@KennyOmegamanX is mimicking the tactics of many grifters, authoritarian leaders, and cults of personality throughout history in that he is purging all the unwanted and inconvenient parts of his past and rebuilding a new mythology in it's place

The point of this mythology building is to create a simple, emotionally evocative "just so" narrative that boosts one's legitimacy in the eyes of the people one is trying to convince that also discourages any real questioning of the facts

Somewhat counterintuitively, the existence of illogical and/or contradictory elements is a feature, rather than a bug in this sort of historical revisionism. The point is the *emotion* and whether the story just "feels" right; the emotional response lasts, the details dont

So now in this new myth we have Kenny Omega; The Chosen One, the Golden Child guided from the beginning by his Wise Older Mentor Don Callis. There's an air of divinity and predestination to it that resonates, which is why cult leaders tend to construct similar backstories

When employed, these mythologies are used as proof that the teller is not only suited to the lofty position they aspire to, but that it is correct and inevitable that they do so. They are potent in their ability to manipulate and they are not meant to be questioned

All that is part of the work being crafted: Kennys new mythology is ABSOLUTELY meant to be questioned. The excision of the Young Bucks from his own personal history is so bold and egregious that it should set off alarm bells in anyone paying attention & prompt them to look closer

Storytelling, for the Elite, is always told in layers. Taken at face value it's mostly goofy hijinks with moments of more serious drama seeded through out. But when one looks deeper, one can find deeper layers of meaning that echo through the whole story. The same is true here.

At a shallow, surface level read, we see that Kenny Omega has just betrayed his friends and the company he helped form to turn heel in a blindly ambitious, egotistical grab for power and fame. Simple, straightforward, easy enough to follow, just fine for a casual fan.

Long time fans of his work might then scratch the surface and see that Kenny is doing what he as a character has always done when he feels insecure, inadequate & abandoned; pushing away his friends, acting out for attention, & reacting to attempts at reconciliation with hostility

But we can go deeper: The Young Bucks are some of Kenny's closest friends and years long creative partners, but their part is often ignored when people tell his story. The resentment they've expressed & the way Kenny's now erasing them CAN be seen on a metacommentary on that

Why stop there? This myth building is essentially a form of propaganda, a tool of informational warfare which ties in with Don's unhinged assertion that he's Canadian CIA.

There's perhaps a statement to be made in the way that smark media is uncritically repeating Kenny's myth

Misinformation is a huge issue in our current culture, and the way wrestling journalists are absorbing and propagating a constructed narrative that serves a particular person's agenda could be seen as a microcosm of the wider media landscape in which we live

And at the core of this there's Kenny himself, a person who has always expressed a deep love of wrestling as art, who respects it enough to expect more from it and wants others to do the same.

Now he's telling an ambitious story that I remember being described as "experimental"

What does "experimental" mean? A bunch of things, probably. Hard to say. Maybe some of the things listed above, maybe none of them, probably a lot of things i haven't even thought of yet. It's still VERY early days. He's just getting started, if you will

I suspect that some might think I'm reading to much into things and that, at the end of the day, it's really not that deep. Especially the wilder meta theories i touched on. And you know, maybe so! But this story IS and will be a work of art, and i intend to treat it as such

I'd like to leave off with Kenny's own words from Talk is Jericho, perhaps the most important ones of the entire podcast (that was ignored in favor of uncritically repeating his much more dramatic heel work) and a moment where I feel Kenny is expressing himself honestly: