(2024-03-25) How We Got Here

How we got here. On Friday, Kate Middleton, or Catherine, the Princess of Wales (Princess Kate), revealed that she has cancer. This very briefly sent the internet into free fall, with many users admitting they feel more than a little gross about all the memes and conspiracy theories they've been sharing about her for the last two months. I say "brief" because many users have since pivoted and are now just sharing different conspiracy theories about Kate.

My researcher Adam and I put together a timeline of how the viral frenzy started and can definitively say that it was not foreign bad actors tricking Western internet users into being mean and weird about a member of the royal family taking a suspiciously long time to post a proof of life update. Instead, it was a combination of factors — and factions — who were amplified by poorly moderated and badly incentivized social platforms

On January 17th, Kensington Palace announced that Kate was in the hospital and would be there for 10-14 days recovering from “planned abdominal surgery” and wouldn’t be doing any public events until “after Easter.” About a week later, the #WhereIsKate hashtag first appeared on X.

Sussex Squad, a largely US-based pro-Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fandom

On February 5th, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles had been diagnosed with cancer. Which pointed a massive spotlight on the royal family.

The moment #WhereIsKate broke containment, as Embedded phrased it, was most likely February 27th. That's when Prince William pulled out of attending his godfather's memorial service due to what the Palace called a "personal matter". Though they said that the "personal matter" wasn't related to Kate (which was a lie) and said that Kate was "doing well," which caught the attention of a big #resistance account that then shared the #WhereIsKate hashtag

The next day, Kensington Palace went into overdrive, suddenly deciding that now was the right time to refute what they were calling "wild conspiracy theories," and, once again, said that Kate was "doing well". Which only made the interest in her whereabouts more rabid.

A Page Six article about Kate "doing well" was then aggregated by Pop Crave, the most important news outlet of our time, which turned a weird story happening on the periphery of culture into the biggest topic in the world.

once again, this could have lost steam here. This is likely the last chance we had to get off the disinfo freeway. Instead, however, the Palace decided to publish an Instagram post.

This is a good moment to pause and explain, generally, how the royals interact with the media. As my friend, and very excellent royal reporter, Ellie Hall (who helped read over this story) told Nieman Lab, there is not a singular press apparatus for the royals. Each family unit has their own very small, siloed team. And these teams tend to leak information about other members of the royal family. They also have a very unique relationship with UK media, providing them anonymous quotes and approved photos and videos in exchange for continued "access". And many UK tabloids are happy to play ball. If you see a UK newspaper aggressively going after a member of the royal family it's likely because other members of the royal family want them to.

On March 10th, British Mother's Day, Kate's Instagram page published the now-infamous Photoshop

UK media, likely embarrassed by the Instagram debacle, decided to fire what is best understood as a warning shot at the Palace

The same day the Photoshop went live, The Independent published a story that went very viral on X, titled, "Lady Rose Hanbury: Who is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley?"

Hanbury has long been alleged to be Prince William's mistress

But royal watchers believed the Palace was "soft launching" her to the public. I saw more than a few users claim that Prince William had to divorce Kate before he took the throne.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert picked up the story about Hanbury on March 12th, though, and now her legal team has sent him a notice demanding a retraction

In terms of conspiracy theories that were circulating, many of them were centered on secret pregnancies

And that brings us to Friday, when Kate revealed that she was diagnosed with cancer and is seeking treatment

if you're looking for someone to blame all of this on, it's clearly Kate's press team and, by extension, everyone in her life that supposedly cares about her.

But this is also just how our various institutions work — or more accurately do not work — now. Over the last 25 years we have slowly uploaded every part of our lives to a system of platforms run by algorithms that make money off our worst impulses. Well, the ones brands are comfortable advertising around.

for years we have wondered what the world might look like when we crossed the threshold into a fully online world. Well, we did. We crossed it. This is what it looks like. And it is already too vast and complicated and all-encompassing to blame any one individual for how it functions. (this is too broad/meaningless an extrapolation)