The 100 Worst People On Twitter

@ThelIluminati

#ISawTheLight

It’s about time The 100 Worst checked its privilege. How many AOCs (assholes of colour) have we had on the list so far? Joe Budden, The Rock, MJ Illest, BonsaiSky, Dr Eoin Clarke and KSIOlajidebt. A pitiful six. We’ve spent more time criticising saltines than a chowder blog. We’ve focussed on the White Twitter Elite so much that we’ve neglected Black Twitter. So let’s make a play for equality today. Let’s look at the nadir of Black Twitter. Let’s look at @ThelIluminati.

Next time you’re on WorldStarHipHop, take a few seconds away from the self-loathing that occurs after you jack it to a Pinky video and look at the comment box. Read a few messages and you’ll go “huh, these commenters really hate Beyonce”. Read a few more and you’ll go “huh, these commenters really like Jesus”. And you’ll read a few more than that and slowly piece everything together. These messages are all part of a consistent whole, the commenters are all saying the same thing: black popular culture is controlled by a shadowy cabal of Satanists, who killed Michael Jackson/Tupac/Aaliyah/Left Eye/the black dude from Charles and Eddie. The spectre of the illuminati haunts WSHH in very much the same way the guilt of putting on a modern day minstrel show must.

Back in the old days, before Barack Obama stopped racism, white people were allowed to define what words meant by themselves. Back then, “illuminati" mean something quite obvious: “Jews”. When Henry Ford or David Icke or your man from The Corrs were raging about the illuminati controlling international finance, what the meant was “I hate Jews”. The illuminati on Bossip, MediaTakeOut et al is something quite different though. It can best be described as an all-purpose whipping boy for all the evils in society, evils that are apparently overseen solely by Jay-Z, his missus and their reptilian sacrificial daughter.

So on to Twitter. The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Every clueless Guardian music writer’s favourite rape balladeer, Tyler the Creator, takes home a gong for “Best Juggalo”. Immediately afterwards, a new Twitter account is set up. @ThelIluminati. It tweets a simple three-word message at our Tyler: “Welcome Brother. Congrats.” Hip hop blogs everywhere realise that this will be good for their SEO and quickly write up a report on it. A year later, the account has over one million subscribers.

So what’s the problem? Well… @ThelIluminati does four different types of tweet, and four alone.

The first is them role-playing as the actual illuminati. A new rapper will start getting love on Twitter, they’ll message him and go “dear x, welcome to the illuminati. We are watching over you”. This is because, back in the day, the Knights Templar used to send a wandering bard from village to village to shout out the names of their latest members.

The second is as the complete opposite. This time they’re against the illuminati. Fuck tha police, legalise it 420 blaze everyday, Google and Apple were behind 9/11 Occupy Some Places. It makes no sense for message styles one and two to appear on the same account, but, hey, it gets RTs.

The third is yet another bland platitude account. So after “we control the world’s media” and “kill those who control the world’s media”, it’s “maybe you don’t care too much. Maybe he cares too little. RT if u agree”.

And the fourth is why we’re here. This is an account specifically targeted at a black audience, and a working class black audience at that. A group marginalised in American society both politically and financially. And it implies they’re on their side, the police are bad, media giants and financial institutions are holding the black man back. And then… and then it sells sponsored tweets for pre-paid credit cards with extortionate charge fees. Gambling apps for the iPhone. Bootleg sports jerseys. All of your favourite ways of keeping the poor poor, this account endorses. It’s not the hypocrisy that’s the worst thing here. It’s that they quite clearly know exactly what they’re doing. It’s ironic that an account that pretends to be affiliated with Satan has quite clearly already mortgaged its soul for financial gain.

As a side note, back when Pay4Tweet was briefly in vogue among bored internet dicks, I paid to tweet something from @ThelIluminati’s account (I said if they had 10,000 unfollows in a day they’d give out a $1,000 Amazon gift certificate. They deleted my tweet immediately). Anyway, when you pay for something through Paypal, you can see who the money went to. @ThelIluminati is an account run by a 44-year-old woman in North Carolina. Seems a lot less threatening now, huh?

Sample Tweets:

“Tell the people the truth about December 21, 2012 #debate2012”

“Being ignored by the person you love is hard, but what hurts the most is when they make it look like it’s easy for them.”

“Make Money With The Illuminati! Sign up http://bit.ly/Qs2FMk  for only $19.95 & YOU will be GUARANTEED to MAKE $800 Daily! THIS IS REAL!”