30 Most influential People of the last 30 years #26: Will Smith

The ThinkTank Panel (of One) proudly presents the 30 Most influential People of the last 30 years. These are the people who have shaped and molded the ThinkTank Panel (of One) into what it is today; Arrogant, Neurotic, Ostensibly Ostentatious, and Prohibitively Expensive. Today we look at #26.

Will Smith

The ThinkTank Panel (of One) is not referring to the Academy award nominated actor/Grammy award winning rapper, because technically that  would be Mr. Willard Christopher Smith Jr.
No, the 26th spot on the countdown is particularly reserved for the character the afore mentioned actor/rapper portrayed on NBC’s “the Fresh Prince of Bell Air.” No one on the ThinkTank Panel (of One)  has ever met Willard, and know nothing about him personally, but Will Smith has spent more time in the ThinkTank Panel (of One)  living than the ThinkTank Panel (of One)’s own coffee table.

There are 3 individuals in the 30 most influential people of the last 30 years countdown that the ThinkTank Panel (of One) has modeled their typical patterns of behavior around through sincere but admittedly unrecognizably bad imitation. Will Smith is the first.

So what exactly did Master William possess as a personality trait that the ThinkTank Panel (of One) found so essential and irresistible? The short answer, derived after years of intense scientific study, and human resource management surveys is quite simply: people skills. Will Smith was not the super smooth Casanova that precipitated his self proclaimed alias of Prince (as in "charming"). Indeed Will’s schemes almost never worked out. He always got caught. He was constantly in trouble, or had people mad at him, such as the police, Coach Smiley, Uncle Phil, or especially Carlton (side note: Alfonso Ribiero would be #31 on this countdown thanks to this and this). Yet he was always able to maintain working relationships with people.  Will treated people to a free show with every social interaction. Every conversation was a private performance by the Fresh Prince. Sometimes it was a show of compassion, sometimes it was an exhibition of ridicule, but Will always gave people a performance worth the price of admission. 

The ingenious microcosm of human nature the ThinkTank Panel (of One) gleams from Will Smith is that people appreciate being treated as a private audience, even if they resent the sentiment of the performance. This has proved to be a difficult lesson for the ThinkTank Panel (of One) to put into practice. And so, if you listen carefully, you will recognize the phony lines and facial expressions made famous by the Fresh Prince, mutilated by disastrous imitation in the ThinkTank Panel (of One)’s various attempts at communication.

Warner Bros. has blocked the embedding of Fresh Prince Videos, so click on this picture to go to best Youtube clips ever!!