Princess Catherine & The Conspiracy Theory Pipeline
The Princess of Wales announced her cancer diagnosis via Instagram on Friday
For the past three months, most of the world, at least those who are chronically online have been speculating as to where the Princess of Wales has gone. It was announced in January that she was undergoing abdominal surgery and wouldn’t be seen until after Easter, which is March 31st.
Everything was ok at first, but then the online trolls got ahold of this information and around February, things started to turn downhill. People were making memes and spreading rumors, alluding to different reasons she would need almost 4 months to recover.
I’ve been a royal watcher & lover since William and Catherine got engaged in 2010, and I was not paying much attention to this fodder. I took the palace at their word, until early March when things got weird.
I won’t go through the entire timeline of everything because it has been spelled out excessively over the past two weeks but things came to a head on UK Mother’s Day, March 10th and have gone down hill from there.
My friends and family, knowing that I’m the avid royal observer in their life, asked me for my opinion and knowledge of what was going on, so I made a little slideshow, which kind of blew up on social media and in my friends’ various work Slack channels.
However, I wasn’t into all the conspiracy happening, I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t make any memes… I was just gravely concerned that something was actually wrong, and it turns out, I was right.
Never in my million thoughts as to why Kate was not being seen, why the Mother’s Day photo had been manipulated, why they just wouldn’t sit her down and take a photo, did I think she had cancer.
But, that’s exactly what is going on.
Today, March 22nd, the Princess of Wales took to her and William’s official Instagram account to announce that she was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy treatments.
I felt sick immediately, and I felt guilty for all the speculating I did, and the contribution I made to bullying her into making this statement.
The public feels entitled to this information which is why even after the farm shop video people still didn’t believe their eyes and thought there was something sinister going on. There are people still at this very moment who won’t believe that Princess Catherine has cancer, and those people need help.
People are questioning why Kensington Palace waited this long, why they didn’t just reveal the diagnosis when things started getting out of hand… and the answer seems simple: they didn’t have too. It’s a personal, private health matter and the Prince & Princess have three very young children who needed to comprehend and understand what is happening to their mother.
A Twitter account, the Royal Tea, put it into better words:
*The public is also questioning why they threw the Princess under the bus for the Mother’s Day photo, which is something I’m not qualified to answer.
All of this leads to a bigger question, and the bigger concern…why is everyone obsessed with conspiracy theories? Why is there a mob mentality when it comes to public figures? Why can people never accept what is being told to them? Why does everyone believe everything is a lie?
It’s hard to say, it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when everything became make believe but with the rise of misinformation, the decline in media literacy, and the hold that social media, especially TikTok has on the world, it’s not surprising that it’s happening more and more now.
The public, and mostly those chronically online and in the younger demographics, refuse to accept information given to them. They cannot take anything at face value, everything has a deeper meaning to it. Sometimes, that is simply not true. Sometimes things are black and white, and we have to just accept what is being presented because it’s the truth.
Conspiracy theories are incredibly dangerous, and this entire Royal Family situation proves just that.
When it comes to conspiracy, the fallout is always worse than the start. January 6th comes to mind… the conspiracy started by Donald Trump that he won the election resulted in people losing their lives, whether they were killed or have gone to prison. Conspiracies are not to be played with, and I hope that this Royal Family mess is a sign to everyone to think before they speak, before they type, and use common logic to come to a conclusion. Also, remember that no matter who someone is, you never know what they are going through.
Conspiracies do exist, but they’re not as common as you think.