The viral meme “Thank You, Beyoncé” has people either loving it, sick of it or not understanding it.
This meme gained popularity after Sean Combs’s (also known as P. Diddy, Puff Daddy or Diddy) arrest, with Beyoncé having some type of connection to him. Although this meme is not new, allegations against Beyoncé have been around for several years. Some have claimed that she is in the Illuminati and is also strangely, and inexplicably, Italian.
Many conspiracy theorists claim she has more power than anyone knows, so much so that many artists thank her in their award acceptance speeches. Some of those artists have included Britney Spears, JoJo Siwa, Lady Gaga and Megan Thee Stallion. Adele also, while not thanking her, said that Beyoncé should have won the 2017 Grammy Award for Album of the Year instead of her and even broke the award and threw a piece to her in the audience. Six years later, Lizzo won Album of the Year and Song of the Year and used her entire speech to praise Beyoncé. When Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z accepted his Grammy Award earlier this year, he talked about how Beyoncé has never won a Grammy and how “That doesn’t make sense.”
Jumping back to 2009, one of the biggest celebrity feuds began when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s Best Video by a Female Artist Award acceptance speech by taking the microphone from Swift and saying, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you. I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” talking about Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” music video.
Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Diddy have had a long friendship, stretching from personal to professional. In 1997, Jay-Z and Combs collaborated on Diddy’s debut album, and that was the first time the public became aware of their friendship. Each have also publically supported each other and have appeared at many events together, such as Diddy’s lavish 50th birthday bash in 2019. In 2003, Beyoncé and Diddy recorded the song “Summertime” together. Although, even with all that, there is no concrete evidence that Beyoncé or Jay-Z have any correlation to Diddy’s alleged crimes.
Going along with the “Thank You, Beyoncé” meme, is “Beyoncé kidnapped me” meme. This meme only made the “Thank You, Beyoncé” meme more popular. This one started around late September of this year, when Twitter/X user @crulsmmr (who has since deleted their account) posted a screenshot on the 20 of Kate Furler’s (Sia’s) post, circling the first letter of each word to spell out “Beyoncé kidnapped me.” Sia’s post in this screenshot read: “Baby, everything your own nice cat eats. Kangaroo is dead, nowhere and purple penguins every day. My egg.” While that was an odd post to begin with, it was reported to be a joke to reference the conspiracies, but it was taken seriously. The user @crulsmmr then captioned this post, “She was trying to warn us.”
On Oct. 24, Siwa referenced the meme in her acceptance speech at the Industry Dance Awards. Sia is now rumored, as of Oct. 24, to have been kidnapped by Beyoncé after posting that joke. Since the original post, she posted an odd photo with not much context. Some think this is similar to when Britney Spears was rumored to have been kidnapped or held hostage in 2021, with how she made odd posts. Recently, Siwa has been rumored to be kidnapped because of her reference to the joke. “Evidence” behind this kidnapping is that she has not posted on any social media in over a week, when she was on a daily schedule of at least one post a day on one platform.
That meme then spiraled into Beyoncé killing people. This theory, if that is what you call it, is all over the place, with a burst of theories being raised at once. One of the theories is that Beyoncé was involved in Liam Payne’s death from a hotel balcony. Seven minutes after the 911 call, the ambulance arrived, but Payne’s injuries were “incompatible with life.” Evidence has shown that his system was overloaded with drugs and alcohol, but people have linked Beyoncé by saying that she was reportedly seen at the same hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two days before his death there. One of the first posts about this conspiracy theory was by TikTok user @tamzintruman on Oct. 17, with an eight-second clip of herself with the text, “Why have I just read that Beyonce was in the same hotel as Liam Payne 2 days before he died?!?!” Users @newsdecodefy and @pradab4be made similar posts, claiming the same thing.
Clips of Payne cheering for his former One Direction bandmate Harry Styles during the 2023 Grammy Awards, where Styles won Album of the Year, arose too because, when Styles won that award, he won against Beyoncé’s album. Reddit user @macadoo784 reportedly commented on @Kushalbrl’s post on the @r/music community page, sharing this conspiracy theory, with the comment reading: “So, Beyonce is some sort of celebrity secret assassin? Out to get all those who ever criticized her?”
This led to the “She Knows” conspiracy theory, with some making comical videos on TikTok and others linking Beyoncé to the song by J. Cole, “She Knows” by saying the song was alluding to the many deaths she has been linked to, such as Aaliyah, Left Eye and MJ, among others.
Now, with all of that said, what really started the “Thank You, Beyoncé” meme was TikTok user @igotstinkyfeet when they posted a video on Oct. 4, thanking Beyoncé in absurd situations. Later, similar videos were made, and that soon spread to X. Even corporations like European airline Ryanair joined in, quoting an X post, “We want to thank Beyoncé” when user @let_it_burn posted a photo captioned “two windows?! wow thanks @Ryanair i love you ❤️”. After all this attention, many started to look into the conspiracy theories, not understanding the trend.
To end this entertaining recap of this meme (so far), thank you, Beyoncé!
