Kanye West And The Dark Side Of The Attention Economy

Kanye West is at it again. Since his appearance at the Grammys last Sunday, the rapper—who now goes by Ye—has been wreaking havoc across social media, picking up petty squabbles on Instagram and spewing nonsense on X.

That’s nothing new for West, but it yet again underscores the ugliest facets of the attention economy and the social media outrage machine.

Feeding The Outrage Machine

It all began last Sunday at the Grammys where West was accompanied by his wife Bianca Censori, who wore a provocative see-through dress which made her appear almost completely nude.

The dress instantly became the talk of the town—and the internet hasn’t been able to stop yapping about it. Indeed, West was particularly proud of that, claiming in a post on Instagram that Censori was the most Googled person at the awards.

The claim is dubious, but that’s besides the point. In the attention economy, all that matters is that people talk about it—and West has been a master of feeding the outrage machine. He’s not the only one either.

Rage-baiting—putting out intentionally incendiary content to drive engagement—has turned into a common social media growth hacking tactic for a slew of content creators in recent years.

West is symptomatic of the dangers of the social media outrage machine. Over the past couple of days, the rapper has been calling for the release of Sean “Diddy” Combs—who’s currently facing sex trafficking charges—from federal prison, ranting about how Jewish people can’t be trusted and praising Hitler.

West’s bizarre comments have drawn considerable amount of pushback, including a condemnation from the American Jewish Committee calling on the entertainment industry to disavow the rapper for his “blatant hatred.”

Still, West’s incendiary posts have attracted millions of views across social media platforms, with multiple aggregation accounts reposting them to further farm engagement.

The rapper’s unending tirades—ranging from digs at comedian Dave Chappelle to insults aimed at former assistant suing him for sexual harassment—have also inspired a stream of memes, one of which was reposted by Elon Musk himself.

The Vicious Cycle Of The Attention Economy

That’s where the problem with the attention economy lies. Outrage drives engagement, but engagement commands attention—and when attention is the currency, outrage becomes the fuel that keeps the attention economy going.

That’s not to say that outrage can’t be the catalyst for important conversations. It certainly can and does. But for every nuanced conversation, there’s a current of forgettable gibberish designed solely with the purpose of driving engagement.

Few of these conversations leave lasting impact. Instead, we harp onto the next outrageous thing and simply move on.

Then rinse and repeat—and the outrage machine keeps spinning.

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