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I love a good conspiracy theory writes 041Culture columnist MVUME NDIMBA; “But amidst the wild ideas, I’ve discovered a simple yet profound solution: the “mind your business” theory.”

I dont really enjoy television anymore as it feels boring and tired. Television has become a repetitive lineup of the same thing upcycled and refurbished and presented like a new product. 

Like creating lab-grown meat out of your waste products, television is just feeding us the food we already ate and even though they aren’t exactly showing us the process… we can kinda tell what we’re consuming isn’t fresh or new. 

But deciding to stop watching new TV shows outside of maybe “The Boys” has left me with a lot of free time… like too much free time. Like a dangerous amount of free time. 

So to make sure I fill my time up positively, indoors, away from the streets I’ve had to make some changes in my content consumption to make sure I keep entertained and stay out of the streets. So what did I use to fill that open space? 

You guessed it. Conspiracies! 

I’m really into conspiracy theories. For me, conspiracy theories fill that need, I find ideas like the flat earth entertaining, and without believing or dismissing these ideas, I can sit and consume hollow earth content all day because it’s just damn entertaining watching someone explain a bad idea and try to make it believable. 

But I realised recently that I may be consuming a lot more than the average person where these theories are concerned.

You see, in my personal life, I have been quite successful in maintaining friendships across a couple of decades. One of these friendship groups is “Ho-reo” (play on Oreo) because you see, two of us are black and one is white, do you get it? 

But anyway, during our weekly catch-up, Meech (not his real name) was telling me and Nad (not her real name) about a Brazilian lady he met. This woman is not critical to the story but she told Meech about the story of the UFO crash that happened in Varginha in 1996. He was blown away by this story and reported back to me and Big Nad. She also had never heard the story before and was blown away by the fact that this actually happened and we never knew as a planet that an unknown creature crashed out in Brazil, asked for help telepathically, was taken to a vet, general hospital, military hospital and gave every person who came into close contact with it radiation poisoning. 

I, on the other hand, knew the story and shared the story of the UFO landing at the Ariel School in Zimbabwe in 1994, sharing the details of that story and how this thing happened just next door and didn’t know anything about it… I really am way too into this stuff. 

One of the theories that I brought up after the alien chat is something known as the “Great Replacement” theory. In broad strokes, the Great Replacement is the idea that straight, white men are slowly being erased from popular media, replaced by racially diverse women, queer bodies and non-binary people across the board. Straight white men are only allowed to be included as villains, comedic relief or place fillers, while the other more diverse characters are allowed to have depth and be multi-dimensional. According to the theory, this has a side effect of creating a real-life environment of straight (usually white) men being shamed in public media and bad or evil dudes, creating a perception that white men are not to be listened to or taken seriously and in extreme cases, bred out of existence by means of interracial relationships like the way they did the Australian Aborigine. 

Now while this is a bad idea with some compelling, albeit circumstantial evidence, it is still a bad idea. However, the interesting idea I had from this theory is that a lot of these “straight” males in the public eye are kind of doing it to themselves.

Jonothan Majors (black man) fumbled a generational bag by getting caught up with the wrong woman, his 3rd-degree assault charge forced Marvel studios to bring Robert Downey Jr (a white man, most of the time) back as the new “big bad” (now that’s a great replacement). 

Sean Puffy Combs (P Diddy) one of Hip Hop’s first-ever billionaires is currently fighting horrible allegations and to be honest… he did all that stuff, he is guilty of all of it. 

Vince McMahon is also fighting horrendous allegations and if you’re in my age group and older and grew up watching the WWF/WWE product over the years, you know he did that shit, he is 100% guilty and needs to be put away for a long time. 

This isn’t limited to men either, Lizzo was fighting allegations of sexual misconduct body shaming her dancers (who are meant to be big girls) and creating a hostile work environment for her staff. 

Even the youth are getting in on the action with Mr. Beast being accused of running an illegal gambling ring on his platform and being friends with a “kid diddler” who also appears regularly on his channel. 

Even OGs like the dad from “Family Matters” (the Steve Urkel show) have an Onlyfans and he is on there going CRAZY. 

I brought all these examples up to say that, “Hey… there’s no replacement, people are taking themselves out of the equation” across gender and racial lines, sometimes people are creepy. And a lot of times that creep is only exaggerated by the access and privilege afforded to you by having some money or the burning desire to get back “to the top” and regain public admiration… Looking directly at you Orlando Brown, RIP Aaron Carter, and Charlie Sheen, I see you and am completely shocked you’re still alive. 

I fear that in the last few decades, we have fallen into a cult of celebrity worship, seeing our favourite actors and singers as demigods and deities when they are just humans. People like you or me. And without going into that theory I think that the destruction of this idea is so important. It’s so necessary to get away from this thinking, for our sake as consumers and theirs as people. We need to worry more about our immediate circle of influence and give that love and adoration to people who are in our lives.

 I think a lot of these more fringe conspiracies are created by taking admiration that you should hold for people you actually know and giving it to strangers because they have the same genitalia as you, or like the same kind of things you like. And I think that is what makes people believe in these theories no matter how insane.

Terence Howard telling you that 1×1=2 with a straight face and zero ironies in his voice only works if you’ve seen Empire, The Best Man, or Hustle and Flow, or even if you confused him for Cuba Gooding Jr. (another freaky freaky dude) that sense of familiarity and ability to identify with the messenger should never outweigh the message itself. 

Much like “The Boys” the celebrities we look up to are as flawed and screwed up as we are, in many ways they’re way worse than we are. Free from consequence and responsibility, these people are allowed to do whatever they want and when confronted with the results of their actions they use their superpower to evade responsibility. But unlike Homelander, their power isn’t super strength or laser eyes, their power is finance. They pay their way out of trouble with little to no impact on their real lives without a second thought for the people whose lives are irrevocably changed by their reckless actions. 

With all that said. I am officially debuting my own conspiracy. Called the “mind your business” theory. Simple enough to follow and easy enough to do. All you need to do is wake up every morning and mind your business. If someone comes to you with drama and gossip, stop them immediately and tell them you’re not interested. When your phone starts pushing you news articles about this celebrity and using their personal problems as a commodity, delete the notification and mind your business. I guarantee this will not only improve your life, finances and personal relationships. 

Or dont and keep fighting your neighbours over dumb things nobody can change.