Regardless of whether you love them or love to hate them, the Kardashian-Jenner dynasty has completely taken over the entire E! network and our brains.
Since 2007, viewers have struggled to keep up with the Kardashian’s sex tapes, lip injections and infamous family feuds.
Now, fresh off the heels of their 12th season premiere, viewers are getting a taste of the sisterly clan with new truck loads of drama making for a season of pure gif-able potential.
However, all the hype around the famous family begs the question: why?
The truth is keeping up with the Kardashians is harder than it looks.
Breaking the family down, you have a recently transitioned transgender parent, a money hungry momanger, a former porn star, an unmarried mother of three, a waist training gym rat, a Victoria’s Secret model, an 18-year-old with lip injections and a recently engaged sock line mogul. (If that list isn’t long enough for you, then add in their countless love interests and various offspring.)
In my many years as an avid Kardashian aficionado, I have never felt more disconnected from the family than I do now.
Not only is the drama nearly impossible to keep up with, but of all of their viewers, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell they’ll ever have to deal with the stresses of being a Kardashian.
For example, in season 11 of the show, Kim Kardashian bet $1 million that her mother, Kris Jenner, would not be able to find the Calacatta gold slabs needed to complete her bathroom counters —literally #firstworldproblems.
If that did not prove my point, then reminisce on that one time Kim lost a $75,000 earring while swimming in Bora Bora as Kourtney Kardashian reminded her that “there are people dying.”
This season, the family will face their most complicated web of drama yet: the recent engagement of Rob Kardashian with Dash Clan enemy Blac Chyna. The plot twist? Chyna is Tyga’s baby-mama and Tyga is dating Kylie Jenner, Rob’s half-sister.
In short, if both couples were to get married then Rob and Kylie would both be stepparents to Tyga and Chyna’s child. Yes, it is all really confusing and a storyline straight out of “All My Children.”
But what this scandalous web of drama has done is brought to light the fact that we the viewers need to stop pretending we can relate to this family and move on from caring about the eclectic antics of their doing.
The truth is, I will never have to contemplate whether or not to go nude in Playboy like pre-Kanye Kim, never have a lip-kit like Kylie, never walk in a Balmain show in Paris like Kendall and never organize Oreos in massive glass jars like Khloe because seriously, that seems quite time consuming.
The reality is the show that started out about a “wholesome” family from Calabasas is now a never-ending soap opera that seems to be inspired by lazily written tabloid headlines.
And, as true as that is, I’m still watching and still writing about them. Consider that: the Kardashian effect.
No matter what this family does and how little we can relate, it is impossible to escape their grasp. They are on our televisions, iPhones, Instagram feeds, Twitter timelines and in our magazines, making them part of the conversation regardless of whether we want them in it or not.
