WRT 105
Digital Literacy Assignment
West’s Online Identity Needs Help
Once a major rap-icon of the early 2000s, Kanye West opened the doors to stardom after
the 2004 release of his album College Dropout, which sold 441,000 copies in its first week of
sales. Since then, West has been in numerous news reports due controversies following his social
media activity. While, West is infamous for his long philosophical posts, recently his platform
has become radical and sparked a great deal of backlash, resulting in once loyal fans, turning
against him.
Kanye and Politics
Kanye West has never been afraid of speaking his mind, especially when it comes to
politics. For years, West has exhibited black excellence and spoke against racism and
homophobia thus, his personality having many affordances. His rants began after an Kanye went
off-script during a live TV fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina on NBC, “George Bush
doesn’t care about Black people”, regarding former President George Bush’s handling of the
natural disaster (Michaels, 2010). West was praised by democrats for confronting the republican
politician. Ten years following this outburst, Kanye apologized, saying “we as human beings
don't always choose the right words” Bush then accepted the apology, but incorrectly addressed
West, saying, “I don’t hate Conway [sic] West” (“Kanye”, 2010).
However, this would not be West’s first time voicing his political views. In 2009, Kanye
stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards, as Taylor Swift accepted her VMA award.
In an interview, President Obama watched the video of West and responded with, “He’s a
jackass”. This outraged West and thus he turned to twitter to speak his mind. “Obama was in
office for eight years and nothing in Chicago changed” West tweeted, evidently ignoring
Obama’s community activism and his work as a Senator of Illinois (ye, 2018). This seems to be a
turning point for Kanye West’s online identity, as before Kanye’s rants were assumed to be
because of his reputation of being overly-confident.
Following Donald Trump being sworn into office, Kanye recurrently showed his support
for the far-right president. In November of 2016, West admitted to not voting, however,
stating,“I would’ve voted for Trump.” ( albertoreyes, 2016). As expected, West’s fans were
mortified by his bold statement especially due to Trump’s approval rating being at a low 37.8%
at the time (ABC News, 2018). Only a month later, on December 13, 2016, West met with
Donald Trump at Trump Towers, Trump reportedly said, “Kanye is a “good man” and they have
been “friends for a long time.” (Henderson, 2018) This was just the beginning of a long stream
of Trump loving content posted by West. In April 2018, West tweeted that he “loves” Trump,
claimed they both had “dragon energy” and uploaded a photo displaying himself wearing a Make
America Great Again Hat. Following this radical tweet, celebrities such as Justin Bieber, ...
