Kim Kardashian West officially became the most popular person on Instagram yesterday, edging out the beloved Beyoncé.
Despite Kardashian West's 44 million Instagram fans, Q Scores polls indicate that she's the most disliked celebrity in America. 71 percent of Americans polled this year gave her a negative rating. For context, only 52 percent of Americans polled gave Bill Cosby a negative rating, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
So if Americans dislike her so much, then why are so many of us following her on Instagram?
Robert Weiss, a social worker and sex therapist at Elements Behavioral Health who specializes in media and intimacy in the digital age, tells us there's one simple reason: it just doesn't matter whether we like celebrities or hate them — we use A-listers to help us relate to each other and make sense of society.