March 15, 2024 • 47 mins
Where is Kate Middleton? https://www.vox.com/culture/24087565/princess-kate-middleton-disappearance-rumors-explained-abdominal-surgery-kensington-palace
The Kate Middleton photo scandal is a rare — and consequential — flub / A wave of wire services retracting a doctored image of the Princess of Wales and her kids set off a firestorm of conspiracy theories: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/12/24098548/kate-middleton-royal-family-photoshop-manipulated-image
The edited Princess Kate photo probably wasn't made with AI: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/kate-middleton-photo-ai-image-photoshop-edit-rcna142799
Kate Middleton and the End of Shared Reality (paywalled): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/kate-middleton-mothers-day-photo-fake/677718/
The Royal Family’s Kate Middleton Crisis Her disappearance isn’t just a tabloid sensation. It’s a sign of the monarchy’s deepening instability: https://www.thecut.com/article/where-is-kate-middleton-catherine-princess-of-wales-royal-family-crisis.html
Women Who Break the Glass Ceiling Get a “Paper Cut”: Gender, Fame, and Media Sentiment: https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/socpro/spac020/6563163?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgett and this is
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to There Are No.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of
social media, technology and identity. And this episode is a
special report. You know how back in the day they
would do those like special report, special report. This is
a special report on Kate Middleton. Mike, thank you for
being here. Have you been following what is happening with
(00:38):
Kate Middleton?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I wasn't at all, and then all of a sudden,
I was like seeing it everywhere.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Uh yeah, what's what's going on?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Bridget So I feel the exact same way, like I'm
not a Royals person, you know, It's not a cultural
thing that I follow closely really at all. But I
feel like I woke up last week and it's all
An He's talking about. I was getting group texts about it,
multiple text messages from multiple different friends about it, people
that I hadn't talked to in years, like ex'es being like, hey,
(01:10):
what do you think is going on here? So this
is definitely one of those big cultural things that people
who maybe just are casually, like the most casual followers
of the royal family are now weighing into so fair warning.
All of that is to say that I don't know
a ton about the Royals, and so in this conversation,
(01:30):
if I get something wrong or you're like, actually, she's
a duchess, not a this like, I apologize in advance.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is a little bit out of my out of
my purview.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
However, I do know a lot about conspiracy theories, particularly
how they impact women and how they move online. This
kind of feels like the perfect storm of what makes
the conspiracy theory take off online. So naturally I want
it to weigh in, So let's get into it.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So so like, what is the story here and why
are we talking about it on this show?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So this whole thing really started with Kate back in
January when Kensington Palace announced that Kate Middleton was going
to be entering the hospital the day before for a
planned abdominal surgery. The statement that they put out was
like very clear that they were asking for a little
bit of space on this. The statement read, the Princess
(02:23):
of Wales appreciates the interest. This statement will generate. She
hopes the public will understand her desire to maintain as
much normalty for her children as possible, and her wish
that her personal medical information remains private. The statement also
said that Kate was not going to be appearing in
public until Easter, which this year it's March thirty first,
and she still really has not been seen, but other
(02:47):
stuff sort of started to happen, like Prince William canceling
a scheduled appearance to attend the funeral of King Constantine
of the Helenus, who died last January and was his godfather.
This led to intense speculation that something had happened with her,
but Kensington Palace continued to say like, no, she's all good.
(03:08):
Her recovery is still on track, even though she has
not been seen. So again, to be clear, the statement
that the palace put out said that she would not
be seen in public until March thirty first. It's not
March thirty first yet, so they haven't really like it's
not like that data's come and gone, but people still
have questions. So this is really where you have people
(03:29):
really beginning to speculate. My group chat definitely like I
don't know if y'all out there listening, if your friends
have been talking about this NonStop, but mine have been
talking about this NonStop. Here are just a few of
the theories that I've seen floating out there about where
Kate is. One, something bad happened with her surgery, something
(03:50):
you know's she needs more recovery. Something bad has happened
related to her hospital's day.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
That's one.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Another is that she's been replaced with a body double.
Another that I saw is that she is actually one
of the performers from that Glasgow Ai Willy Wonka experience.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean, that would make some sense, right, Like with
all the scrutiny on the royals, perhaps her deepest desire
is just to be the unknown.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
You before we got on the mic, you sent me
that image that's like a screen, like a side by
side of the Unknown and Kate. And what's funny to
me about that image is that it's one of those
images where I suspect they're trying to be like the
similarities are there, but the Unknown wears a mask, so like.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
No, they're not.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Could be anyone, could be anyone.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Although for those who listen to our round up about
the Willy Wonka Ai fiasco. I found out some interesting
information about the unknown.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Oh you know about the unknown.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I know about the unknown.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The unknown is a black woman, and I wrongly call
I wrongly said, Oh, the unknown is like wearing a
slash wig that wasn't a wig.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
She just has full, beautiful black, curly hair.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The unknown becomes known.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
If she If that actor is listening, you have a
open invitation on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
We would love to have you, assuming that it isn't
Kate Middleton, if.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It either way, honestly, either way. So I've heard a
theory that Kate Middleton has actually been dead this whole time.
