By GRACE BERNARD
Last week, Kanye West kicked off New York Fashion Week with his revolutionary Yeezy Season Three sold-out fashion show and listening party for his new album, “The Life of Pablo,” in Madison Square Garden. But people all over the world were able to score an inside look at the event thanks to today’s media coverage.
In the aftermath of the over-the-top show, the media have spent the past week proving that technology is making fashion and celebrities more accessible than ever before.
Both fashion and traditional news websites began sharing articles featuring pictures and videos from the show that day. Then, the news media focused on West’s outrageous rule list given to models that was leaked through SnapChat and Instagram. Finally, West himself took advantage of the media’s power by announcing that his album would only be available through his subscription-based website and Tidal.
According to its website, Tidal is a “high fidelity music streaming” service. Tidal was also the only website that had access to a live stream of West’s show.
This past week, West has been unable to stay out of the news media. His notorious Tweets made headlines on websites like CNN.com after he claimed to in $52 million worth of personal debt and pleaded with Mark Zuckerberg to donate $1 billion in order to fund his continuous stream of business ventures.
Most recently, the feud between West and Taylor Swift was resurfaced after headlines reported that Swift responded to a lyric in one his new songs about her as being “misogynistic.”
As of Wednesday, news media, particularly online websites as most traditional gossip magazines aren’t published until Friday, have now been running with a leaked recording of West ranting and calling out Swift backstage at “Saturday Night Live” before his performance for the show.
Mega-celebrities such as West, as well as over-the-top fashion brands, are normally inaccessible to the majority of the population. But with the increasing usage and development of social media, they are now becoming a greater part of our everyday lives.
As the population continues its fascination with these once distant concepts, they are becoming more concentrated in traditional new outlets that used to be reserved only for topics of practical importance.
The news media’s normalization of things that used to be such strong symbols of wealth and success begs the question of what will happen to the notion of exclusivity as it becomes more and more available to not just the American public, but the world.