Hacker Cinema
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
2007 · TV series · 42 min episodes · 20 seasons
Created by Eliot Goldberg, Ryan Seacrest
A peek inside the exploits and privileged private lives of the blended Kardashian-Jenner family, including sisters Kim, Kourtney and Khloé.
1 negative4 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
This is a little bit of a tangent. The specific case of the Kardashians is unimportant to the overall point, which is that there are reasons to be interested in things that we perceive as frivolous or vapid. When hundreds of millions of people are interested in something, it's almost never frivolous or vapid when you learn more about it.
> I don't think she believes in falsehoods about the Kardashians.
I can't comment on your girlfriend. You're obviously correct about her. That doesn't mean she's a typical fan or typical media consumer.
The things most people don't realize about them are:
- they're intelligent, talented, and capable people;
- absolutely nothing on their shows is any more real than what happens on a scripted TV show, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians is literally scripted;
- they don't personally make many of the decisions about their brands (what they post on Instagram or Twitter, what products their brands release, etc.)
> They know it's vapid and dumb. People seek escape and fun.
I agree. I don't think most fans of reality shows think the shows are important or admire the people on them. That's partly my point: like crypto, we may look down on all the people involved without realizing that there is a lot more than meets the eye.
> Saying people watch them merely because they are being fooled is a bad take and often used in politics.
I agree.
We've been tracking it for decades now.
- reality TV star as president of the United States: check
- mountains of garbage: check
- The movie 'Ass' (The Kardashians): check
and probably many more bits and pieces.
My better half primarily watches E! (Keeping up with the Kardashians), HGTV, Food Network, etc. All have full episodes online, but require the cable subscription login dance. Even if I could get the live sports I wanted, I don't foresee these "middle America" networks and shows embracing cord cutting anytime soon.
The "sensible argument" is that ads allow small "content creators" to "monetize" their content.
I think this is mostly a fallacy. I know of many developers, bloggers, musicians, film makers, etc who put their content out into the public domain because that's what they want to do. There are "monetizing" opportunities above and beyond advertising that seem to work well, but the lowest common denominator, and by inference, the lowest form of media, are generally ad-driven.
People argue with "yeah, but what about game of thrones and silicon valley". I reply with "yeah, but what about keeping up with the kardashians, jersey shore and the latest CSI franchise".
The gold / dross ration is 1 / 99. We can easily lose most of the ad driven content in the world without losing entertaining content.
I may be a statistical aberration though. I'm obviously not the "target audience".
> the 50 year old probably doesn't know who the Kardashians are. How can you not know who the Kardashians are? What's wrong with you?
I know it's just a throw-away example, but I'd like to point out "Keeping up with the Kardashians" has been on TV continuously since 2007. The more prominent Kardasihan sisters themselves are all 34-36 years old.
I don't think anyone in their 50s really would have a hard time relating to someone in their mid-30s, nor be completely flummoxed by a TV show that's been available for 10 years.
More to the point--pop culture is popular culture and seeps its way through all age groups. A better example would be a music artist that's popular only with teenagers or some niche group. I couldn't name a single artist popular with teens/tweens now.