A Social Media Post Probably Isn’t Worth A Thousand Words. Here’s Why.
The Ram’s win was not the only thing people were talking about on Superbowl Sunday. Kanye West and Pete Davidson were also a hot topic of discussion after Kanye posted a series of Instagrams targeting Pete - or as Ye referred to him as ‘Skete’ - Davidson.
The feud between rapper Kanye West and comedian Pete Davidson seemingly began after Davidson started dating West’s former wife Kim Kardashian. But it wasn’t just their new relationship that West was upset about.
Prior to Davidson’s and Kardashian’s relationship, Kanye West made an appearance performing on Saturday Night Live in 2018. After his performance, he stayed on stage and delivered a politicized speech expressing his support for Donald Trump.
Many people largely attributed his questionable speech to his 2016 diagnosis of bipolar disorder and recent declarations about how he was the “real him” when he was “off the meds.”
In an SNL skit responding to Kanye not taking his medication, Davidson joked “Take em, I’m on them, they’re great,” along with “Being mentally ill isn’t an excuse to act like a jackass.”
Keep in mind that Pete Davidson is a comedian who has coped with his own trauma and battles with mental health through comedy, and has a dark sense of humor which may be controversial depending on who the audience is.
What a lot of us forget though, is that celebrities are as much human as the rest of us. Their struggles and emotional breakdowns are not for our amusement.
Although, it didn’t seem like Davidson’s intentions were malicious, and whether he was out of line commenting about Kanye’s mental health is up to you to decide.
However, it does go to show how celebrities’ lives and their real suffering become a topic of public entertainment. Everyone has some kind of opinion, when in reality none of us have the slightest clue what people are going through or their histories.
This is especially true when that celebrity is Kanye West, and in the midst of the Super Bowl, and he starts posting outlandish content on social media. People are going to turn it into entertainment.
With social media playing as large of a role in society as it does today, we have to acknowledge how it can be harmful to everyone, even celebrities. Having been in the spotlight for as many years as Kanye has, we can’t begin to imagine the kind of toll constant comments and criticism would take on your emotional wellbeing.
Were the posts slightly unwarranted? Yes. Do we have any idea what goes on behind the scenes in Kanye’s life, or even Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson? No. So we can’t assert judgment or make implications about a story we only know just the surface of.
In one of Kanye’s posts that day that he has since deleted, he captioned a picture speaking on now trending Davidson’s SNL skit saying, “This boy thought he could get away with performing this sketch for the team that wrote this for him. This is not harassment. This is payback.”
This may not have been a mature approach. But what it does seem like after reading his other post, where he mentioned wanting to be a family with Kim and his children again, is that he is just someone who is going through a hard time.
Social media has provided extraordinary benefits and opportunities for us as a human race but conversely, it has also done a lot of harm. Not to say social media itself is responsible for some of the harm that has been done, but it has given users the platform to do so from behind a screen.
A good rule of thumb is to not post anything where you wouldn’t be okay with people knowing it was you who posted it. It doesn’t make anyone, even celebrities, feel good to be criticized or torn apart online. Something to keep in mind, especially as Yik Yak - an anonymous Twitter-like app - trends across college campuses, and here at Elon.
Photo by Unsplash.