushered into this country by Survivor on May 31, 2000, I have maintained that "Reality TV" is a contradiction in terms! Start by pouring KUWTK, a show that is phony about a family of phonies, into your mixing bowl. Then add FUX Noos and Mark O'Dabeest Zuckerberg. Continue stirring, more and more aggressively, so that your brain cells fall out from the strenuousness of your physical endeavor, and presto! You have all the ingredients for 1) Erosion of Agreement Regarding What Constitutes Truth/Reality, 2) Growing Distrust of American Institutions, Including Established Media Outlets (Newspapers, Print Magazines, ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS, etc), 3) Increase in Number of Conspiracy Theories and Believers in Such, 4) A Growing X-Files "Trust No One" Public Mentality, 5) A Culture of Grievance, 6) An Upsurge in Paranoia, 7) Large-Scale Breakdowns of Cohesive Social Order and Norms, and finally, 8) The Rise of a Demagogue with Authoritarian/Dictatorial Tendencies.

Congratulations: Your American Suicide Pie is Oven-Ready!

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6 replies	Author	Time	Post
How 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' Changed Everything (Original post)	Proximate Centurion	Sep 2020	OP
Two great DU minds making the same point at the same time (I'm not the other one!)	Squinch	Sep 2020	#1
PC Rules	Proximate Centurion	Sep 2020	#2
Political correctness?	Squinch	Sep 2020	#3
Personal Computer!	Proximate Centurion	Sep 2020	#4
I have no idea what you are talking about.	Squinch	Sep 2020	#5
if you want to know how Trump could have become "president" of America	Skittles	Sep 2020	#6