And then there is my personal favorite theory that she's
actually getting a BBL, a Brazilian butt lift. And if
you've ever known anybody that's got that, you do have
some like downtime where you're not seen in public while
(05:36):
you recover.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
That would be so funny if she came back and
was like, no, I didn't get a BBL, and like,
obviously did.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So that's the.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Thing about this speculation, right, some of it is like
genuinely very funny and some of it is kind of dark.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In researching for this episode.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I went down quite a few Reddit rabbit holes with
people speculating and giving their theories and their evidence. And
I don't want to get too much into some of
that because some of it, some of it is.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Like truly deeply dark. I will just say.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
This, where is Kate to me kind of feels like Cubanon,
but like for normal white ladies, right, Like, it's one
of those things where a lot of the hallmarks of
conspiracy theories where anything can be used as evidence that
we're not being told the whole truth, right, And it's
not just like a mundane truth that they're hiding. Like,
(06:28):
the truth is not just that Kate is exhausted and
wanted to break and you know who wouldn't if you
were a royal.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's like a sinister truth. It's not just a mundane truth.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And everything becomes a data point for the fact that
they are obscuring this sinister truth via lies and obscuscation.
So another truism about conspiracy theories that really helps them
to spread that we're seeing here is that generally there
is some nugget of truth to the theory that allows.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For like some specula of world building.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Right, Like, all of the conspiracy theories that I have
really seen take hold have that where there's some nugget
of something, where it's like, oh, this does seem to
be evidence of something what unclear, But that is what
allows people to really speculate and build a world on
top of it. And the truth here is that there
does seem to be something I guess I'll use the
(07:21):
word uncharacteristic going on. Like I said, I don't really
follow the Royals, but this is coming from Ellie Hall,
who is a journalist she used to work for BuzzFeed,
who really has been doing.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
A lot of great coverage into the Royals.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
She's been on There Are No Girls on the Internet
and the podcast I did with cool Zone Media Internet
hate Machine. Ellie Hall is the real deal, and she's
been talking about how the pr strategy around this has
been uncharacteristic from what we've seen from the Royals in
the past. Charlie Worzel at The Atlantic Summariz is saying
(07:54):
Kensington Palace's public relations strategy has been out of character.
The communications team it doesn't usually respond to God. There's
also been a dearth of speculative coverage from British tabloids,
which Hall notes has aroused suspicions, and then of course
there's the photo, which Hall wrote was distributed by the
Palace in an unprecedented manner. So we'll get to the
photo in a moment, but it does seem to be
(08:15):
that people who have been following the way that the
Royal Palace moves and how they put information out there
and respond to information, are saying whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Right now feels new and feels different, and it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Sounds like a big point of contention is that if
this surgery was like a planned surgery, like they say,
why would Kate have also scheduled appearances that she would
then need to cancel, right Like, if you knew you
were getting surgery, why would you schedule an event and
then need to cancel it. Concurrently, the Palace announced that
King Charles would also be stepping away from the public
(08:47):
eye to get treatment for an enlarged prostate, which many
people think is kind of suspicious to have two of
the most public facing royals both planning a medical procedure
and an absence from the public eye at the same time.
Royal expert and historian doctor Tessa Dunlop told The Mirror
that it is unusual for the royals to talk about
their health in this way that Charles has, where like
(09:09):
you are saying like a specific medical or health need
that you.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Are stepping away to get to get treatment for.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And then when you compare that to how they've talked
about it with Kate, where they're just like, oh, it's
an abdominal issue. All we can say is that it's
not cancerous. It seems like to onlookers that that might
be indicative of like not being told the full story.
There was also this idea that Kate, for lack of
a better phrase, has kind of been framed as like
(09:37):
the reliable royal. Like when you're a royal, they want
you to be in public all the time. All your
moves are like scrutinized and picked apart, but they want
you to like show up consistently and like look perfect
and polished and polite while doing this these public appearances
in which you will be like picked apart regardless of
how you show up. And so historically it does sound
(10:00):
like Kate for years has had this perception of like
going along with that and kind of playing the game.
So now people are saying that for her to be
pulling back if that is indeed what this is seems
uncharacteristic to the point that people feel like there has
to be more to this story. So all of this
is really a hallmark of how conspiracy theories move online,
(10:22):
right the fact that there does seem to be a
small nugget of truth that something at least uncharacteristic is
happening here, and this lack of information that just leaves
a lot of space for everybody to fill in the
blanks and assume that something fishy or you know, malevolent
is going on.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The royal family.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Has been pretty quiet while all this speculation has been swirling.
