I watched an interesting broadcast on All In with Chris Hayes the other night. It was specifically about how social media can spur people to initial action, such as the growing protests that happened a few years ago in Egypt against the government, but that action after the initial protests is nonexistent. In other words people can be motivated to get upset about something but the follow through is missing.

I’ve always had issue with social media pushes because I never felt the people involved understood that for real change, to make a real impact in something takes work, blood, sweat, tears and in a lot of cases is years if not decades of conflict before justice can be done. Education of the subject is key because we are prone to jump feet first into something without making sure of the facts in the issue.

This morning I came across a strange but disturbing social media push. It was not an earth shattering event as far as world impact, but the way people gravitated to it without much information was unsettling to me. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are on the April cover of Vogue USA magazine. Sarah Michelle Gellar, yes the same of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and currently on the CBS Show The Crazy Ones, put out a Twitter response to the cover.

Immediately social media exploded with people agreeing with SMG and threatening to cancel their subscriptions because of the cover. Why? If she had a reason, SMG didn’t express it in her initial tweet. In checking some online threads I saw some people mentioned how Vogue is a fashion magazine, but Kim Kardashian being a celebrity, OK questionable celebrity, doesn’t disqualify her from being on the cover. A simple photo check will show Vogue has had the likes of Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Nichole Kidman and other actresses on their cover. There have been men and women on the cover so there doesn’t seem to be a controversy there.

From what I can gather, Anne Wintour, fashion editor for Vogue, had stated in the past that Kim Kardashian would never be on the cover of the magazine. So the editor changed her mind and put Kardashian and West on the cover and this firestorm occurred?

Looking at the photo I’m not seeing where the issue is. I’m not seeing what issue SMG has about the cover and I’m really perplexed about people following the advice of her 140 character message. Shouldn’t there be something more to go on before taking action? Should there be any action at all about this? The question could be asked why SMG didn’t cancel her subscription, or why she would have gotten a subscription in the first place, after a Vogue cover controversy a few years ago.

In 2008, ironically it was also an April cover, LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen were on the cover. There was a lot of conversation about the photo, noting that the depiction of James harkened to the poster for King Kong and exhibited a racist portrayal of a black man. There were calls for boycotting and canceling subscriptions at the time. Famed photographer Annie Leibovitz shot the 2008 and 2014 covers and Anna Wintour has been editor since 1988, so she was also involved with the 2008 cover. To me the question has to be asked again, what makes the Kanye/Kardashian cover as controversial as the James/Bundchen cover?

If I were a lemming, I could go to the basic trope and say there is a racial component to the calls for cancellation. The comments made by many would seem to focus on that but let’s try a less high energy element in this. Kim Kardashian is a polarizing person. That polarization fuels magazine sales, television ratings and comments online. A fan of Kardashian will be sure to pick up a cover of the magazine when it comes out. News outlets will continue to report about the decision to put her on the cover, which may fuel more sales. Her show will still air and get ratings. I honestly don’t think Kardashian, Wintour or the powers that be at the magazine or in Kardashian’s camp care if people cancel subscriptions because she is on the cover. They are getting all the free advertising they need.

What I think we have to be concerned about is the general willingness to mobilize, comment and protest over something that has very little impact, if any, on society as a whole. Yes, Kim Kardashian became famous for making a sex tape in 2007. Yes her family has parlayed that into a thriving industry but folks you need to get over the hate over Kardashian. Her sex tape didn’t trigger the fall of civilization, it didn’t cause war, and though some might say otherwise, she hasn’t eroded the moral fiber of our country. Her family wouldn’t be making the money they are if there wasn’t an appetite for her. Considering the larger controversy over the cover in 2008, Kardashian in a wedding dress seems hardly the stuff that would warrant so much ink in such a short amount of time.

You know what is fueling this? The bandwagon effect. SMG, with her own agenda in mind, sends out a tweet that gets HER followers to comment. Now you have two celebrity women in a ‘feud’ and gossip sites repost the tweet. More people jump on the wagon, less concerned about the facts of the cover controversy but moved because they have an unnatural disgust for Kim Kardashian. So this thing is growing because a good number of people are mad that a woman used sex to get ahead. They are mad because she won’t go away. What they have to realize is the reason why she won’t go away is because we don’t want her to. We know about her relationships, we know about her wedding. A tweet by one celebrity put Kim Kardashian in the spotlight and has thousands if not millions of people responding vigorously to the post. She isn’t going away anytime soon because the public has an appetite for it.