The Inevitable “Kanye is a Douchebag” Post

Since the VMA’s aired this past Monday night, Kanye West’s infamous interruption when Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” won Best Female Video has been endlessly discussed, criticized, and parodied. From minutes after the scene played out, social networking sites notified all those who hadn’t seen the live footage of what had happened, from Facebook status updates of “_____ thinks Kanye West is so mean!” to the popular Twitter trend, “Kanye is a Douchebag.”

The following day, I was on StumbleUpon (I don’t know if there are any fellow Stumblers out there, but it’s a program that essentially finds random internet sites based on your interests that you can “stumble” through). I came across a site parodying Kanye’s interruption. Here’s the link: http://kanyegate.tumblr.com/. Some are pretty dumb, so I’m adding photos of a couple that I thought were pretty well done and include some pretty iconic images and product placement (photo-shopped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup into Kanye’s hand, anyone?)

Anyway, these images got me thinking a lot about image reproduction and the copyright laws surrounding them. As I started writing this blog entry, my friend asked what the whole Kanye-Taylor thing was all about. I immediately went onto YouTube to show him a video of it, only to find that I couldn’t find any links to it online. Fair enough. I assume that MTV didn’t want that footage going around anymore than it already had. However, a few still frames of Kanye holding a microphone talking to Taylor on stage were copied and have been reproduced on hundreds of images on the website I provided and more. It made me think a little about the Che Guevara image we looked at in class. I know it’s kind of a stretch, but where most people in America look at the image of Che and think “revolution” in the broadest of senses, most people in America look at the image of Kanye and think “jerk,” “jackass,” “douchebag,” etc. in the most general of senses. In a week, if not already, the actual event that went down and any social and cultural commentary surrounding it will be lost to this iconic image. Is it only a matter of time before we’ll see images of Kanye holding a mic with the phrase “I’mma let you finish” plastered on tshirts and posters?

The following picture doesn’t relate too much to what we talked about in class; I just found it really funny and thought I’d share while I was on the topic of Kanye’s VMA stint. About ten minutes after Kanye dissed Taylor on live TV, I went to show my roommate the link on YouTube, which was up at the time. I started reading the comments and got a kick out of this one. Regardless of the abysmal grammar, does this person really think an anonymous “shame on you, Kanye” via YouTube video will do anything? I’m suuuure Kanye read that post and now feels terrible about his actions… Any comments on technology and anonymity online? Iconic images and image reproductions? Thewraith4revenge’s message to the world that mean people suck? Discuss!