I think Prince William put out some kind of a
comment that he was like, oh, well, I'm not focused
on what's happening on social media. I'm focused on my work,
and you know, I get that response.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Like for a long.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Time, people, I think the media guidance was like, oh,
you don't you shouldn't respond to rumors, you shouldn't respond
to speculation, don't respond, be above it, ignore it. But
it's clear to me that that strategy is just not
serving them here because it just just leaves space for
people to fill in that gap with whatever information supported
(11:17):
by evidence. Or not, because they're not really saying anything
to dispute it.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Earlier you described it as world building, which when I
think of world building, I think of like games like
Dungeons and Dragons or you know, any number of games
where people are using their imagination for fun to create worlds.
But with this, Yeah, it really seems like people are
(11:44):
using their imagination to build worlds about public figures.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It's interesting, and you have to wonder, like, why why
are people so invested in world building around this?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I don't have to wonder because it's fun, Like I guess.
That's one of the things that I really want to
drive home is that one of the reasons why conspiracy
theories can really take off is because world building is fun.
People play games like that because they are fun. Should
you be doing it and speculating about the lives and
(12:19):
private health information about strangers?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I would argue no.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But the reason why people get so invested is because
puzzles and games and feeling like you have figured something out.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That other people haven't figured out, scrutiny, you know, feeling like.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You were the clever person that was able to read
between the lines, and like spot carefully constructed media or
pr lies four lies and like really get the truth.
That's fun for us, and it's very like validating. It
makes it like if you are somebody who can cracks
what's really going on, that's very self flattering because that
(12:58):
makes you smart, that makes you clever, that makes you
not a sheep, that makes you not somebody who dislike
mindlessly accepts the party line that you've been given. All
things that people like to feel about themselves. And so
in all the times that I've covered conspiracy theories, which
has been a lot on this podcast, that is something
that I really kind of understand about them, how people
(13:19):
can get sucked into them for many reasons, not the
least of which is because it's entertaining. But I think that,
as you said, like there's a difference between world building,
speculative world building for a D and D character that
you spent all this time building up, and a real
person who is a stranger to you, who really exists
and might very well really be going through something.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And so the.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Silence from the Royals really allows for all of this
to build up, right, and it really fuels more theories
that like something fishy is going on, not just not
just like mundane something like bad is we're not being
told something bad. One person on Twitter said, quote, you're
telling me that Kate Middleton, the same woman who posed
(14:03):
outside the hospital like a freaking supermodel mere hours that
they're giving birth, suddenly requires months of recovery before showing
her face and the British press now magically respects privacy.
This feels sinister, So listen, As I said, I don't
follow the royals that closely, so I won't even pretend
to act like I have some insight into what's going
on here. As somebody who has really studied conspiracy theories
(14:27):
and the way they move online.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I bet the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
That maybe something is going on that the royal family
is not being one hundred percent honest about, and maybe
that thing is a lot more mundane than a lot
of the onlookers would like to believe, and are sort
of like building up in their head, and it's possible
that the motivations for that aren't necessarily like sinister, let's
(14:55):
take a quick break.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
At our back.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It does feel a little bit like there is something
going on, because like stories like this, they could so
easily kill it if there was nothing happening, you know,
if everything was above boards, they could easily kill the
story by releasing a photo of her looking happy and healthy.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Right, well, let's talk about that, because this is actually
where stuff gets real weird. So there has been one
photo of Kate since January that was published on March fourth.
It's that photo where she's in the car with her mom.
It's kind of grainy. The other picture that was published
was on her Instagram of her and her kids for
Mother's Day, which in the UK is March tenth. This
(15:51):
photo was pretty obviously manipulated in some way. Now, the
individual edits on the photo are pretty minor individually, but
like on their own, taken together in totality, like it's
not a good look. And the fact that the edits
are like really amateurish. You know, when you look at
the picture, it's obvious that something is not right with
(16:13):
this photo. And so I think that's why when they
put this photo out there was a complete uproar because
after all of this speculation that where is Kate? Is
she okay? YadA, YadA YadA. The way that you respond
to that is this image that clearly does not look right.
Of course, that's going to be red meat to all
these people speculating that something has gone wrong. So a
(16:36):
lot of people were speculating that those images were AI generated,
or even that they were AI generated deep things, like
the image did not exist in any capacity, Like it
wasn't just an.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Edited image, that image never took place.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
People were even saying that the image was an edited
version of a picture of Kate from the cover of Vogue.
Now this conspiracy theory, to me felt especially stupid because
you had people who were like doing side by side
comparisons of the manipulated image that Kate put out and
the image from the Vogue magazine and being like, look
(17:11):
how they look so similar. That her smiles the same,
her eyes are the same. It's the same person. So yeah,
they do look similar, Like a picture of the same
woman might look the same, Right.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Makes sense if she really is the same woman.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
How deep does this thing go?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So despite all of the speculation that these photos are
like AI generated deep fakes, NBC spoke to Hanny for Reid,
a University of California Berkeley professor who investigates digital manipulation
and misinformation, who.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Basically said it doesn't look like AI to me.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It looks like somebody just used good old fashioned photoshop
to edit those photos and that they are not AI
generated deep fakes. Hanny says, I think it is unlikely
that this is anything more than a relatively minor photo manipulation.
