A Brief History of Kanye West Deleting and Reactivating His Social Media Accounts

To liberally quote Eminem, who Kanye once cited as “the #1 rapper of all time”, “guess who’s back, back again, Kanye’s back on Instagram.” Yes, it's true. The rapper who deleted all social media in May has returned to the image sharing platform. His first post back was a dedication to Kim. But as of 4:30pm today, he's posted eight more 'grams of famous duos, including Michelle and Barack Obama, Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson, and Madonna and Sean Penn, which is a weird one.

And yet, doesn’t this feel all too familiar? Not his unending love for Kim; I’ll never not be fascinated by his baseball stadium proposal and his predilection for dressing his wife. No, what I'm referring to is Kanye’s abrupt usage of social media, including sudden reactivations and the brusque deactivations that will eventually follow. He’s never been one to tread lightly, be it in person or online. And I respect a man who is consistently inconsistent as long as I’m not relying on them as my significant other or boss or something.

Herewith, I’ve sort-of-meticulously chronicled a timeline of Kanye’s exoduses from and triumphant returns to social media; the Instagram-filtered picture of a persona of a madman that emerges reflects the nebulous genius of an artist both worthy of our reverence and criticism. Kim is a common justification for his returns, but Lord knows what makes him log off. I can only assume that’s when he makes all the good music and designing oversized expensive shirts.

May 14, 2009: Before joining twitter he wrote in a blog post, “EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF.” and “I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER???”
July 28, 2010 9:17 AM : Joins twitter and tweets “Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley.” Almost immediately he follows up admitting he spelled Silicon incorrectly.
October 4, 2012: Deletes all of his tweets and composes a new one, “be back soon.” With bated breath we wait.
October 5, 2012: Luckily we did not have to wait long. The very next day he tweets, “WE LOST STEVE A YEAR AGO TODAY . . .HE IS ONE OF THE MOST INSPIRING AND INFLUENTIAL HUMAN BEINGS OF OUR EXISTENCE ALONG WITH MICHAEL JACKSON, WALT DISNEY AND DR. KING...LET'S BE THANKFUL FOR HIS LIFE AND RESPECT HIS LEGACY BY NEVER COMPROMISING ON OUR FUTURE."
January 25, 2013: He brief returns with the following series of words tweeted out: “Truth. Beauty. Minimalism. Emotion. Soul. Awesomeness. Functionality.”
August 16, 2016: Deactivates twitter but does not acknowledge it. Puts it back up within the day.
September 18, 2016: Joins Instagram and posts a screenshot from the movie Total Recall. Doesn’t necessarily make sense but I could argue that no one’s earliest instas are good. They’re all garbage. At least he didn’t go filter and border crazy.

December 16, 2016: After not posting for two months (the last post was a birthday message for Kim), Kanye tweets out that he has met with President elect Donald Trump. “I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues, these issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago. I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future president if we truly want change.”
May 5, 2017: Deletes Instagram and Twitter accounts.
February 14, 2018: The king returns for his queen.

Who knows what the future will hold but for good measure, appreciate what you have in the moment. Take some screenshots. Nothing in life, especially Kanye West, is guaranteed.