“They don’t want you to be successful,” assures DJ Khaled from his shower, phone aimed strategically over his head, soap running down his freshly cut hair. He continues, “They don’t want-” but the rest of his enigmatic message is cut off. By whom; the snapchat video timer, or, more sinisterly, the ominous “They” we may never know. We know one thing for certain though; celebrity snapchat accounts have exploded, thrusting the oddest of individuals into public spectacles, the personal made public, and the private made existential.
Dj Khaled’s popularity on Snapchat reached fever-pitch over the months of November and December. As an extended performance-piece, DJ Khaled’s Snapchat account functions as real-life documentation of one man’s reckoning of the inner self with the outer self and his existential quest to forge a new definition of Man.
DJ Khaled’s willingness to document himself, to turn the eye of the camera against his own, directly reveals his, to steal French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre’s word, being-for-revealing. DJ Khaled, to put it simply, exists to live. Staring into the brown eyes of DJ Khaled, the viewer receives the impression of being on the other side of the mirror from Khaled, as if we are inside his mind looking back at him. Exposing all aspects of his life and how he manifests himself in the material world, thus personhood, creates an intimate connection between the inner world of DJ Khaled and the outer-realm in which his corporeal form exists. The Snapchat camera functions as an allegory through which DJ Khaled is able to recognize himself and posit his consciousness as something transphenomenal. His attention, directed towards the outside world through his broadcasting of videos, is reflected back at him in the watching of his own videos, and he becomes intimately conscious of his own existence. Consciousness here is self-awareness; the unavoidable perception of one’s self pressing up against the flesh of the world.
Every morning DJ Khaled wakes up. He waters his flowers, his bamboo; he waters his lion statue, the guardian of his realm; he speaks with Chef Dee, he eats his white scramble, turkey bacon, and crab cakes. He goes out on his jet ski, he smokes a cigar and talks business, he tips his staff generously; he watches basketball games and ends the night with pithy mantras. Here is DJ Khaled’s definition of Man. Everyday he is crafting the same example of humanity; a person who is generous to those around him and within his community, environmentally aware, and who eats a solid breakfast every day without fail. DJ Khaled stresses gratefulness and awareness of one’s “blessings.” He does not, however, accredit all of his successes to divine movement or luck. DJ Khaled stresses the value of hard work, of confronting life and recognizing that man is condemned to be free. DJ Khaled recognized the realities of his circumstances and worked for affluence, he never became complacent and recognized that “They don’t want you to be successful.” Unwilling to live in bad faith—accept circumstances at face-value—DJ Khaled worked harder than anyone else in the game.
As a performance piece, DJ Khaled has crafted the truest form of reality television. Unedited, often in one take, and incredibly spontaneous, the voyeur is afforded a ten-second glimpse into the life of an Other and at the same time, a deeply personal Self.