Kim Kardashian not long ago he appeared on Alabama Barker TikTok Live. “You have to come see my (Birkin) collection,” she said, adding that Guram Gvasalia, the creative director of Clothesencourages him to go to Paris to buy one of the rare examples of Hermès Himalayan models. “I have to show you, I have the one with the diamonds.” The bag – which is worth as much as £500,000 on the resale market – is an obscene symbol of wealth and is just one of many ways celebrities maintain their distance from each other.

But such trinkets may no longer be enough: Kim’s latest display of status and connection is even harder to find: a never-before-seen humanoid robot developed by Tesla. Yesterday afternoon, she displayed her abilities in a series of gushing Instagram Stories, speaking to “Optimus” in the same tone reserved for young children who have yet to develop their fine motor skills.

“Do you know how to do that!?” Kim coos, making heart hands with the robot. “Oh, you’re Hawaiian!” she purrs when he waves his hands to the side. “Lift the roof!” » she cheers, as she pumps the sky like Elon Musk at one of Donald Trump’s rallies. It’s strange: most people seem to shy away from the distended tycoon, who finance the president-elect’s campaign with a $200 million cash infusion. Not Kim. Stranger still, these stories are not marked as #ads.

Musk unveiled a prototype of the robot last month at a Tesla conference called “We, Robot.” He told the crowd that Optimus would be able to “be a teacher, babysit your kids, walk your dog, mow your lawn, buy groceries, just be your friend.” I’m not convinced that these robots will be able to do anything – let alone »conquer the world» – when they it apparently lacks fundamental technology to navigate on uneven ground. The bottom line is that I just don’t like the shoe he’s wearing. This reminds me these repulsive slip-ons, which I suppose is precisely the sort of thing a roboticist would consider attractive. It’s fair enough that Tesla engineers didn’t think about styling. Too preoccupied, perhaps, with getting the “most sophisticated humanoid robot» fold a t-shirt.