Last summer, Kylie Jenner put a post on Instagram that encapsulated, in just one photograph and a caption of obscene boastfulness, the worst excesses of the world’s most popular social media influencers. The photograph showed Jenner, the make-up tycoon and sister of Kim Kardashian, in an embrace with Travis Scott, the rapper and her on-off boyfriend, in front of two whopping private jets. She wrote: “You wanna take mine or yours?”
You don’t become the fifth most followed person on Instagram, with 389 million followers, by worrying about coming across as smug and tin-eared. And you’ve got to hand it to her. A ten-part mini-series could be commissioned about the state we’re in as the climate crisis bites, and it would not cover the issues as concisely as that one post. In response, social media ignited like a hillside in Provence during a drought. Jenner was accused of being a “climate criminal” and found herself the new lightning rod for green campaigners. Others, however, may not have been so quick to judge. Her follower count grew and the jet still features on her feed.
