Here’s why you’re really so obsessed with the Kate Middleton story

This week the discourse online has been dominated by just one thing – that photo.

To recap those who have just surfaced from a nuclear bunker or a long-haul flight from the Moon: the Princess of Wales underwent abdominal surgery earlier this year, with Kensington Palace explaining she’d be absent from duties until Easter. The internet freaked out at Kate’s absence, putting extra scrutiny on a rare family snap shared on social media for Mother’s Day on Sunday.

When people then started realising there were problems with the image (if you’re still not caught up, take a read of this explainer), conspiracies theories exploded and the Princess was compelled to apologise for crimes against Photoshop.

Things then got even weirder: a grainy photograph of the Prince and Princess of Wales sat in the back of a car taken on Monday afternoon resulted in the social media masses claiming the woman in the vehicle could be someone else entirely. Around the same time, some people took leave of their senses when they realised that Kate’s face on the cover of Vogue in 2016 looks the same as her face now (unsurprising, really, given it’s still her face).

And it’s only Wednesday…

What is going on?!

I’ve been covering tech – and a subsection of it often called “internet culture”, by which we mean “how people behave on social media platforms” – for more than a decade now. In internet culture land, I’m about to collect my pension. And in that time, I’ve never seen a permacrisis on a rolling boil thanks to social media mobs like the last week.

A number of issues are at play – and handily, they cover what I’ve spent the last 10 years or more trying to contexualise: that interesting things – sparks, even – happen when the online and offline worlds combine.

It also tells a broader shift and involves Elon Musk, and how he’s trying to turn back the clock on social media.

Meeting monoculture

Historically, social media has had pretty significant rallying moments. Think about The Dress (in 2015) as one moment, but there are plenty you can probably dredge up from the back of your mind. For a period, it seemed like everyone was talking about it. You might have noticed that hasn’t happened a lot lately – until last week.

That’s because social media is heading in a different direction. TikTok – which is facing a vote on a ban in the United States this week – helped change that, offering individually tailored feeds of content based on algorithms. (Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, has said it’s started doing similar algorithmic targeting on its apps for video lately.) If content used to flow in a torrent down a river that everyone could see and drink from, it’s now served up in straws you can’t see through. Everyone’s tastes are different.

But Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) hasn’t acted like that this last week.

“When this all first started, I remember getting pushed this content a ton without having ever interacted with a single post,” said Jess Maddox, assistant professor at the University of Alabama.

“Something in the X algorithm under Musk has changed to promote sensationalism and/or conspiracies on a broader scale.”

Why that’s happened is not clear (X was approached for comment). Probably even Musk doesn’t know fully. But it could be that he’s dabbling with sensationalism deliberately (he does like to cause a stir) or unwittingly (this is his first time running a social network, so may be relying on old pages from the playbook that others discarded ages ago). It could also be because he cut 80% of his staff when he took over Twitter and they’re only able to do old school social media algorithms – the river/torrent model – rather than modern day ones.

But it’s happening. You can’t avoid Kate on X.

“Stories like this are perfect content for social media recommendation algorithms,” said Liam McLoughlin, lecturer in social media and communication at the University of Liverpool.

Enter the fandoms

Fandoms are a curious beast. You might know them through the Swifties – obsessive Taylor Swift fans who pore over everything she says or does to imbue deeper meaning. Sometimes it’s there. Sometimes it’s not.

Anyway: fandoms are like a dog with a bone. They don’t let go. And if they believe something, you will have a very hard time convincing them otherwise. At this point, there are any number of rumours about Kate that are believed by various social media users as passionately as someone in a fandom.

They demand answers, and fast. “At a time when we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, it’s easy for one to feel dissatisfied or think something nefarious is going on when we don’t immediately have all of the information, and the available information doesn’t feel like a proper answer,” said Maddox.

The other thing to know about fandoms is that their members are perennially online, and they move quickly, and en masse. What we’re seeing play out over the Kate Middleton question is a fandom totally outmaneuvering and outwitting a venerable institution that could barely tolerate engaging with traditional media, never mind social media.

Never complain, never explain

That was the favourite phrase of the deceased Queen Elizabeth II. But if you do neither, then people can say what they want. And on social media, you have millions of people saying what they want – some of which pick up steam.

First the issue for social media denizens was the lack of sightings of the Princess since her operation. The palace – eventually – demurred, sending out the Mother’s Day picture. But because the photograph was edited (most likely because have you ever tried getting three children into smiling for a picture they don’t really want to take at the same time?) suddenly that became an issue.

The mob wanted more proof. And the palace gave them it. A blurry car picture. Which the mob said didn’t necessarily show Kate, and which some picked apart because some bricks in the background didn’t look alike (don’t even ask).

Every time Kensington Palace tries to settle the issue in an old media way, social media comes along and moves the goalposts. And Musk’s method of designing a social media platform keeps feeding us it, because it drives attention and outrage.

This is the point where I’m meant to come up with a nice solution to end the stalemate, and quell the baying mob. Truthfully, I don’t have one. And I’ve been looking at this space for years. Fandoms, fuelled by algorithms, are weird things. If I can’t come up with a solution likely to silence the concern, heaven help the Palace press office.