The past few weeks have been a fever dream for the world of online conspiracy theories. As outlandish claims about Kate, Princess of Wales spread from the corners of the internet to mainstream social media platforms, those who normally don’t dabble in conspiracies found themselves leading the charge. In short, the whole world went down the rabbit hole.
WIRED spoke to researchers, TikTok creators, and conspiracy experts about what exactly happened and how so many people were willing to buy into this story. Ta. It was a perfect storm. A combination of gamified social platforms, distrust of media and government, unprecedented levels of conspiracy theories, and even bot influence campaigns on social media all played a role. The intrigue continues even after Middleton announced he had been diagnosed with cancer.
Until Friday, Middleton’s last public appearance was on Christmas Day. Kensington Palace later announced that she had undergone abdominal surgery and said Middleton spent two weeks in hospital recovering before returning home. Conspiracy theories about Middleton’s whereabouts have been circulating online since early January, but went mainstream after the Palace published a doctored photo and the Associated Press, Reuters and other news organizations retracted it. “Even though they were dishonest, they published at least one doctored photo. Of course, at that point they would have lost all credibility,” said disinformation researcher Melissa. Ryan told WIRED.
It seemed like the entire internet was immediately obsessed with figuring out what happened.
Social media platforms saw an explosion of videos discussing the issue. TikTok’s researchers and content creators, along with its huge fan base, are obsessed with grainy photos, hand images, and AI-enhanced photo dimples. Even creators who don’t normally post about the royal family jumped on the bandwagon due to the high level of interest in the topic. These conspiracies have also been able to thrive because the royal family has refused to talk openly about what’s going on, and that void has spread from TIkTok creators to X’s Blue Check scammers to desperate conspiracy theorists. It was quickly filled up. on Telegram.
“This theme is the ideal mainstream conspiracy theory: low stakes, easy to obsess over, endlessly repeated,” Virginia-based journalist and TikTok creator Caro Claire Burke tells WIRED. “There’s no easier story to assemble yourself than the adventure stories you can build around a woman who is both famous and unknown. She’s the perfect lightning rod for this kind of obsession.” Katie Couric Media Producer Burke recently switched from posting about trad wives to posting about Kate Middleton. These posts of hers received a huge response, including several videos that each received more than 2.5 million views of her, and many of her videos that received more than 6 million views, far more than any of her previous videos. Also includes videos.
Since Middleton’s statement was released on Friday, the amount of conspiracy content surrounding her has decreased dramatically, but it has not completely disappeared. On the Telegram channel and X over the weekend, a conspiracy quickly spread claiming that Ms Middleton’s video statement was generated by AI, while her cancer was linked to the coronavirus vaccine she was photographed receiving in 2021. Some people argued that this was the cause.
