Voices: Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson prove hot people can be cringe too

Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson began their relationship much like most modern romances begin – on the set of Saturday Night Live. The 41-year-old reality star said she felt a spark with Davidson when they shared a kiss during their “Aladdin” sketch last October. Now, one kiss isn’t the maker of a relationship. If I dated every guy I kissed at a sweaty bar in college, I would have probably gone to therapy a lot sooner. Kim freely admits that — it was Pete’s BDE that left her wanting more.

Perhaps the line of what should and shouldn’t be shared on social media was indefinitely crossed when the world suddenly learned that Pete Davidson was packing, and we have his ex-fiancée Ariana Grande to thank for that. But in the immortalized words of Doja Cat, Kim heard from a friend of a friend that Davidson’s genitals were a ten out of ten. She said it herself during last week’s episode of The Kardashians: “I was just basically DTF.”

I appreciate the honesty. Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are arguably the world’s most fascinating couple, so it’s only natural that the public would enjoy hearing how they came to be. It’s the classic fairytale love story, in which our protagonists come from completely different worlds. Kim grew up in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, had the most unconventional rise to fame, and is considered one of the greatest fashion icons of the 21st century. Pete is from Staten Island and was a cast member on MTV’s Guy Code before his SNL fame (I think as a culture we should be talking more about the mid-2010s phenomenon of Guy Code and the subsequent spin-off series, Girl Code).

I’m glad that the geniuses behind Hulu were there to capture every moment of Kim and Pete’s romance. But when does too much information become way too much information?

It’s a little-acknowledged fact of life that straight people are cringe. Straight people in heterosexual relationships famously love talking about farmers’ markets, going to kitsch weddings, and the Le Creuset Dutch oven they just put a downpayment on. But when those straight people in relationships are also both rich and famous? There is no end in sight. Everyone in the world will be forced to hear about the ins and outs of their cringey relationship, with barely anywhere safe left to turn.

Exhibit A — and perhaps the horniest of them all — Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. Back in October, GQ writer Molly Lambert published the interview to end all interviews, in which MGK and Fox gave each other tattoos, smelled each other’s breath, and embraced each other in their very own “dark fairytale” romance. The two had met a few years prior at a party in LA, where this straight-out-of-a-Wattpad-fanfiction moment happened: “I just remember this tall, blond, ghostly creature and I looked up and I was like, ‘You smell like weed.’ He looked down at me and he was like, ‘I am weed’.”

You know the bar is on the floor when something like “I am weed” sweeps a woman like Megan Fox off her feet. And let’s not even dwell on the fact that MGK wears a necklace containing a drop of Fox’s blood, or that the two occasionally drink each other’s blood for “ritual purposes” (because of course that’s the only time that drinking your partner’s blood makes perfect sense), or that Fox’s engagement ring was apparently designed to cause her pain. It’s worth noting that Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker also included a vial of blood at their joint bachelor party. What is up with celebrities and blood...and letting us know about it? Please, God, don’t let this be the attempt at a new straight-couple trend.

These celebrities share the most intimate, and the cringiest, parts of their relationship to the whole world, and we all just move on like it’s normal, because drinking each other’s blood is classic two-year anniversary territory.

For public figures whose entire livelihood rests upon whether we like them or not – and can come crashing down the minute we realise their wealth and status inherently positions them as out-of-touch – performing relationships has become the new PR stunt. The public performance of a relationship — doing normal things like getting ice cream — is better than the relationship itself, because it proves celebrities are “just like us”. And seeming like our friends is how those celebrities get to market things to us on social media and convince us to watch hours of inane TV shot inside their houses about disputes you’d only usually care about if they happened to your inner circle.

It’s an understandable public relations strategy, but the execution is toe-curlingly embarrassing. I don’t need to hear that getting ice cream with Pete made Kim “horny”. I just don’t. Thank U, Next.