The "benighted masses" meme always has two things in common:

--Some dark force is using nefarious methods to control the minds of the population.

--The Enlightened Person warning us about this is somehow immune to it all.

Often this leads to the conclusion that the benighted masses can't be trusted to run their own lives, and the Enlightened must be willing to step in and save them from themselves.

Oddly, many of the Enlightened, while supposedly immune to the powerful controlling forces of the media, globalists, Powers That Be, Illuminati, or what have you, often seem to be enormously gullible when exposed to conspiracy theories or other weird beliefs. Go figure.