There is no evidence that this image is entirely AI generated,
So AI or not, the photo had been manipulated so
(18:04):
much that it became a violation of most newswire services policies.
So if you don't know what a newswire is, organizations
and institutions like Kensington Palace or the United Nations or NASA,
they submit photos to newswire services, and those services basically
vet and fact check those photos and then send them
all around for other media outlets to use. Now, anybody
(18:25):
who is submitting a photo to a newswire service knows.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The drill right.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There are very clear and specific rules about how the
photos can be edited, like, for instance, when it comes
to the Associated Press, you cannot even remove red eye
from those photos. This is why if you ever want
to get you know, if you ever see pictures on
Instagram of like an event or an award ceremony and
all the celebrities look perfect and polished. If you go
(18:50):
to Getty or go to ap you can get the real,
unedited photo. And that's how I know that when you're
scrolling social media and you're thinking, like, oh my god, celebrities,
they look so perfect. None of those photos are real.
They are putting the edited photo on their Instagram.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
If you do a.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Side by side of any of those photos, they all
tell a very different story. And that is why nobody
took compare themselves to what they are seeing on a
celebrities Instagram.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, it starts to get into like interesting existential questions though,
like if the you know, if a celebrities photo from
like an award show has been touched up to like
remove the red eye and smooth over their pores, is
it a fake photo?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I mean, like in twenty twenty four, what even is
a photo?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Like, I mean, I don't want to get I don't
want to make it seem like I just did a
massive bong rip before before recording this episode. But like,
you know, I know people who have entirely AI generated
headshots on their LinkedIn of images that don't.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Exist, but like yet there they are.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So I do think we're all sort of grappling with
some larger existential questions about what is a photo, what
is truth, what is reality? And I think that this
whole Kate Middleton thing really demonstrates that were in this
kind of new and precarious territory when it comes to that.
So one place where this is not precarious is newswire
(20:09):
services because the associated press, Getty Images, and Reuters all
issued kill notices for this photo, which means that they
were advising news agencies to remove this photo from their
archives and from circulation and to not use it at all.
I cannot stress to y'all how big of a deal
this is. In my entire time working at MSNBC, not
once did I ever see one kill notice.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That is how rare it was.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
The Verge reports that quote kill notices are incredibly rare
and unusual. One wire service source told me they could
count on one hand the number of kills issued in
a year. To give you a sense of scale, AP
says it publishes thousands of stories a day and a
million pictures a year. Getty Images covers one hundred and
sixty thousand events annually. That a kill notice of this
magnitude happened is a big deal.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Okay, so that's a pretty big screw up on somebody's part.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Well, Kate says that she was just like innocently playing
with photoshop, like we all do. She put out a
statement that said, like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally
experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for
any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I
hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Signed. See what do you think of that statement? You
seem like you have thoughts.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, it's I can feel the like tendency to want
to speculate and world build like happening within me in
real time here, Because like my initial reaction to that is,
why is Kate Middleton taking her own photos and editing
(21:47):
her own photos and managing her own social feed?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Is that how it works? I would assume that she
would have staff to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's so funny because I had the same exact feeling
when I read this statement one two, I kind of
almost again and this is me like projecting my own
whatever onto it. I almost kind of like felt this
statement was sort of like like the I hope everybody's
celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day. It kind of
(22:15):
seems like, worry about your own family, don't worry about
what I'm doing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah, it feels like a little bit of a dodge.
And it also, yeah, it feels like a dodge. It
doesn't feel like it's addressing the actual like substance of
the concern here.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That's exactly how I felt.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
So, as you've said, unsurprisingly, this photo, which I feel
like was obviously meant to show that Kate is like
alive and doing well, did not accomplish that. In fact,
just the opposite. So now you have people who really
think that something is up, and the speculation has just
been kicked into complete hyper overdrive. I gotta say, in
(22:56):
my opinion, this was just a terrible com n PR move,
Like I don't know if Kate did innocently edit this
photo and post it, or if somebody else edited it
and posted it on her behalf or whatever happened, but
this is like a textbook conspiracy theory thing that drives
people to speculate even more, Like I can't even it
(23:17):
would be like, you know, the conspiracy theory that.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It would be like if Ted Cruz went out on
stage and was wearing like and I just and had
just gotten a Zodiac tattoo or something, and it's like
that that is the level of overdrive that this obviously
would kick this conspiracy theory up into.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, I mean it feels like if there's conspiracy theorizing happening,
releasing a ambiguously doctored photo would be exactly the thing
to do if you wanted to feed the conspiracies.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yes, so, I know the royals have had a pretty
complex relationship with the media, but this image has become a.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Real sticking point.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Kensington Palace is no longer being seen as like a
trusted source, and part of me feels like that, like
is that really so bad?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But the fact that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
They are putting it in explicit terms like that, I
think is a big change. Phil Setwind, Global News, director
of Ajon's France Press, told BBC's The Media Show quote,
all the agencies validated the photo, which clearly violated our
rules because it's actually not even well photoshopped. When asked
if Kensington Palace can maintain its reputation as a trusted
(24:39):
source after this whole controversy, he said, absolutely not. Like
with anything, when you're let down by a source, the
bar is raised, and we've got major issues internally as
to how we validate the photo.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We shouldn't have done it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
It violated our guidelines, and therefore we sent out notes
to all of our team at the moment to be
absolutely super more vigilant about the content coming across our desks,
even from what we would call trust sources. He goes
on to say something that I think speaks to your
point about what even is a photo? What even is reality?
