Conspiracy theories are a slippery slope. One minute you’re watching Usain Bolt celebrate nine total Olympic gold medals in front of millions of viewers, and the next, Bolt flashes the “okay” hands. According to a handful of Illuminati conspiracy theorists, these signal his participation in a clandestine community of elite members of society who run the world.

The hand sign has a history in sports. The “three-point goggles” became a popular celebratory gesture for sinking a three in basketball. According to The Wall Street Journal, it started as a joke about eyesight between two Portland Trail Blazer players, and spread through the N.B.A. and college basketball. Bolt was celebrating a different three—he won the 100 meters, 200 meters, and sprint relay titles at three consecutive Olympics, which is collectively known by its sports monikers, the threepeat or triple triple. That’s three fingers for three events in three Olympics.

If this sounds like it all makes too much sense, and also you believe demonic forces made deals with members of the entertainment industry to carry out the overarching plots to control humanity, then you might have something in common with a couple of so-called conspiracy theorists. One YouTuber, who prefers to go by his channel name, “What is Real,” explains how this hand gesture and a few others that Bolt flashed to the camera during the Olympics are associated with such secret societies as the Illuminati or Free Masons.

The symbol that kicked off “What is Real”’s fall down the rabbit hole of hand signals was the “all-seeing eye,” or covering one eye with a hand. The other one, hands over the lips like you’re saying “shhh,” is the “symbol of silence, which is the masonic gesture that a cultist will do in public to indicate that they are quiet about what’s really going on,” according to the video. Addressing ”all you doubters out there that the symbol of silence is actually a thing that people display publicly,” he offered old photos of David Bowie, Lindsay Lohan, and “the occult queen” Lady Gaga with their hands over their lips, too.

"What is Real" would rather refer to his hobby as “pop-culture esoteric analysts” instead of “conspiracy theorist.” He told VF.com over e-mail on Monday that, “I enjoyed watching Bolt perform, and the general sense I get from the guy is a good one. In all of his interviews I have seen, he seems like a genuinely kind and positive person.”

“What I meant by embodying occult archetypes,” he explained, “is I have noticed a phenomena of certain popular figures having a common esoteric theme throughout parts of their careers. It would take a literal book to fully explain what I mean by this.”

There are many other videos on the matter if you’re also deeply invested in losing an afternoon. Some even caught on during the last Olympics in London. Unsurprisingly, the games are a boon for all kinds of Illuminati theorizers, from dabblers to hardcore enthusiasts.

Katelyn Hempstead of The Lizard People, a podcast during which she invites guests to try to convince her of the most popular and/or most bizarre conspiracy theories, tried to add some context to these videos. Though her show is comedic rather than scientific, Hempstead has noticed some trends after 22 episodes over 9 months. “These videos are fairly par for the course on Illuminati and secret-society theories, in terms of evidence and thoroughness,” she told VF.com in an e-mail on Monday. “From what I’ve seen, they tend to be heavy on imagery and light on analysis, and framed as ‘I’m not making an argument, just pointing out the suspicious evidence!‘”

Some of the videos, like [this one] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoMHRpAyXQI) by “The Vigilant Christian,” “follow the trend of cramming in every corollary theory they possibly can, from global warming to gene alteration to Satanism,” and each one tends to “spiral out from one hand gesture into the world-wide all-encompassing hegemonic domination by the elite.”

Hempstead often wonders in her work, ”What’s the advantage of having a member of your secret society basically yell ‘hey I’m part of a secret society!’ on international TV?”

“What is Real” has a go-to answer for that: “The best way I can put it is when a child is very young and parents spell out a word they don’t want the child to hear, and the child does not perceive what is being communicated because the child is not equipped with that knowledge yet. I see it kind of like that—symbol illiteracy—so it doesn’t matter if it’s shown right in front of the faces of the uninitiated. It’s simply a symbolic language that most of the masses are not privy to.”

So according to several theorists and at least one “pop-culture esoteric analyst,” there’s a decent chance that Usain Bolt is a member of a secret cabal that runs the entertainment, business, and political worlds. Just follow the hands, sheeple.