We As a Culture Need to Stop Feeding Into Kanye's Negative, Limit-Testing Behavior

They seem nice!

When I was a juvenile delinquent growing up in a group home on the north side of Chicago in the early to mid 1990s, if one of my housemates was throwing a tantrum, shouting profanity and throwing things in a crazed fury, we were instructed to ignore them. 

When one of us would go off, the rest of us were told not to feed into their negative, limit-testing behavior by responding in any way, positive or negative. 

Whether they realized it or not, what the tantrum thrower wanted more than anything was attention. Attention is the fuel that powers temper tantrums. It’s the oxygen tantrums need to survive.

By ignoring people throwing an epic fit, you consequently starved them of that oxygen, that fuel, that fire. A temper tantrum needs an audience or it’s just someone impotently throwing a fit. 

They have fun!

If we fed into the child throwing a tantrum by egging them on or warning them about all the trouble that they were in that inevitably had the effect of prolonging the tantrum, since it gave them the attention that they desperately craved. 

But if we acted as if nothing was happening, they would often get frustrated and stop. 

Kanye West right now is engaged in a public temper tantrum worthy of his hero Donald Trump. 

The primary motivation for this unseemly display of incoherent rage is the producer/rapper/billionaire’s high-profile divorce from Kim Kardashian. What we are witnessing right now is the very ugly spectacle of an unwell man very publicly harassing and stalking his soon to be ex-wife and the mother of his four children in a series of different, screamingly public and deeply unnerving ways. 

Kanye has used social media to accuse Kardashian and her family of being racist monsters who won’t let him see his children and who have allowed one of his daughters to be on TikTok in clear violation of his wishes. 

He's also threatened, in song, to kick the ass of Kim Kardashian’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson. Kanye’s message regarding Kim Kardashian is twofold. Kanye wants the world to know that Kim Kardashian is an absolute monster who is responsible for all of the problems in their marriage and also that God wants them to get back together and that repairing their marriage would inspire millions of other couples considering divorce to follow their lead. 

Kanye somehow also finds the time to date actress Julia Fox in what feels like an elaborate bit of performance art rather than a relationship. 

The rapper has enough rage in his heart for women other than the Kardashians. He recently took to social media to angrily demand that Billie Eilish apologize to Travis Scott for possibly insulting him at a show or he will pull out of a headlining gig at Coachella where he plans to bring out Scott and, I imagine, Keith Raniere, James Toback, Louis CK and the surviving members of the Manson family. 

If you’re a horrible person who has committed terrible crimes, Kanye wants to kick it with you! It’s almost as if he sees himself in pals Marilyn Manson and DaBaby. 

Since Kanye West is behaving like an eleven year old from a group home for emotionally disturbed adolescents in the midst of a seemingly endless temper tantrum the whole world unfortunately can see and hear and be appalled by, we should treat him accordingly. 

We as a culture need to start ignoring Kanye West and stop feeding into his negative, limit-testing behavior. That’s the only way it will ever stop. 

When Kanye angrily and nonsensically demands that Billie Eilish apologize to horrible human being Travis Scott for possibly suggesting that a man who kept on performing for nearly an hour while his fans were trampled to death was perhaps insufficiently considerate of concert-goer’s safety or he won’t perform at Coachella we should say, “Great. Don’t perform. We probably shouldn’t have booked you in the first place.” 

Don’t report on Kanye using Instagram to psychologically abuse, threaten and gas-light the mother of his children. Deny him the attention he desperately craves. Stop letting him dictate the narrative. 

One of the many things #MeToo was about was not being deferential towards the emotions and careers of toxic, powerful men who use that power to harass and abuse women who have done nothing to deserve such treatment. 

So maybe, just maybe, we should being so deferential towards the emotions and career of Kanye West, a toxic, powerful man who is using that power to harass and abuse women who have done nothing to deserve it. 

If nothing else, Kanye has done the seeming impossible and gotten people to feel sorry for Kim Kardashian, who is widely and wrongly depicted as a cultural villain and force for evil in the universe but is clearly the wronged party here.

The Joy of Trash is out and it is magnificent! 

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