There doesn't need to be a conspiracy to make the masses love the Kardashians. All that is necessary is for the elites to follow their own drives to meet the demands of their social class and accumulate wealth to retain their position (and there's nothing sinister with wanting this; we all have strong drives to keep or improve our relative positions). The rest follows pretty much by itself:

It is easier to create wealth by feeding the immediate drives of the consumers than by trying to make them genuinely happy and fulfilled in ways that require their potential customers to put in effort and make sacrifices in the short term.