This is the most unsettling Kylie Jenner video you’ll ever see
If you’re a woman on the Internet, chances are you’ve encountered trolls or bullies at some point. It never feels great, but take that feeling and multiply it by one thousand and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to experience the Internet as a female celebrity. If you’re having trouble imagining that, just watch this video by William Rebein in which Kylie Jenner’s makeup tutorial plays backwards, taking her from fully glam to bare-faced, while an anonymous voice reads mean comments that actual people have written about her online.
Here are a few examples of the comments included in the video: one person says Kylie looks like “a used blow up doll,” another says she’s like “a monster.” Many compare her to her sisters (i.e. Kendall is “gorgeous,” whereas Kylie’s face is “disgusting”). Some commenters say she wears too much makeup but then others make suggestions for how she can improve her looks. Many commenters focus on her age, remarking how she looks old or how she will look old in ten years. “Kylie Jenner is nothing special,” is one comment that, while not as shocking as some of the others, seems purposefully designed to take the 18 year old reality TV star’s self-worth down a peg.
Rebein said he didn’t even have to dig to find any of these barbs; they were taken from the top comments of just two articles. The sad fact is that it’s easy for the average Internet commenter to leave comments like that. It can also be easy for the rest of us to dismiss it. It’s easy to say that celebrities, especially reality TV stars like Kylie Jenner and her sisters, know what they’re getting into. It’s easy to say that they should expect and might even deserve the attention of Internet trolls, because that’s what comes with the territory of being rich and famous.
But the truth is that no human being deserves that sort of vitriol. No amount of money or fame can insulate someone from the pain of being personally attacked by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hateful comments.
It’s especially worse for someone around Kylie’s age (the youngest member of her family, just recently having turned 18). According to the Anti-Bullying Campaign, a whopping 70% of young adults between the ages of 13 and 22 have experienced cyberbullying. This happens at a time in their life when they are at their most vulnerable, when their self-esteem is already extremely low.
You don’t have to like Kylie Jenner, or any of the Kardashian clan. However, it’s vital to realize that when people hide behind their computer screens and post hurtful comments like these, it’s contributing to a wider issue. The comments in the video may have been aimed directly at Kylie, but they reflect a general misogynistic attitude that affects women everywhere.
The commenters’ assertions that Kylie should wear less makeup but then change other aspects of her looks are just one example of how society dictates women’s appearances, whether they wear makeup or not. When beauty blogger Em Ford made a video of herself without any makeup along with actual comments she’s gotten that call her “ugly” and “disgusting,” her video went viral–partly because it was shocking, but also because many women could empathize because they have had similar experiences.
The anonymity afforded by the Internet allows not just sexist but also homophobic and racist beliefs to spread unchecked via cyberbullying. It doesn’t matter whether you have 30 Instagram followers or, in Kylie’s case, 57 million. It can happen to anyone, and it does. It shouldn’t be acceptable in either case.
For her part, Kylie has admitted that the cyberbullying hasn’t exactly passed her by unnoticed. After she started her anti-bullying campaign #IAmMoreThan, she explained how she got the idea to TIME: “Almost my whole life, since I was nine, since I’ve been in the spotlight, that comes with so much bullying and attacking. Everything I do, there’s a huge light on it… It has still affected me a lot.” This, coupled with the realization that she’s not the only one dealing with online harassment, made her decide to use her considerable platform on social media to raise awareness of the issue.
If we want to be able to say we’re against cyberbullying, then we need to be against it for everyone. We have to take a stand not just when it happens to our families and friends, but when it happens to famous bloggers, reality TV stars, and other celebrities. The moment that we forget that a person on Instagram is just as much a human as the person sitting next to us on the bus is the moment that we ourselves lose an important part of our own humanity. That part is called empathy. Use it without discretion.
. Some commenters say she wears too much makeup but then others make suggestions for how she can improve her looks. Many commenters focus on her age, remarking how she looks old or how she will look old in ten years. “Kylie Jenner is nothing special,” is one comment that, while not as shocking as some of the others, seems purposefully designed to take the 18 year old reality TV star’s self-worth down a peg.
Rebein said he didn’t even have to dig to find any of these barbs; they were taken from the top comments of just two articles. The sad fact is that it’s easy for the average Internet commenter to leave comments like that. It can also be easy for the rest of us to dismiss it. It’s easy to say that celebrities, especially reality TV stars like Kylie Jenner and her sisters, know what they’re getting into. It’s easy to say that they should expect and might even deserve the attention of Internet trolls, because that’s what comes with the territory of being rich and famous.
But the truth is that no human being deserves that sort of vitriol. No amount of money or fame can insulate someone from the pain of being personally attacked by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hateful comments.
It’s especially worse for someone around Kylie’s age (the youngest member of her family, just recently having turned 18). According to the Anti-Bullying Campaign, a whopping 70% of young adults between the ages of 13 and 22 have experienced cyberbullying. This happens at a time in their life when they are at their most vulnerable, when their self-esteem is already extremely low.
You don’t have to like Kylie Jenner, or any of the Kardashian clan. However, it’s vital to realize that when people hide behind their computer screens and post hurtful comments like these, it’s contributing to a wider issue. The comments in the video may have been aimed directly at Kylie, but they reflect a general misogynistic attitude that affects women everywhere.
The commenters’ assertions that Kylie should wear less makeup but then change other aspects of her looks are just one example of how society dictates women’s appearances, whether they wear makeup or not. When beauty blogger Em Ford made a video of herself without any makeup along with actual comments she’s gotten that call her “ugly” and “disgusting,” her video went viral--partly because it was shocking, but also because many women could empathize because they have had similar experiences.
The anonymity afforded by the Internet allows not just sexist but also homophobic and racist beliefs to spread unchecked via cyberbullying. It doesn’t matter whether you have 30 Instagram followers or, in Kylie’s case, 57 million. It can happen to anyone, and it does. It shouldn’t be acceptable in either case.
For her part, Kylie has admitted that the cyberbullying hasn’t exactly passed her by unnoticed. After she started her anti-bullying campaign #IAmMoreThan, she explained how she got the idea to TIME: “Almost my whole life, since I was nine, since I’ve been in the spotlight, that comes with so much bullying and attacking. Everything I do, there’s a huge light on it… It has still affected me a lot.” This, coupled with the realization that she’s not the only one dealing with online harassment, made her decide to use her considerable platform on social media to raise awareness of the issue.
If we want to be able to say we’re against cyberbullying, then we need to be against it for everyone. We have to take a stand not just when it happens to our families and friends, but when it happens to famous bloggers, reality TV stars, and other celebrities. The moment that we forget that a person on Instagram is just as much a human as the person sitting next to us on the bus is the moment that we ourselves lose an important part of our own humanity. That part is called empathy. Use it without discretion.){kind=link}