This Kim & Kanye Thing Could've Been Real

Earlier today an attention-grabbing story started circulating. It stated that Kanye West was doing his very best to make fiance Kim Kardashian a "bigger performer than Beyonce." Cue eye-rolls and choruses of "Oh, Kanye" and impassioned indictments of reality TV. But, as it turns out, the whole West-Kardashian-Knowles thing was a hoax in the first place. So why was it so easy to believe?

Some more background: This is what people thought West said:

I am going to make Kim Kardashian a bigger performer than Beyonce. Me and Kim will soon be the first couple of Hip Hop.

I saw that earlier when it was posted in Jezebel's Dirt Bag feature, and I was all prepared to write a scathing but searching post about the ways in which West and Kardashian do or do not connect their life and their fame to reality. Then I did some googling, and saw pretty immediately that that quote was glaringly fake. This is hardly the first time this has happened to Kanye West: I'm sure there are still some people out there who believe that he compared himself to Nelson Mandela. This is, after all, a man who is well-known even to people who have never listened to his music, in part because of his reputation for saying outlandish or brash — or in the case of his Twitter, downright brilliant things. Add that to the public perception of Kim Kardashian — AKA a very famous woman who actively sought out that fame despite a lack of any of the talents we most cherish our public figures for — and you've got a relatively believable story. Of course they'd want to be Jay Z and Beyonce— who doesn't want to be Jay Z and Beyonce?So today the story wasn't true, but we could all wake up tomorrow and find that West and Kardashian staged a coup in the middle of the night for the throne of England and have forced Kate Middleton to create a Twitter account specifically for the purpose of tweeting out compliments of them. You just never know.