Did Kim Kardashian Block the Snake Emoji From Her Instagram Account?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to Sunday, July 17, 2016. It’s late. You’re about to crawl into bed and dream about work being canceled the next day, when all of a sudden your phone starts blowing up. “Kim exposed Taylor,” 19 people texted you simultaneously. What!? WTF does that mean? Exposed what? Exposed how? Were these people referring to Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift or just two random people named Kim and Taylor? So many questions, but you’re too tired to find the answers.
You begrudgingly log onto the Internet, and that’s when you see it: Kardashian’s lengthy Snapchat Story, which features her husband, Kanye West, and Swift having a detailed phone conversation about his song “Famous.” You’re immediately reminded of the drama that led to this phone conversation: Swift claimed she didn’t approve of West calling her a “bitch” on “Famous,” but both he and Kardashian said the opposite. According to them, Swift absolutely green-lit the lyric—and she was excited about the controversy.
Kardashian published this phone conversation to set the record straight, but it honestly didn’t confirm anything one way or the other. Yes, Swift and West talked about “Famous” during their chat, but not the “bitch” lyric specifically. All this proved was that Swift knew about the song in general, but not the details.
Of course, this didn’t stop the Internet from praising Kardashian for “exposing” Swift. The hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty quickly popped up on Twitter, and fans started spamming Swift’s account with the snake emoji to show their disdain.
Why the snake emoji? That’s what people were using at this time to bully Swift. This started happening after Swift’s ex-boyfriend, Calvin Harris, went on a Twitter rant about her, but it really ramped up after the Kardashian drama.
But now Swift is fighting back. On Monday (August 21), she started dropping mysterious snake videos on her Instagram page. These clips led to the announcement of her new album, Reputation, which seems to be a clap-back to everyone who trolled her last year—including the people who called her a “snake.”
She’s officially reclaimed the snake emoji as a positive symbol, and her fans are living for this. They’ve reclaimed the emoji, too—but now they’re using it against Kardashian. Just look at this recent message Kardashian posted to Twitter; several Swift fans replied to it with—you guessed it—snake emojis.
Is this petty? Absolutely. Kardashian, though, still isn’t standing for it. According to BuzzFeed, the reality TV star has blocked the snake emoji from her Instagram page—which means people can’t use it in her comments section. A BuzzFeed staffer wrote the snake emoji on Kardashian’s page but then noticed it disappeared when he tried to view it from a different account. Interesting.
Apparently, this is a thing you can do. If you go to Instagram’s settings and select “comments,” you can set a filter that prevents certain phrases from appearing on your page—including emojis.
So…did Kardashian do this because of Swift? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s totally possible she’s just afraid of snakes now and doesn’t want to see them. They are snakes, after all.