Kanye West and Kim Kardashian sue YouTube founder for filming their private engagement spectacle
Intensely private couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian got engaged last month, in front of their closest family members, friends, 50-piece orchestras, and baseball stadiums. Unfortunately, that very personal moment soon became a gaudy public spectacle, after one attendee posted a fuzzy cell phone video of West’s proposal on the website MixBit, thus allowing in the prying, gawking eyes of all who weren’t specifically invited, hadn’t seen the many posts about it on Instagram that were then circulated on every gossip website in the world, didn’t happen to be aboard any planes passing by, or aren’t a bird—birds being beyond even Kanye’s control, for now.
Now that attendee, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, has been hit with a lawsuit from Kanye and Kim, one that accuses him specifically of violating the confidentiality agreement he had to sign in order to be among the secluded enclave of AT&T Park, and, more broadly, of being a total hanger-on loser. In the suit, which you can read in its entirety at The Hollywood Reporter, West and Kardashian’s attorney discusses at humiliating length Hurley’s “desperation” in using their engagement as an opportunity to bring eyes to his “foundering” website, which he launched after selling YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion. (But the lame kind of billion, where no one invites you to cool engagement parties.)
It then goes on to list Hurley’s various failed business enterprises, by way of explaining why Hurley then “tagged along” and “finagled entry into an exclusive event to which he had not been invited, and which involved two people (Kardashian and West) whom Hurley had never before met.” And while one could argue that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t yet had stand quietly in a baseball stadium while you stage an expensive exhibition of your wealth and influence—and love—the suit argues that, no, Hurley was just there to draw attention to himself and promote his personal brand.
The suit further explains that the proposal was already being professionally filmed for use on an upcoming episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, a show that is based around drawing attention to Kim Kardashian and promoting her personal brand. Ironically, it’s now amateur video that is the bane of that show’s existence, rather than its reason.