The past few weeks have been a fever dream for the online conspiracy world. Wild claims about Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, went from fringe corners of the internet to mainstream social media platforms, and people who don’t usually dabble in conspiracies found themselves leading the charge. Basically, the whole world fell down the rabbit hole.
WIRED talked to researchers, TikTok creators, and experts on conspiracies about what exactly happened, and how so many people so willingly threw themselves into the story. It was the perfect storm: A combination of gamified social platforms, distrust in media and government, unprecedented levels of conspiratorial thinking, and even a bot influence campaign on social media all played a part. Even now, following Middleton’s announcement that she has been diagnosed with cancer, the conspiracies have continued.
Until Friday, Middleton was last seen in public on Christmas Day. Kensington Palace later announced that she was undergoing an abdominal surgery and said Middleton was in the hospital for two weeks before returning home to recover. Conspiracies surrounding Middleton’s whereabouts had been bubbling online since early January, but they became mainstream after the palace issued a doctored photo that was retracted by AP, Reuters, and other agencies. “They were dishonest, and then they put out at least one doctored photo. So of course, at that point, they're gonna lose all credibility,” Melissa Ryan, a disinformation researcher, tells WIRED.
It seemed like the whole internet quickly became obsessed with figuring out what happened.
On social media platforms, videos discussing this issue exploded. TikTok investigators and content creators, along with their huge fanbases, obsessed over dimples on grainy photographs, images of hands, and AI-enhanced pictures. Creators who don’t typically post about royals jumped on the bandwagon because of the level of engagement this topic was receiving. These conspiracies were also able to thrive because of the unwillingness of the royal family to speak openly about what was happening, creating a void which was quickly filled by everyone from TikTok creators to blue check grifters on X and died-in-the-wool conspiracists on Telegram.
“The topic is an ideal mainstream conspiracy theory: It's low stakes, easy to obsess over, and endlessly iterative,” Caro Claire Burke, a journalist and TikTok creator based in Virginia, tells WIRED. “There's no easier build-your-own-adventure story than the one that can be built around a woman who is simultaneously famous and unknown. She's a perfect lightning rod for this kind of obsession.” Burke, who is a producer with Katie Couric Media, recently switched from posting about tradwives to Kate Middleton; she’s seen huge engagement on these posts, including several videos which racked up more than 2.5 million views each, and one which has been viewed more than 6 million times—much more than any of her previous videos.
While the volume of conspiracy content around Middleton has dramatically decreased since her statement was released on Friday, it has far from disappeared entirely. On Telegram channels and X over the weekend, conspiracies claiming that Middleton’s video statement was AI-generated spread quickly, while others claimed that her cancer was caused by the Covid vaccine which she was photographed getting in 2021.
But influencers looking for likes and clicks made up just one aspect of this perfect conspiracy storm.
WIRED found that Middleton conspiracies were being amplified by networks of bot accounts on X, with one comment posted by thousands of accounts. The comment referred to a conspiracy about a video published in The Sun of Prince William and Middleton walking at a farm shop. “Why do these big media channels want to make us believe these are Kate and William?” read the posts.
Joe Ondrak, regional investigations lead with Logically, a company that uses AI to track conspiracies and disinformation online, also discovered the same comment being shared on other social media platforms, as well as message boards and much darker conspiracy corners of the internet. Ondrak has not been able to identify who was behind the campaign, but said it could be a “bot farm for hire,” which is a company that sells services to push whatever disinformation narrative you desire on social media platforms. While most of the X accounts spreading this message are based in the UK, the ones with the highest reach are based in India.
The campaign, Ondrak believes, could have been undergone, in part, to “undermine trust in mainstream media sources.”
In the US, trust in mainstream media and government is at all time lows, meaning that these kinds of comments or explanations can be eagerly accepted and shared. A Gallup poll published last year found that 39 percent of Americans had no confidence at all in the mainstream media, a record high. Months earlier, a survey published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 49 percent of Americans agree with four or more conspiracy statements related to topics like antisemitism, vaccines, climate change, and white supremacy. That figure dramatically increases to 69 percent among US teens.
“Conspiracy frameworks and the conspiracy mindset are more readily present in the cultural mindset now than it was pre-2020,” Ondrak says. “The way in which Covid [conspiracies] led to the Great Reset and led to everyone knowing someone in their family who has referenced it or shared things on Facebook—it's now just much more present.”
The British royal family is a topic that has been at the center of the conspiracy universe for decades, from wild claims that they are lizard people to QAnon’s claims about Princess Diana still being alive. The palace is also a subject of intense scrutiny from the media across the globe, meaning that audiences have been primed for years to engage with this story.
“There is no weirder Twitter than people who either love or hate the royal family, and the battle that plays out online every day,” says Ryan. “I follow it just because I've written about Meghan Markle and the hate targeting her so much. So there was already an audience sort of primed for this content.”
Now, experts who track how people are radicalized into more troubling conspiracies by seemingly benign ones worry that some of those who were captivated by the Middleton speculation in recent weeks could now find themselves obsessed with other conspiracy communities.
“I see a lot are having fun with it, but as with many conspiracy theories there's an extremity scale here,” says Brent Lee, a former conspiracist who now works to help people escape the rabbit hole. “This sliding scale always runs the risk of losing people to the extremities of the rabbit hole. It depends how far people are willing to go.”
Ondrak believes that the lack of trust in institutions and government means more and more people are susceptible to this type of thinking.
“We've seen in the past the true crime community getting far too into things that lead to Satanic Panic, and then true crime becomes QAnon.” says Ondrak. “There is always the risk that one or two people might accidentally find themselves on an on-ramp and not be able to get off.”
Still, it may not necessarily lead to anything. Since Middleton’s cancer announcement, backlash against Burke and creators has been swift.
“I genuinely did not think that people would turn this story into what they turned it into, which was that a young woman, a young mother of three, had been bullied into revealing a medical diagnosis and we should all be ashamed,” Burke said on a podcast on Sunday. “On Instagram in particular, and TikTok, I received a sudden rushing wave of profound vitriol.”
Other creators believe some, however, deserve the blame. “I do think there are a handful of creators who took advantage of the hype, spread horrible theories, and made bold claims without any fact to back it up,” says a TikTok creator known as Alyssa R from Illinois. Alyssa R has 115,000 followers, and her videos on Middleton amassed hundreds of thousands of views. “Those creators absolutely should feel ashamed for partaking in spreading misinformation and potentially putting pressure on the Princess to reveal her diagnosis.”
Ashamed or not, these creators could have inadvertently sent some of their new followers down a conspiracy rabbit hole that could be difficult to escape from. Lee says that for those teetering on the edge of looking into more extreme conspiracies, it’s important to ask basic questions: How likely is this to be true? How many people would have to be involved to pull off this conspiracy? How many people would have to be involved in covering up this conspiracy? And have I jumped to conclusions because there is a gap in my knowledge?
“It's so easy to get caught up in the hype of the rumor mill,” Lee says. “It's nothing strange or new. It's what we do. I believe the genesis of almost every conspiracy theory is gossip. My advice to anyone, be they prone to conspiracy theories or not, is to stop and think for a minute. Occam's razor is your friend. Ask yourself these questions and see if you can find easy logical answers without making assumptions.”
