How the Kanye West Subreddit Finally Turned on Kanye West

For decades, Kanye West was one of the most magnetic celebrities on earth. Having witnessing Ye’s yearslong escalation from “dragon energy” mantras to open Hitler worship, many of these former stans are finally ready to leave their onetime idol behind—though not “the friends we made along the way,” as r/Kanye moderator Clement Leveau put it to me. “Kanye brought all of us together, but we don’t identify with him anymore.” Since 2016, as Ye’s reactionary turn advanced from public support for Donald Trump to sporting bigoted symbols like the “White Lives Matter” slogan and the swastiska, plenty of attention has turned to the fan communities: subreddits like r/Kanye, forums like KanyeToThe, Instagram and Twitter accounts like @TeamKanyeDaily. For all of them, grappling with Ye’s reactionary drift has been a yearslong struggle; as Aaron Mak reported for Slate four years ago, KanyeToThe’s reckoning with its hero’s MAGA turn dates back to 2018, when he told TMZ that slavery was a “choice.” But West’s dining with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and praise for Hitler during an Infowars appearance were the “absolute breaking point,” Leveau stated, and now these spaces are condemning Ye much more strongly. So he took a “hard-line” stance on comments in both the subreddit and the server, in order to preserve something of importance to him and so many others: “We have a very vibrant community, and it’s been hard to find a new net to cast for all of us.” He stresses that the members of r/Kanye are a truly eclectic bunch—chess players, visual artists, programmers, and teenage musicians, all of whom have befriended one another and even come to collaborate on projects.