The Kardashians Are in Their Flop Era

Twenty-first century pop culture can be divided into two halves: Before Kim, and Anno Kardashiani. These roughly correspond to the period between 2000 and 2006 (B.K.), and 2007 onward—the year that budding socialite Kim Kardashian’s sex tape leaked, soon launching the career of America’s most powerful family. But what if the Era of Our Ladies Kardashian was, in fact, coming to an end? If you ever look at the internet, you’ll learn that we may, indeed, be moving into a new timeline entirely: the Era of the Flopdashian. Or maybe it’s something even worse than that. We may have hit the point where the Kardashians aren’t worth talking about.

For 15 years, cultural critics have proclaimed that the Kardashian family—Kim and her four sisters, plus mother Kris (and arguably ex-step-parent Caitlyn)—were “everywhere.” Their hit E! Show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, ran for 20 seasons. They appeared at Fashion Weeks and Met Galas, on Saturday Night Live and talk shows, in magazines and advertisements. Their personal dramas were contorted into TV plotlines as much as they were news fodder, especially the ups and downs of their marriages. Kim even met with President Trump at the White House.

And as ridiculous as the Kardashian fervor has always been, it was, for a long time, exciting. More than that, it was sociologically and critically interesting; here was a family whose entire lives were a capitalist endeavor, their literal existence their primary product. Kim’s got Skims, Kylie’s got makeup and canned vodka spritzer lines, Kendall’s got tequila, and Khloé’s got ethically questionable spon-con. But what the Kardashian-Jenner clan has most of all is their propensity for contriving their bougie lives into soapy television masquerading as real life.

Read more at The Daily Beast.