one
You are an Illuminati conspiracy theorist. You share your carefully thought out, logically impenetrable theories with your friends and neighbors. They scoff at you. They cannot be convinced. But the truth is out there.
two
You are an Illuminati conspiracy theorist. Or so your friends and neighbors think. In reality, you are an employee of the Illuminati. Your job is to construct wild, elaborate conspiracy theories too bizarre to be taken seriously, with careful albeit fantastical logic always leading to the correct conclusion; thus preventing anyone from working out this conclusion themselves and finding out the true role of your employers.
three
You are an employee of the Illuminati. Or so you think. In reality, you are employed by a cover for the real Illuminati, devised to make you believe you have acquired all of the top secret information, so that you do not search for more. Your role to protect the real Illuminati through conspiracy theories is only a way to keep you occupied, so that you do not find out the truth. All of your friends and neighbors are part of the real Illuminati. They react to your theories with utter incredulity, in order that you may think, satisfied, that you are fooling them all. Reassured that you continue to be in the dark, fooled by their pretended disbelief, they continue to work in shadowy ways around you.
four
You are ignorant of the real Illuminati. Or so they think. In reality, you have found out their secrets months ago – your friends and neighbors are very bad liars. You have spent these months pretending ignorance. On the surface, this is because you fear they will kill you if they find out you know. Truthfully, this is because you do not want to hurt their feelings. You allow them to continue believing they are doing a good job of keeping you in the dark.
five
Your friends and neighbors are aware that you have been lying to protect their feelings, and are touched by your consideration. They act as though they are unaware of your awareness, respecting your pretense. By the time you realize this, it is too late, too awkward, to stop pretending. Your friends, too, wish to avoid awkwardness, continuing the act, eventually creating a spiraling chain of one layer of pretended ignorance upon another, ad infinitum.
six
History became legend. Legend became myth. You and your friends have never had secrets between you. For time immemorial, all of you have pretended to keep secrets from one another, and have respected these pretenses in turn, for reasons now much older than living memory.
NineofShades 