M.I.A. drops conspiracy-tinged streetwear line, including a 5G-blocking tin foil bucket hat
Rapper M.I.A. is launching a streetwear line to help protect against “Wi-Fi, 4G & 5G from reaching your brain.”
M.I.A unveiled the line in a series of TikToks yesterday
The OHMNI line includes a $100 shiny silver bucket hat marketed to highlight its “unique atomic structure,” which gives it electromagnetic wave deflecting powers; a $200 “Data Protection Dump Bag,” which includes a built-in Faraday cage to block all data and WiFi connections; and a $50 pair of boxer shorts made from “Original Silver Street Shield textiles” providing protection for the “numerous risks linked to electromagnetic radiation,” all promising to restore people's autonomy and freedom.
M.I.A. promoted the fashion line with black and white graphics showing off the products’ features, including a shielding cage for phones, laptops, and tablets in the dump bag,
The brand’s information page claims that OHMNI products are “your last frontier at preserving your privacy, autonomy, and rights over your body and your data.”
“In the time of smart cities, digital crypto, AI, NeuraLink, hackable humans, zero privacy, deepmind, internal body data harvesting, and indiscriminate tracking surveillance, mind data mining, social media overload, augmented reality, social credit system, virtual dystopian mindfield, we bring you the revolutionary future of fashion,” the description reads.
“This is not your artist foray into fashion. This is a necessity."
Why is MIA selling tin foil hats?
And while it may seem odd, it is not out of line with the rapper's recent posts.
In 2019, M.I.A. tweeted that in 10 years 5G will “mutate [all of us] Into radioactive cyborgs.”
In a string of since-deleted tweets from 2020, she also proposed that, while she doesn’t think 5G causes COVID-19, she did think that it can “confuse or slow the body down in healing process as body is learning to cope with new signals wavelength s frequency etc @ same time as Cov.”
“Last pandemic came with radio waves,” she theorized in a different tweet. “Now 5G.The shift is not easy.”
As 5G mobile networks were rolled out, a blizzard of conspiracy theories about the tech spreading viral disease, zapping brains, and causing all manner of illnesses and ailments proliferated.
There’s no evidence of a link between 5G and COVID-19, which spreads through respiratory droplets, not radio waves.
Some scientists have warned about the potentially harmful effects of cellphone radiation, including a 2018 study that found “evidence” that cell phone radiation could have caused both benign and malignant tumors in rats. But a 2021 review of research into the potential negative health effects of 5G mobile networks found “little evidence of health effects including cancer at different sites, effects on reproduction and other diseases,” and “no confirmed evidence that low-level RF fields above 6 GHz such as those used by the 5G network are hazardous to human health.”
“Future backwards is R U TUF,” reads a caption on one of M.I.A.’s TikToks. “If the conspiracy theorists are wrong, good for you, you own some beautiful clothes made with pure silver and precious metals. But, if they are right, you just might have saved the future of humanity.”
Not everybody was buying that marketing line though.
“entire world!… Qanon, born agains, 5G - All just fear mongering to get a quick buck of disenfranchised people. Weak. You can do better,” commented one person on TikTok.
“I’ve lived to see M.I.A become a WhatsApp auntie,” added another. “What a life.”
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