Kourtney Kardashian's Boring New App Made Me Feel Like Shit

By Bobby Finger  |  December 8, 2015 | 7:40pm
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“Hey guys, welcome to my app,” says Kourtney Kardashian after you open Kourtney, her new app, for the first time. It’s the same endearing, though spiritless, voice we recognize from Keeping Up With the Kardashians—the one that makes it sound like she has no interest in a single thing she’s saying because there are more important things she needs to be doing, like taking care of her children: Mason, Penelope, Reign, and Scott.

Kourt spends the bulk of her 42-second introductory video attempting to convince us that her app will be “different than [her] sisters’” (all of whom released their apps months ago), and says she will focus more on interior design and her “mom life.” “I cannot wait to share my life with you,” she moans as the video fades to black. But don’t be fooled, because no one has ever been less excited about anything than Kourtney is about her new app.

And I can’t really blame her, because there’s not a whole lot here. And what is here doesn’t always work.

The app is laid out much like content on Snapchat Discover: you scroll left and right to navigate from item to item, up and down to expand the item you’re interested in, and chuck the phone into the nearest river after realizing you’ll need to pay $2.99 per month to unlock every item. Then, after spending hundreds of dollars to replace your phone, you think, “What’s another $2.99?” and unlock all of Kourt’s wonders:

  • MINI: Bright Ideas
  • AROUND THE HOUSE: Chic Reads
  • RECIPES: Avocado Pudding
  • GET THE LOOK: Sleek and Sultry
  • SHOP THE ROOM: Too Cool for Colors
  • KOURT: Get Ready for My Live Streams
  • SHOP THE ROOM: In the Kitchen With Kourt
  • MINI OBSESSIONS: Mighty Metallics
  • GOOD-FOR-YOU-GLOSSARY: Manuka Honey
  • MOVIE NIGHT: The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • TBT: Montana Memories
  • SHOP THE LOOK: In the Navy
  • SHOP: Shop Style + Beauty
  • SHOP: Shop Living
  • SHOP: Shop Mini

Content aside (we’ll get to that later), there are already plenty of stylistic problems with that list of items. Kourtney uses inconsistent language and illustration styles for the same features (GET THE LOOK v. SHOP THE LOOK / a photographed recipe for Kourt’s Krispies v. an illustrated recipe for avocado pudding), redundant subheads (SHOP: SHOP STYLE), and seemingly random ordering.

Once inside each individual piece, even more problems arise. Some have introductory messages from Kourtney, while others offer not the slightest glimmer of context. She told me why I need to start eating Manuka honey (it’s “healthy and yummy” and “treats gingivitis”), but did not explain why, exactly, a $4,500 coffee table book about Valentino is “an easy way to add personality” to my living room. Does it treat gingivitis too? What the hell do I know, maybe it does! Oh damn, it froze again.

The app uses any excuse it can find to get you to feel like shit for not buying shit. “MOVIE NIGHT: The Nightmare Before Christmas” abruptly transitions from a story about watching movies with her children to spending hundreds of dollars on Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise to wear and drink from while watching a movie that I can stream on Netflix right now, for free (or the price of my subscription). “We love to wear matching pajamas,” she writes before linking you to buy them on Gap’s website. Is my family doing something wrong by not dressing up in matching pajamas before watching Home Alone, Kourt? Are we beneath you? Do you pity us and our pilly flannel pajamas?

Get That Look sections will also make you feel like shit. Her “Sleek and Sultry” makeup how-to informs you what eyeliner and “Brow Wiz” to buy, but provides no video tutorial showing how to use either product. “Luckily my makeup artist Joyce Bonelli is a genius,” she writes. Guess what, Kourt, I don’t fucking know her.

Oh, you want me to make “Kourt’s Krisps” with Mason and P? And you want me to use organic marshmallows instead of Kraft, and “Erewhon crispy brown rice” instead of Rice Krispies? Are you saying my mother was a bag of wet garbage for making us cookies with Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips? I bet you are. I bet you think my mother was a piece of shit.

This app is pure misery.

Her live streams, the only things I’m actually interested in, haven’t even launched yet, though I’ll allegedly be notified when they do. “Be sure to accept push notifications,” she threatens.

Those will probably make me feel like shit, too.

So let’s recap: she wanted me to buy a whole lot of things I can’t afford, told me to start using an “Anastasia Brow Wiz” that I’m not even sure how to define, asked me to make “Krispies” with vegan marshmallows and “crispy brown rice” that my mother never bought me as a kid, and decided to mock me—I think she was actually mocking me!—for not being tight with some glam squad “genius” named Joyce Bonelli.

I just paid $2.99 to be shamed by an aspirational lifestyle app.

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