Kim Kardashian’s Statement About The 1969 Moon Landing Deserves Jail Time
TikTok, that once-heralded societal balm of the 2020 Dark Ages, has since become a vilified culprit for several societal woes. Its addictive feedback cycles are making teens more anxious and depressed than ever; its unregulated algorithms are introducing young children to the concept of unaliving; its links to sleep deprivation are causing students to underperform at school; its incentivization of clout has caused Logan Paul wannabes to give random Target shoppers heart attacks. That’s not to mention its direct relationship with body dysmorphia and devastatingly shortened attention spans. At this rate, the economy will tank as soon as Generation Alpha enters the workforce; that is, if the entry level jobs once destined for them have not already been replaced by A.I.
Phew! I think today might be one of my cynical days. Usually, my boyfriend brings me back from the edge during these times, but he’s currently at work and I’m currently unsupervised at my computer, baby! Of course, you can blame all of TikTok’s negative effects on human nature and defend TikTok as just the tool that facilitates our ultimate destruction. You can also name capitalism and greed and selfishness as what led the privileged class to create apps like TikTok — apps that suppress our better instincts (common sense; critical thinking) while making us ever less vibrant by the day. And guess who gets all the money and power when it all goes awry.
OK, I’m going to dial it back now, but I promise you that this did have to do with Kim Kardashian at some point.
In the most recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians 2.0, a.k.a. The Kardashians, Kim told her All’s Fair costar Sarah Paulson that she didn’t believe the 1969 Moon landing happened. Now, Kim has made plenty of vacuous commentary over the years: She has compared herself to Mary, mother of Jesus; she has said that every American parent should own a Rolls-Royce; she has said that “being on a reality show doesn’t get the respect I feel it should”.
“Get your f***ing ass up and work,” etc.
But when she starts spouting debunked conspiracies on national TV? This is the worst possible result of TikTok and reality TV joining forces to initiate total societal collapse. This deserves jail time.
TikTok conspiracies are responsible for so many collective delusions at this point that it’s hard to count them all. At one point, a joke TikTok caused over 220,000 people to believe that women have to shed their facial skin after their periods. At another point, millions of people believed that a random entrepreneur from Dallas Texas was Tom Cruise. Most recently, millions of teenage male voters believed it when President Trump told them on TikTok that he would solve inflation. In real life, outside of TikTok, inflation is still rising by the day.
All this to say that of course Kim Kardashian believed it when she heard on TikTok that the 1969 Moon landing wasn’t real. A 2022 study found that TikTok users aged 16-24 get 47% of their news from random people they follow instead of from the accounts of official news orgs. More worrisome, about 30% of them believed what they read on Tiktok over what was reported by professional journalists. Those numbers have only become more dramatic in the years since.
Now, think of how many fans Kim Kardashian has. Reality TV, and by extension our collective obsession with fame, has blessed her with an audience of over 355 million followers on Instagram. Many of those followers accept everything she does as gospel. Many of those followers will also now question whether the 1969 Moon landing was real. Some of them will probably now fail their ninth grade history exam.
Sure, Nasa has technically responded. NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy wrote on Not Twitter, “Yes, @KimKardashian, we’ve been to the Moon before… 6 times!” Some media outlets are dubbing this a “clapback” to get clicks, but Duffy’s response is in reality so plainly lackluster that he leaves us wanting more.
We don’t need an America that’s dumber than it already is. Such a statement from Kim Kardashian deserves jail time! Or, if NASA is getting involved, then maybe we should just send her on a 73,000 year mission to Proxima Centauri and, like, see what happens!