He says, one thing that's really important is that you
cannot be distorting reality for the public. The big issue
(25:11):
here is one of trust and the lack of trust
of the general public in institutions generally.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And in the media.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
So it's extremely important that a photo does represent broadly
the reality that it's in and therefore it is not
in a sense telling some kind of a lie or
some kind of a false truth around an event that happens.
And so that really speaks to your question earlier of like,
are what are these photos? In twenty twenty four, when
AI and photoshop and all of these ways that images
(25:40):
and reality can be manipulated. What does it even mean
to demonstrate reality? Like, I think this guy is right,
that it is really important that everybody understands and has
that trust that what you're seeing is broadly true, broadly
based in reality. But you and if you don't have that,
it further erodes the trust in both institutions and news media.
(26:02):
But like, there does seem to be some questions about
what that means when the fabric of reality is so
easily and often manipulated using technology.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And I don't have the answer to that. What do
you think?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah, I think it's uh. I mean sign of the
Times is like a you know, kind of a cliche,
But I feel like we're living in a time that's
really characterized by lack of trust in institutions, and not
just lack of trust, but like rapidly declining trust in institutions,
(26:38):
as well as rapidly declining trust in what we even see,
like the images we see on the news and social media.
Like the idea of a shared reality itself I think
feels pretty tenuous these days. And I guess this story
(27:01):
kind of feels like Kate Middleton and the royals perhaps
like stepped right into that. And you know what, maybe
ten years ago might have been like a minor story
about like royal gossip is now solidly in like the
(27:26):
center of this existential information crisis that we're all having
about like what what is reality?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Even? How do how can we know what is a photo?
What is anything?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
And I think I don't know that they realized that
they were waiting into this, into all of these questions
by releasing this photo, But I think I think that
you're right that they really have and I think that
this is some sort of a milestone where it's.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Like, no, we really do need to have an.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Understanding of what reality is. You can't just use technology
manipulation to shape reality.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We will not accept that. We will not tolerate that.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Like John Alsop from the Columbia Journalism Review actually wrote
a piece where he says that he thinks that this
whole debacle is kind of a hopeful sign for our
current media climate. He writes, Yes, much of the discourse
around this episode has been untethered from reality, but much
of it is actually applied do skepticism to a piece
of information that merited it more skepticism, indeed, than credulous
(28:29):
recent statements from traditional commenters about the royal family moving
into a new golden age of transparency. Declining trust and
institutions is undoubtedly a problem of our current information age,
but institutions don't automatically deserve trust either. So I think
that you're right that we're sort of grappling with what
all of this means. But the fact that the wire
services pulled it immediately, that the Royal family had to
(28:52):
come out and say, oh, we edited this picture. It's
been manipulated, I think does in some ways kind of
speak to the idea that we're kind of asking and
answering those questions in real time. But the answer is not,
just like, you will accept the reality that we present
to you without question.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Maybe it is.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Maybe that's the the optimistic take. I mean, I I
hope that news agencies and the public and you know,
you and me as well as individuals like all of
us bring this same skepticism to other stories of you know,
that have dubious evidence, right, Like it's it is interesting
(29:32):
that there is this whole you know, media brew haha
about Kate Middleton, you know where is she?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Honestly is it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Like an American who doesn't follow the Royals, it just
doesn't feel that important. Like I can see how it
is important, and I you know, read an article a
little bit ago written by a Britain about like the
importance of the Royals as like a source of stability
when they're government is feeling very unstable, and so like
that kind of like made some sense to me, but
(30:04):
like in general, it doesn't feel that important, and it
feels like there are so many other like hugely important
media stories where there.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Is a lot of.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Fake evidence, fake photos, fake narratives, like you know, the
war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine. The Dysantis campaign
released some deep fakes, but you know, back in the
primary when they were still a thing, the like fake
robo call that used a deep fake of Biden's voice,
all of those stories got so much less airtime than this.
