Kanye West Outs Himself As A Software Pirate?

There’s so much to love about a good Twitter fight between the good guys and the bad guys, but what if you can’t really tell which is which? Professional famous person Kanye West has been quite vocal about…well…everything, but his latest online publicity stunt may have backfired in the biggest possible way.

According to multiple sources, West shared a screen shot of his computer while he supposedly enjoying a new video by Sufjan Stevens. The only problem is, in true “oops, maybe I shouldn’t have put that on the internet” fashion, West had some other browser tabs visible at the top of his screen. Porn websites or AshleyMadison.com would have actually been preferable to what was visible: The Pirate Bay, a notorious BitTorrent site made even more famous lately by West’s threats to sue them for offering pirated copies of his latest album, The Life of Pablo.

Well, there’s a plausible excuse, right? Maybe West was just browsing the site to see if his album was still being illegally downloaded? Not exactly.

Further investigations into the particular browser tab on West’s computer showed that he (long story, short) was likely trying to pirate musical synth software Serum, owned by Xfer Records, which was co-founded by musical artist Deadmau5. The aforementioned Twitter fight ensued, with much name calling but no deleting of the offending tweet, which is odd for people concerned about their public image. Just to make the entire episode all that much funnier, The Pirate Bay stepped in and pointed Kanye to their site’s forums if he needed any tech support using the site or downloading material.

It’s safe to say the Twitterverse has not been very kind about poor (apparently, literally) Mr. West’s mistake. With everything from accusations that he pirates other people’s music to using this as proof that his claim of being $53 million in debt must be true, users who’ve grown more than a little tired of the pop culture star’s faux-outrage antics had a brighter day thanks to the flub. For his part, Deadmau5 has reportedly offered to launch a crowdfunding campaign to help West afford the $189 Serum software.