What Happens When Kim Kardashian Doesn't Want to Be Kim Kardashian Anymore?

After being robbed and held at gunpoint in Paris, Kim Kardashian West has disappeared from social media, does she need to come back?

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

It’s been 18 days. No Snap stories. No app updates. No ‘grams. No tweets. All of Kim Kardashian’s social media accounts have gone silent, production of Keeping Up With The Kardashians has been put on hold indefinitely, and the days continue to pass.

We were first introduced to Kim Kardashian via the tabloids as Paris Hilton’s bestie in 2006. She became one of the “it girls” of that pre-social media era, a toned down version of what her younger sisters Kylie and Kendall are now. And like any other person of interest who goes through a scandal, following the leak of her years-old sex tape with former boyfriend Ray J, the media became even more drawn to her. In the most incredible turn-lemons-to-lemonade maneuver, Kim, with the help of her mother, Kris Jenner, used the increased publicity as a marketing tool for their entire family and reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. After having all of her privacy stripped away, Kim made a lack of that very thing her brand, just as social media began to take off, providing her and her family an outlet to broadcast their lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Save your “famous for nothing” criticisms while I remind you of other reality show stars like Honey Boo Boo, or Hoops and Pumkin from VH1’s Flavor of Love.

On Sunday, Oct. 2, while performing at Meadows in New York, Kanye West called to his DJ to cut the track mid-"Heartless" and said, “Sorry guys, family emergency. I have to leave the show,” and rushed off stage. As videos of this moment began to show up on the internet, fans at the show and online expressed a myriad of reactions, many of them harshly angry. We’d later find out that Kim, West’s wife and the mother of his two children, was bound, gagged, held up at gunpoint, and robbed inside of their Paris apartment. An estimated $10 million in jewelry was stolen. Although unharmed, she was badly shaken. She immediately boarded a private plane to New York to meet her husband and within days, they returned to their home in Los Angeles, where she’s remained. She’s only been seen twice since the incident—and not once on social media.

The difference between Kim and the drama-for-drama's-sake reality TV stars is the way she and her genius momager branded her and Calabasas’ Brady Bunch to create a foundation success. However, when you ask what exactly Kim is famous for, the responses are mixed. Simply, Kim Kardashian is famous for being famous. By candidly being herself after that initial surge of press, and by putting her name on everything relevant she could. From the early days of DASH, ShoeDazzle.com, Kimsaprincess Inc. and the Kardashian Kollection at Sears, to her multi-million dollar app and that Forbescover, all of her ventures are an extension of herself. This is why social media has been instrumental in her glow up. What's more, Kim likes sharing her life on social media. She embraces selfies and breaks the internet at will with them. She posts photos of her babies and pictures from her family’s annual Christmas party. She’s been able to make a living just by living and sharing it to the world—even on this eighteenth day of silence, she still has 85.4 million Instagram followers and 48.5 million Twitter followers and is one of the most followed accounts on each platform. But on the heels of a report that she doesn't want to resume her old life, you have to wonder: is Kim Kardashian Kim Kardashian without complete oversharing?

The question isn’t really, “Can she come back from this?” as much as whether or not she needs to. Access to her life through Snapchat, her app, and engaging with fans on Twitter has afforded her increased popularity and strengthened her brand. However, Beyonce dropped a wildly successful album in 2013 that no one knew was coming—publicity isn't everything. And you’d be dumb to think we see every single detail of the Kardashians lives or to think this won’t change how the entire family publicly positions themselves on social media forever.

The tiny light at the end of the tunnel is Kardashian is at a point where she doesn’t need the level of exposure she was offering on social media. Unlike other celebs who’ve deleted their accounts, Kardashian doesn’t put out songs or star in shows that don’t inherently involve an inside look into her life, but she has grown her brand beyond social media. In the July 2016 Harper’s Bazaarinterview, Kanye said, “Kris and the family, they have the power of communication. This is the number one communications company.” He's right, but their methods of communication, and the sheer volume with which they do it, is going to need to be adjusted.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, because there's a possibility that this unprecedented absence from the public eye may just increase our desire to see Kim in the spotlight. By cutting out the live updates to Snapchat and her app, Kim can get more return on less content and still maintain her brand. B-roll footage from the nearly 10 years of KUWTK is more than enough to keep her app engaging from now until the end of time, and a 90-day hiatus could warrant an entirely new volume of her book Selfish featuring never-before-seen selfies.

Ultimately, once Kim feels better following this traumatic experience, life will go on, online and offline. In that same Harper’s Bazaar interview, after being asked if there was anything they wished the world didn’t know about them, Kim points out things about her pregnancies. Kanye immediately praised Kim on how well she did with her second pregnancy, to which she replied, “I wish I had a little bit more privacy.” In the future, maybe we won’t see all of G.O.O.D. Music backstage wearing unreleased Yeezys or Kanye wearing a better bunny suit than Tyga, but does it really matter when safety and sanity are the ultimate priorities? This robbery has forced Kim to reevaluate her natural way of functioning, which is also how she makes money. The bottom line is of course things are going to change. But with the way supply and demand is set up, the less she gives, the safer she can feel, and the more her following will miss her. She’s come out triumphantly from a horrible invasion of privacy before. With the support of her family, we’re sure she’ll do it again.

Latest in Pop Culture