Pop Culture Scandals: Recurring Column

On this month’s Pop Culture Scandals, Ye West, formerly known as Kanye West, actor Pete Davidson (best known for being a cast member on the comedy show Saturday Night Live), and socialite Kim Kardashian have been the face of one of the social media’s biggest scandals recently. The story truly began in early 2021 after West and Kardashian had just gone through an extremely messy and sudden divorce after six years of being together. In these six years, the couple even started a family and never appeared to have any complications with their marriage, though, of course, the media only has limited information as to what goes on in the Kardashian-West house.

On Feb. 19, 2021, the couple had the media in shock after their astounding announcement to the public that they were officially ending their marriage. However, the real drama started after Kardashian moved on quickly and started dating Pete Davidson. They met after Kardashian hosted SNL, in Oct. 2021, with show regular, Davidson.

In Jan. 2022, West dissed Davidson in his and The Game’s song “Easy” which is about how West’s life is not actually as “easy” as some may think. For example, the lyrics include, “My life was never (Eazy)”, as well as this one lyric targeted directly at Davidson, “God saved me from that crash, just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s a*s (who?)”. As if the song wasn’t already problematic enough, West also released an extremely disturbing music video to go along with it later in March 2022. We’re not going to go into heavy detail about what happens in this video, but the main plot is that West has substantially kidnapped a doll who strikingly resembles Davidson. Throughout this video, West is seen carrying a severed head that belongs to the doll/Davidson while he is rapping. After the video was released, Kardashian’s texts got leaked, which showed her fears that one day someone will hurt Davidson, and will blame it on West. Her reaction to this song had fans shocked after she said, “He is creating a dangerous and scary environment.” We believe West involved the Kardashian kids as well in the song, saying how they are spoiled kids. At the end of the music video West includes a section saying “IN THE END EVERYONE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. EXCEPT SKETE, YOU KNOW WHO, JK HE’S FINE.”

In Feb. 2022, Kid Cudi got caught up in all of this drama. Kid Cudi is known to be friends with Davidson and has collaborated with West, so obviously, he was a target for West to take his frustration out on. West posted on Instagram saying, “JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS CUDI WILL NOT BE ON DONDA BECAUSE HE’S FRIENDS WITH YOU KNOW WHO WE ALL SPEAK IN BILLIE LANGUAGE NOW.” This message explained how West will not have Cudi on his album, “Donda 2.” In 2018, the two were a part of the duo group, Kids See Ghosts releasing a debut album together with the title “Kids See Ghosts.” The two also collaborated on one of West’s previous albums “Donda.” After seeing this, Cudi fired back, commenting, “Too bad I don’t wanna be on ur album u f–kin dinosaur hahaha, everyone knows I’ve been the best thing about ur since I met u. Ima pray for you brother.” Now, on the Twitter platform, Cudi tweeted, “We talked weeks ago about this. You’re whacked for flipping the script and posting this lie just for a look on the internet. You ain’t no friend. BYE.” Well, that settles things.

Also in February of 2022, photos and messages between West and Davidson have traveled their way onto social media, onto various repost accounts, and across everyone’s feed. West has been referring to Davidson as “Skete,” so that he can say whatever he feels about Davidson without expressly referring to him to reduce the risk of any potential aftermath or liability lawsuits. Read more about this with the article from ladbible.com. Davidson soon then deleted his Instagram account because he was repeatedly getting comments referring to him as Skete, his new nickname.

West has been posting a series of random pictures on Instagram, such as an edited poster of Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War.” It has a variety of celebrities’ heads, forming “sides”. This post was included with a caption that read, “THE INTERNET HAS STILL NOT FOUND A DECENT PICTURE OF SKEET”. West is essentially saying that there are no good pictures of Davidson, implying that he is extremely unattractive.

West has also decided to illicitly post pictures of heated messages between Davidson and himself. He wrote one caption like this, with West asking his supporters “IF ANYONE LOVES ME AND MY FAMILY IF YOU SEE SKETE IN REAL LIFE SCREAM AT YTE LOOSER AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS AND SAY KIMYE FOREVER.” This post triggered people, including us, to how jealous West is of the intimate relationship that Davidson and Kardashian have created. The next day, West posted, “UPON MY WIFE’S REQUEST PLEASE NOBODY DO ANYTHING PHYSICAL TO SKETE I’M GOING TO HANDLE THE SITUATION MYSELF.” This could end poorly if one of West’s fans contradicts what the second post requests. A week later, Davidson left Instagram, which made West come out and say, “Ran Skete off the Gram. Tell your mother I changed your name for life.”

In another post from Feb. 2022, West said that Davidson would never be allowed to meet his four children after Pete told him that he would love to meet them one day.

As if March hasn’t been problematic enough for West, on March 13, 2022 text messages between the two had been leaked by SNL writer, Dave Sirus. The commentary to us is very unfitting to share. To sum it up, Davidson was telling West to calm down with all the drama and that Kardashian is a wonderful mother, and that he is lucky to be the father. To go along with this, West was banned on March 16, 2022 from Instagram for 24 hours this month.

West eventually deleted all of his Instagram posts, leaving his account empty, but unfortunately, this did not delete the digital footprint and heaps of drama that West created for himself.

We’re very interested to know, what is your take on this situation? Overall, we think most of us can agree they are both amazing as artists and comedians, but the media tends to separate the art from the artist in situations like these. This whole situation is definitely career-changing for both West and Davidson. But, do you think their actions will permanently change how they are viewed overall? Please, let us know in the comments!

If you are interested in reading more about the drama between Kanye West and Pete Davidson, click these links! They helped us write this article.
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