Kanye has trademarked names for his own self-branded "mini-cities," which isn't at all terrifying

Kanye West—whose connections to the real world continue to dry up by the day, including news this week that fashion company Balenciaga was cutting ties with him over a recent spate of antisemitic behavior—is apparently moving ever closer to constructing a reality of his own. Rolling Stone reports that lawyers for West apparently made moves this week to file trademarks for his own self-sustained “mini-cities,” supposedly dubbed “Yecosystems,” where the kinds of people comfortable with having their day-to-day survival governed by Kanye West might someday go to live, briefly.

It is difficult, as always with West, to parse all the chaos of this Walt Disney-wannabe move; easier just to assume that West is trying to distract from the self-inflicted wounds brought about by his last several “No such thing as bad publicity” stunts, which included announcing to the world that he was about to go “Death con 3" on the Jewish people. (Adidas, one of West’s longest-running business partners, is now apparently “reviewing” their relationship as critics call for the company to take a stand against antisemitism.) In a recent interview that, annoyingly, made Piers Morgan seem like the voice of reason, West refused to apologize for the comments, contending, essentially, that he should be allowed to say whatever he wants about whoever he wants, at all times, and regardless of the consequence to others.

Here’s the thing about this whole “Yecosystem” bullshit, though. A), West has apparently been planning this project for a couple of years now, employing some supposedly serious people who are not just “Kanye West running his mouth” in order to develop “a self-sustained enterprise that would have its own branded homes,” as well as “retail stores that sell Yecosystem-branded food items and beverages.” And, b) he’s made some actual moves in the urban planning direction of late, most notably with the launch of his Donda Academy—an actual school, where actual human children attend and learn, which opened last year.

The point being that, while we would all mostly prefer to just look away from the garbage fire, this particular garbage fire has enough money, fame, and lawyers to have real-world impact from time to time; we might not be driving past any real-world “Yecosystems” (or Yzyverses, Yxyverses, or Yeezyverses, all of which have also now been trademarked) any time soon—although one of Rolling Stone’s sources swears they’ll be breaking ground on their first “campus” next month— but he’s certainly got the resources to make things much worse in his efforts to reshape the world in his own Kanye-focused image.