(30:37):
And you know, I guess, optimistically, maybe this big story
that's like using the sort of cultural hook of the
Royals to get people thinking and talking about these things,
maybe that will kick off kind of a new era
(30:57):
of skepticism.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I hope you're right, and I feel very strongly that
it doesn't matter if it's a like quote small story
or like a cultural story or whatever, or if it's
something as big as you know, a ongoing war or conflict.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think that I've said this on the show before.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I'm sure people are sick of me saying it, but like,
the truth isn't important. The truth matters, and we all
deserve the truth, and so it doesn't matter if it's
like a pop culture story that seems quite small or
a big story. In fact, in my mind, those things
are connected, right, And so I agree with you that
maybe this is an indicative of like how we will
be thinking about other quote bigger stories of medium manipulation
(31:40):
and how we understand them through this quote smaller story,
you know. Remac molavi Vesi, a digital rights lawyer and
senior researcher at the Mozilla Foundation, told CBS something along
these lines that I really agreed with. Quote it shows
our vulnerability toward content and toward how we make up
our realities. If we cannot trust what we see, this.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Is really bad.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Not only do we have already a decrease in trust
in institutions, we have a decrease in trust and media.
We have a decrease in trust even for big tech
and for politicians. So this part is really bad for
democracies and can be destabilizing. And so I kind of
agree that it doesn't matter if we're talking about, you know,
a campaign or a war or a pop culture event
(32:23):
that if you if you don't have, if people no longer,
if trust is no longer a thing that just exists,
the entire thing breaks down, and the entire thing is destabilizing,
and democracies are really fragile, and so like, I think
it really does matter.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
More.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Absolutely, yeah, I totally agree, And I think you know,
you talked about earlier on the show that when there's
a lack of good, reliable information, people like to world
build and it's fun to speculate about what might be
going on, and that is harmful. But then what's even
(33:23):
more harmful is when nefarious, bad actors with an agenda
step into that space and world build in a way
that is not just you know, fun speculation, but intentionally
trying to like mislead and push authoritarian narratives exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And this is where I'm kind of like having my
own come to Jesus moment. Like everything I'm about to say,
I'm saying in a mirror essentially to myself, which is
that I am someone who loves pop culture.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Loves celebrity gossip.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I read de Mois like I enjoy that as a pastime.
But I do not think that is wholly unconnected from
the bad actors who are using that very same dynamic
to manipulate people and destabilize democracies. And so I don't
have the answer of where one ends and the other begins,
but I think we got to ask those questions. And
(34:18):
then I think, so you have all these questions about
what is truth and manipulation, but when you add in
the Royals, it just takes on another layer.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I read that piece and the cut that you referenced
earlier about how the royal family kind of needs this
magic to exist as an institution, like a stable institution,
to survive, And I think that what we are seeing
right now is that people have really lost trust in
the Royals as an institution and the people who make
media and cover the Royals and media more broadly. And
(34:49):
so I think folks saw how Megan Markle was treated
before her and Harry left their royal duties, Prince Andrew's crimes,
that whole thing, and I think general questions about the
place of a monarchy as this whole over of harmful
colonial legacies has really got people asking some questions about,
you know, the royals and how they exist so that
magic that they're that they the cut piece describes that
(35:11):
the Royal family kind of needs to be working for
us all to believe in the institution as something that
is stable and good. Kind of like, isn't it really work?
That magic is really kind of not magicing so much.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, And you know, the other piece of that article
in the Cut was not just how the Royal family
needs the magic to exist, but also how the like
British people kind of need them to exist.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
And I found that interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
You know, again, as an American, it's not something that
really resonates with me, but you know, it's it's been
a long time since I read anything that was sort
of celebrating the idea of a constitutional monarchy. It always
just seemed like a weird colonial relic to me. But
it was interesting to read in this modern era that
(36:05):
we're in, when you know, survey after survey shows that
people are open to other forms of government than democracy,
which is like very alarming and concerning. But it feels
like that is a little bit related here as well.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And this thing with the whole Kate Middleton image, I
think to me really reads like the last gap of
really trying to use technology like photoshop to create this
reality where people can see the magic, have trust in
it and believe that it exists, right, and then have
it translated back into trust in that institution and that
(36:44):
as a like governing body.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
It does make sense in a weird way.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And so, you know, I think a lot of the
tools that the royals and other famous people have to
keep this machine sort of going, you know, pretty photos,
a careful relationship with the media and the public, I
think those tools are beginning to break down and become
less effective in twenty twenty four, in part because we
have the Internet. Right, people love to be slewed as
(37:10):
a hyper focused on images to point out like what's
not right with them. None of this is really new,
like onlookers have been doing that with the royal family forever,
but this new technology and internet fueled climate that is new.
So I think these old tools will not work in
this new climate. As Charlie Warzel puts it at the Atlantic,
people have recently lost trust in both the Royal Family
(37:31):
as an institution and in the organizations that cover the monarchy,
in part due to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's departure
from royal life. There is a new found sense of
the Royals as conniving and manipulative, and the press plays
into this. This trust vacuum when it collides with a
still new technology such as generative AI, creates the optimal
conditions for conspiracy theories to grow. It seems clear, at
(37:52):
least in the case of the Royal family, that the
institutions aren't sure how to handle any of this. It
makes sense then that the two biggest is it real
image controversies of the past year have centered on figures
from archaic cultural political organizations, the papacy and the monarchy.
