Borrowing a Gen-Z Tactic, Kim Kardashian Goes IG Official With Pete Davidson

The world is well aware that Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are dating, but the former decided to make it Instagram official today. The development comes two days after Kardashian talked pretty openly about what the relationship meant (or didn’t mean) for her family’s upcoming Hulu series in a Variety cover story (though, putting her relationship on the grid could also be seen as a tactic to change the conversation after Kim’s unsolicited lecture about her views on work from the same Variety interview seemed to go over like a lead balloon).

Whatever the case, this was bound to happen. We’re happy for them. It’s hard to find love in this crazy world.

What we’re more interested in is the subtle social media aesthetic changes that Kim chose to unveil the relationship hard launch with: this seems to be her very first attempt at the Gen-Z-beloved photo dump.

The carousel starts with Kim posed, kneeling in a glittery Balenciaga coat (one we’ve actually seen her wearing before). Scroll one slide over, and there’s a much more casual photo of a Carhartt-wearing man laying down with his head in Kim’s lap and a tightly lit joint in his hand. Although it’s not immediately clear that the head belongs to Davidson, scroll past one more photo (a blurry photo of Kim covering her own face) and you’ll discover a candid black-and-white selfie of the pair together. To finish it off, Kim also posted a meme from Ben Affleck’s 2010 movie The Town. Why?

Kim, of course, has made ample use of Instagram’s carousel feature before, but usually the photos are merely different angles of the same outfit. This feels almost, but not quite like a photo dump. For those unaware, photo dumps are when the kids update Instagram with slideshows of seemingly unrelated photos, random screenshots and memes with an emphasis on candidness and imperfection (in other words, the exact opposite of the tightly edited and controlled Instagram experience usually employed by the Kardashians).

By way of comparison, 25-year-old supermodel Bella Hadid not only loves to upload a photo dump from time to time, but also unveiled her relationship with boyfriend Marc Kalman in slide ten of a (now-deleted) photo dump last summer. In September, Kardashian’s 26-year-old sister Kendall Jenner also made her relationship with NBA player Devin Booker Instagram official by including a photo of his back on the final slide of a vacation photo dump. This is how all the cool kids are going about making it IG official these days, and Kim is simply following suit.

Anyway, it seems like Kim and Pete were having fun there on that floor. We can only assume that shortly thereafter, they promptly got their “f***ing a**es up and work[ed].”