“Back on my bullshit” is a phrase thrown around pretty casually these days, almost to meaninglessness. But then something happens that is so quintessentially a return to one’s bullshit, the phrase is resurrected and feels brand new. That is exactly what happened when Kanye West reactivated his Twitter account over the weekend and went on to unleash esoteric philosophy in threads of a 280 characters or less. He also tweeted out neck tattoo designs. It's called mixing lowbrow and highbrow. Look it up.
Kanye is no stranger to shutting down and reactivating his social media accounts with little to no reason. Here is an unabridged timeline of him doing so. While it’s partially alarming to see him do this so often, it’s also a very refreshing break from anyone who takes their social accounts too seriously. Now, no one is more serious than Kanye West, but online he doesn’t play by any rules. He double, triple, quadruple posts. He goes from rant to rave, throwback to visions of the future. His tweets are rarely personal updates, branded content, or plugs. The closest it comes to that are the poorly Photoshopped photos of boots he tweeted out last night. But even then, he’s sharing his works in progress. There’s no link in bio.
His recent batch of tweets, which commenced with a retweet of Jack (yes, the Jack) welcoming him back to twitter, ranged from product ideas to existing consciousness to a caption contest. Why is he doing this? Well, I'm not sure there's a single person on earth (or whatever planet Kanye is from) that knows for sure, but there are some educated guesses. One photo he shared was of him and Lamar Odom, his sister-in-law Khloe Kardashian's ex husband.
my favorite moment of walking into MSG to play Saint Pablo, I used to go to the hospital and play Lamar the album when he was learning to walk and talk again Then we walked into the arena together pic.twitter.com/ysC5z5wDUA
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 15, 2018
This comes days after Khloe gave birth to a daughter and her boyfriend Tristan Thompson very publicly cheated on her. Could this be a distraction from that? And if so, one can't help but hear the word "distraction" and think of the one other person with a bigger ego than Mr. West, a—ahem—muscular Twitter presence, and an affinity for using it for misdirection-oriented damage control.
Perhaps this is build up to a new album release? Last week he told The Hollywood Reporter that he was writing a philosophy book, so it could be promo for that. At least two of the tweets read like something you'd say after hitting the bong in a dorm room that didn't need anymore bong smoke permeating it. There's also the very real possibility that they mean absolutely nothing, and that trying to cull meaning from them is a joke he is playing on us. Potential meaninglessness is a weapon Kanye brandishes skillfully, and therein lies his very 2018 brand of genius.
