Keep Those Societies Secret

Open your eyes, sheeple! Dark forces are at work behind the scenes. No, not the Illuminati or the TemplarsI mean the hacks employing secret societies in their work. Dan Browns newest book, Inferno, has the Consortium. Both Jay Z and Drake name-check the Illuminati. The Templars show up yet again in Octobers Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. Were deploying secret societies far too casuallytheyve turned into paint-by-numbers supervillains, with a dash of X-Files and a pinch of Alex Jones. But what bothers me more than laziness is the fact that it leaches power from actual conspiracy theories, our most vital and powerful form of modern-day folk art. Dont believe me? Search YouTube for Illuminati and marvel at the rich tapestry of crazy cooked up by shut-ins who believe that an 18th-century Bavarian social club steers modern-day politics. Look, you can make great art about secret societies, but only if you make it about the paranoia itselflike Eco did with Foucaults Pendulum, or Philip K. Dick did with well, with everything. People who record rants about how the pyramid on the dollar proves that the Trilateral Commission controls Major League Baseball are a national treasure. National Treasure is not a national treasure.

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Keep Those Societies Secret