The romantic storyline here was supposed to be "Cinderella finds her prince." But the audience—and Humphries himself—couldn't ignore the subtext. The tape had made Kim a sex symbol, but the Kris Humphries wedding special tried to rebrand her as a traditional bride. It failed spectacularly.

Their romance was light, full of skits and Instagram posts. It was a palate cleanser. While they broke up due to distance and logistics, Pete Davidson served a critical narrative function: he proved that in the 2020s, the tape had lost its power to destabilize a relationship. As of 2024 and into 2025, Kim’s rumored romance with NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. represents the final evolution of the romantic storyline. The tape is never mentioned. It is a relic. OBJ is a superstar who grew up in the era of Kim Kardashian the mogul , not Kim Kardashian the leaked tape .

The romantic storyline here was radically different: Pete Davidson, who has his own public struggles with mental health and tabloid infamy, treated the Kim Kardashian tape with a shrug. When Howard Stern asked him about watching the tape, Pete famously replied, "I mean, I've probably seen it before I was with her... it's not something I think about."

The takeaway was brutal: The tape could be used to argue that Kim was incapable of a serious romance. It took years for her to shake that accusation. Enter Kanye West. In the history of "Kim Kardashian tape relationships and romantic storylines," Kanye is the seismic event. He did not ignore the tape; he transcended it. Kanye famously told Kim that she was "not the girl from the sex tape" and that he saw her as a "fine art masterpiece."