Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Monday, February 25, 2013

The New World Order and "the Harlem Shake"

Well, I'm sure you're all wondering this morning what the Illuminati are doing.  My suspicion, given that it's Way Too Early o'Clock, is that any Illuminati in the United States are probably doing what I do at this time of day, which is to swear at the alarm clock, and then yawn, put on my bathrobe, and stumble around the kitchen trying to figure out how to operate the coffee maker.  Any sensible Illuminati are still asleep, of course.  If I was an evil, super-powerful, super-intelligent member of the Inner Circle, bent on world domination, I certainly wouldn't feel obliged to get up early, and I would definitely have one of my minions let the dogs out and fix my breakfast.

Be that as it may, it behooves us to keep an eye on these people.  After all, they're up to all sorts of bad, highly secret stuff, conspiracies so amazingly secret that you can find out all about them if you google "illuminati secret conspiracies."  Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, we found out that BeyoncĂ© had caused a power outage at the Superbowl by flashing a special hand signal.  The source of this intriguing claim was one Sarah Wilson, who writes for Unexplainable.net and who seems to be a wingnut of nearly David Icke proportions.  And now, Sarah Wilson is making another, even more amazing claim: that the Illuminati are trying to brainwash people...

... using "the Harlem Shake."

I'm not making this up, and if you don't mind doing repeated headdesks, you can read her whole piece here.  And for the three people worldwide who have not yet seen the "Harlem Shake," and who might be understandably reluctant to watch the video link posted above, allow me to explain that it is a 30-odd second clip of a piece of syntho-pop music by the American musician Baauer that someone decided to videotape a "dance" to.  I put "dance" in quotation marks, because as far as I can tell, it consists mostly of scantily-clad people flailing their arms and doing repeated pelvic thrusts, although in all honesty I have to admit that it probably takes more skill than "the Macarena."

In any case, it didn't strike me as anything that might lead to brainwashing, but Sarah Wilson begs to differ:
Why would some make a connection between the Harlem Shake videos and the Illuminati? For starters, some have questioned the motives of the dance craze based on the lyrics. It isn’t that far-fetched that the Harlem Shake could play a role in a conspiracy to brainwash people...  Is there a possibility that the trending videos are part of a conspiracy to infantilize adults in America – to the point that they "become unaware of the gradual loss of civil liberties?"
Because that makes sense.  If I take my shirt off and gyrate around for thirty seconds, I'll become so addled that Congress could repeal the entire Constitution and I wouldn't even notice.

But of course, it's not like she doesn't have some big guns backing her up:
...the Harlem Shake could be seen as a way to program and influence the actions of today's younger generation. According to Alex Jones of Infowars.com, the Harlem Shake promotes an approach to 'freeze' the development of men and women and keep them at the mental capacity of 12-year-olds. The objective is to prevent these members of society from becoming able-bodied, free-thinking adults. As a result, these people are less likely to understand (or oppose) larger political and social issues.
Let me get this straight; you quote Alex Jones for support, and this is supposed to increase your credibility?  The guy who believes that everything from the Moon landing to the Oklahoma City bombing were government fabrications?  The guy who wanted to wrestle Piers Morgan so he could find out what flag Morgan had stitched to his underwear?  The guy that even Glenn Beck thinks is a wacko right-wing extremist?

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that I'm pro-"Harlem Shake."  As far as I'm concerned, it's a little ridiculous, and I have better things to do with my time than to put on a Spiderman outfit and leap around on the furniture.  I mean, if you're going to learn to do an Internet-craze dance, go for "Gangnam Style," which at least requires some dancing skill, now that we know that it wasn't Psy et al. fulfilling one of the prophecies of Nostradamus.

The whole thing leaves me a little weary, not to mention bruised from the repeated facepalms I did while writing this.  So I'll just end with one recommendation, for any Illuminati who are reading this; next time you come up with a YouTube craze for Achieving World Domination, can you make sure it doesn't involve guys in their underwear performing pelvic thrusts?  Because I really don't need that image haunting my nightmares.  Thank you.

2 comments:

  1. If you want to brainwash people, you have to start when they're young. The most efficient brainwashing is done with a friendly purple dinosaur. So you see, we have nothing to worry about.

    ReplyDelete