WASHINGTON — The Kardashians: You either love them or hate them. If you love them — well, we’ll get to that. If you hate them, the idea of a Kardashian-free Internet may seem like an impossible dream. But no more.
James Shamsi, a British marketer living in Los Angeles, has developed #KardBlock, a browser extension that removes all mention of the clan from your feed, the Daily Beast reports.
“Did you hear that Kim just released a book of her selfies …? Her selfies! I didn’t sign up to these sites to hear about things like that,” Shamsi told the Daily Beast. “I am interested in deeper issues. But every platform seems interested in Kardashian news to the point that everything else gets crushed.”
He says the add-on has attracted 20,000 beta users in its first week, and he says the final version will not only erase Kardashian mentions, it’ll replace them with links to “charitable causes of all kind,” Shamsi tells the Daily Beast.
He won’t stop there: You’ll someday be able to customize it so you won’t get Justin Bieber news or whatever else you don’t want — even advertisements.
“We are living in a time when important news is being squashed down by either adverts telling you that you need Viagra or Kendall Jenner getting into some sort of a scrap,” Shamsi says.
“Ultimately, we are hoping to change that by making something that can really help people.”
He’s taking donations, but says he’ll donate them to charity as well.
It’s true, as the Daily Beast points out, that between the Kardashians’ talk of the Armenian genocide and Bruce Jenner’s revelation about living as a woman, the family has never been more important.
Still, Shamsi says, “They will raise awareness for 30 seconds, and then one of them will take their top off and that will be news for days and days and days,” he says.
“They could be doing great things, but they often choose not to, which to me is an irritant.”
Not everyone seems taken with the idea. Shamsi claims to have gotten a threatening phone call in the middle of his Daily Beast interview.
And if you love the Kardashians? You don’t have to do anything. They’ll be back on the Internet soon.