He's referring to that AI image of the Pope wearing
a popper poat, which I always say, like, completely fooled me,
(38:15):
And it does make sense that, like, I think that
you're right, that it reflects a larger disillusionment in these
arcane political and cultural organizations.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, and also arcane political cultural organizations that have tended
to be very conservative, right. And I think in the past,
one of the ways they maintained power was by tightly
controlling information. And with social media, that's suddenly so much harder, right,
(38:49):
Like you maybe in the past you could talk to
twenty news outlets and get them all on board.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
That's not the case.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Now there's you know, hundreds of millions of people reposting
stories all over the place. And yeah, then with generative
AI and you know, lack of confidence in the veracity
of photos, videos, audio. It's so it's a weird time
(39:16):
for all of us. And yeah, it's not surprising that
it's an especially weird, difficult time for these storied institutions
that have developed most of their tools of power from
a previous era. That feels increasingly it leaves them feeling
(39:37):
increasingly ill equipped to deal with the current media environment
that we're in.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, and I mean to that point, this is loosely related,
but I feel like I'm sort of personally reckoning with
wanting to read all the speculations about what's going on
and also being like engaging in this feels icky a
little bit like, like, engaging in speculating about somebody's health
information feels really wrong to me, And so I think
(40:05):
it speaks to how much we as the public feel
like we are owed information about famous people, like the royals.
Like on the one hand, you might be like, well,
that's the drill when you become a royal, and maybe
that's true, but I do think it speaks to like
when what happens when people feel entitled to information, even
sensitive health information about people they don't know, in a
(40:27):
climate where information feels so tenuous, so easily manipulated. In
my research for this episode, I did see like a
level of entitlement around information and like ownership of people's
public selves that I just did not think was healthy.
And it is clearly gendered, like it is will link
(40:47):
to a study, but it is very well documented that
women public figures face greater criticism than male public figures,
particularly around like health and well being. Like attitudes around
health and well being are incredibly gendered. So it feels
like a biased, unfair, not equitable conversation in general to
(41:09):
be speculating on.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
And I do think.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
There's this like strange parasocial thing that happens with the Royals,
like when I was doing research for this episode. This
British tabloid journalist Liz Jones published this piece when Kate
first left the public eye. The title is this feels personal.
The news Kate is in the hospital has hit me
like a young member of my family has been struck down.
(41:33):
That is a wild piece to publish that. The fact
that was the title of a piece is wild to
me because she's not a member of your family. You
don't even know this person. It is wild to publish
a piece about how this is a personal drama for you,
the health issues of someone that you have never even met.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
And so I think that this is another thing that.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
People are just starting to question, along with these archaic
social and political, you know, rule parties. I think people
are starting to ask questions about this level of parasocial
scrutiny and is it healthy and is it something that we,
you know, and by we I mean institutions media journalists
should even.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Be contributing to.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
And this is just my opinion as like a casual
observer of all of this, is that, you know, I
obviously thought that the scrutiny that Megan Markle faced was
not Okay, it was really gendered and racist because she's
a black woman.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
And I think that you when you take her as
this figure that people love.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
To pick apart and beat up on in this really
charged way, when you remove her from that conversation and
all of that scrutiny is sort of being put on Kate,
I think it becomes clear like just how much that
scrutiny is, like how much that weighs?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Although I will say, in researching this episode, I did
see a few pieces where they quote like sources close
to Kate who basically blame Megan Markle for what's going
on with Kate, or like, oh, all those horrible interviews
that Megan mark will put out and Kate just has
to wait to see when the next horrible Megan Markle
interview will drop.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That would make anybody ill.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And so it's like, damn, even when Meghan Markle is
not even in the mix anymore, you guys cannot help
blaming her. You cannot help like keeping her name in
your mouth even when she is not there.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
My god, Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, it's gendered.
