To look past whatever (unnecessary) emotions you may have regarding the Great Oscars Slap of 2022 is to realize that it was always silly to blame Jada Pinkett Smith for executing some type of “mind control” over Will Smith, causing him to destroy all the good will he had with white people with one fell slap.
But the idea that the whole incident was a “humiliation ritual” perpetuated by the couple’s membership in the Illuminati is a whole new wave of stupid. Yet the number of likes “Will and Jada Illuminati” videos get on TikTok suggests quite a few people are mainlining the Kool-Aid.
Every now and again, the internet flares up like a case of herpes to remind us of the nose-bridge-pinching silliness that is the Illuminati – a secret cabal of unnamed, unnumbered humans lurking in the shadows, pulling the strings of the planet’s 8 billion denizens to their whim.
So, what exactly is the Illuminati? Ask five people and you’ll get five different answers, because no one actually knows what it is. The literal, historical Illuminati was a decade-lasting society in the late 1700s in what is now Germany, founded by a white dude who wanted to promote the Age of Enlightenment philosophy among the elites.
They had their symbols and their pseudonyms; its members infiltrated other organizations like the Freemasons. But it seems like their influence died some hundreds of years before there existed a TikTok for people to muse about it. (Or did it…?)
The suggestion that a nigh-omniponent shadowy elite society is secretly controlling the U.S. Government is particularly risible when you consider that our government is the model of inefficiency. Did the Illuminati members all fail sixth grade civics? Hell, many of the so-called powerful white men in the country can’t even finish a career without being caught in mind-bogglingly stupid sex scandals – what makes you think these morons know how to keep secrets?
If the Illuminati had open enrollment in 2023, I would imagine it’d be one of the last vestiges of unfettered institutional racism and white supremacy in existence, and that the ultra-famous and rich Black folks that y’all dig down deep to assign membership – including the Smiths, Beyoncé and Jay-Z – would be on toilet-cleaning duty in the Illuminati headquarters.
In that vein, have you ever noticed that politicians and Fortune 500 CEOs are the white people whom folks assume are in the Illuminati, while the suspected Black members are…Doja Cat? I’ve never seen anyone accuse Barack Obama – arguably the most powerful Black person in contemporary history – of being in the Illuminati. If anything, Black people loved to accuse the Illuminati of controlling him.
And no shade to Ms. Cat, but the fact that her artistry veers into into the occult and general weirdness does not a secret society member make. I appreciate the fact that she’s having fun with the little people…I’d do the same in her position.
Finally, if Will is in the Illuminati, shouldn’t he have been able to squash rumors about him and Duane Martin playing “Hide the Fresh Prince?” I figure this shadowy organization can at least control the media and not force one of its members to publicly respond to a former employer turning into a Chatty Patty.
Belief in the Illuminati and its continued sovereignty is the domain of people who insist that discussing a viral topic is a “distraction” from something “more important” but can’t tell you what that is. It’s the domain of people who say stuff like “they” are emasculating grown Black men who express themselves sartorially without penning down exactly who “they” are. It’s a vape cloud on a windy day; a pinch of salt in a pot of boiling water.
But if you choose to believe that Beyoncé — one of the biggest and most dissected pop artists of all time — is “brainwashing” people through complex dance routines and visuals that are hiding pyramids with eyeballs inside of them, go off, I guess. I probably won’t hire you to arrange my sock drawer anytime soon, though.