It's just focused on the two women.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Exactly, like gendered and racialized because it obviously frames Meghan
as like being to blame, not to mention that you
have the same media figures who like would write these
really nasty racist pieces about Meghan now saying oh, Kate
deserves privacy and empathy, you know, the double standard becomes
really obvious, and let's be clear, both of them deserve
(43:43):
that same empathy and privacy. So just a side note
is that my girl Sophie from Cool Zone Media and
I were talking about this via text yesterday that she
was like, isn't it funny how people are saying Megan
Markell needs to speak up for Kate and what a
bad take, Like, she sure doesn't. If she doesn't want
to get involved in this and just wants to mind
(44:04):
her business, she absolutely should. The idea that she should
be like sticking up for anybody to me is wild
and just like really confirm some of my thoughts about
the how people feel owed to the labor and like
public morality of black women sometimes even when they have
done nothing to earn that. Uh So, yeah, all of
this is to say, I do I think that we
(44:25):
are really in an interesting space when it comes to
both the royals, how we think about them, how we
talk about them, how we think and talk about these
these archaic ruling systems in general, and what all of
that means in twenty twenty four in the context of
things like generative AI, photo manipulation, and medium manipulation. More broadly, Like,
(44:46):
I don't really have the answers, but it does seem
like this feels like a line in the sand for
the fact that people are really asking these questions and
that the party line of you will accept the reality
that we present to you and you will not question
that is not working for any of us.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it'll be real curious that, you know, a year
or two from now to look back and see like,
was this that kind of event that was you know,
something of an inflection point about how we think about
photos and evidence and news sources, And maybe it will
you know, it's it's kind of an optimistic note to
end on we we often it's often a lot of
(45:24):
doom and gloom on this show. But yeah, maybe this
is a sign of better things to come.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I'm hopeful about it.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
And y'all, again, I am not the royal expert, so
I want to hear from you. Maybe we'll do a
follow up episode with your takes and your thoughts, so like,
please reach out to us, you want to hear them,
let me know what you think about all of this. Yeah,
thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, Bridget, How can people let you know their thoughts
and takes?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (45:52):
You can find me on email at hello at tangoia
dot com. You can find me on threads at Bridget
Marie and I think my thread's name is the same
as my Instagram handle. You can find me on blue
Sky at Bridget Todd. You can try to find me
on Twitter, although I'm not really there anymore.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yeah, hit me up. I want to know your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
out our merch store at tangoti dot com slash store.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can reach us at
hello at tegodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by Me Bridget Toad.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
(46:40):
Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tarry Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
I have very w
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgett and this is
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to There Are No.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of
social media, technology and identity. And this episode is a
special report. You know how back in the day they
would do those like special report, special report. This is
a special report on Kate Middleton. Mike, thank you for
being here. Have you been following what is happening with
(00:38):
Kate Middleton?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I wasn't at all, and then all of a sudden,
I was like seeing it everywhere.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Uh yeah, what's what's going on?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Bridget So I feel the exact same way, like I'm
not a Royals person, you know, It's not a cultural
thing that I follow closely really at all. But I
feel like I woke up last week and it's all
An He's talking about. I was getting group texts about it,
multiple text messages from multiple different friends about it, people
that I hadn't talked to in years, like ex'es being like, hey,
(01:10):
what do you think is going on here? So this
is definitely one of those big cultural things that people
who maybe just are casually, like the most casual followers
of the royal family are now weighing into so fair warning.
All of that is to say that I don't know
a ton about the Royals, and so in this conversation,
(01:30):
if I get something wrong or you're like, actually, she's
a duchess, not a this like, I apologize in advance.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is a little bit out of my out of
my purview.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
However, I do know a lot about conspiracy theories, particularly
how they impact women and how they move online. This
kind of feels like the perfect storm of what makes
the conspiracy theory take off online. So naturally I want
it to weigh in, So let's get into it.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So so like, what is the story here and why
are we talking about it on this show?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So this whole thing really started with Kate back in
January when Kensington Palace announced that Kate Middleton was going
to be entering the hospital the day before for a
planned abdominal surgery. The statement that they put out was
like very clear that they were asking for a little
bit of space on this. The statement read, the Princess
(02:23):
of Wales appreciates the interest. This statement will generate. She
hopes the public will understand her desire to maintain as
much normalty for her children as possible, and her wish
that her personal medical information remains private. The statement also
said that Kate was not going to be appearing in
public until Easter, which this year it's March thirty first,
and she still really has not been seen, but other
(02:47):
stuff sort of started to happen, like Prince William canceling
a scheduled appearance to attend the funeral of King Constantine
of the Helenus, who died last January and was his godfather.
This led to intense speculation that something had happened with her,
but Kensington Palace continued to say like, no, she's all good.
(03:08):
Her recovery is still on track, even though she has
not been seen. So again, to be clear, the statement
that the palace put out said that she would not
be seen in public until March thirty first. It's not
March thirty first yet, so they haven't really like it's
not like that data's come and gone, but people still
have questions. So this is really where you have people
(03:29):
really beginning to speculate. My group chat definitely like I
don't know if y'all out there listening, if your friends
have been talking about this NonStop, but mine have been
talking about this NonStop. Here are just a few of
the theories that I've seen floating out there about where
Kate is. One, something bad happened with her surgery, something
(03:50):
you know's she needs more recovery. Something bad has happened
related to her hospital's day.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
That's one.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Another is that she's been replaced with a body double.
Another that I saw is that she is actually one
of the performers from that Glasgow Ai Willy Wonka experience.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean, that would make some sense, right, Like with
all the scrutiny on the royals, perhaps her deepest desire
is just to be the unknown.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
You before we got on the mic, you sent me
that image that's like a screen, like a side by
side of the Unknown and Kate. And what's funny to
me about that image is that it's one of those
images where I suspect they're trying to be like the
similarities are there, but the Unknown wears a mask, so like.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
No, they're not.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Could be anyone, could be anyone.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Although for those who listen to our round up about
the Willy Wonka Ai fiasco. I found out some interesting
information about the unknown.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Oh you know about the unknown.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I know about the unknown.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The unknown is a black woman, and I wrongly call
I wrongly said, Oh, the unknown is like wearing a
slash wig that wasn't a wig.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
She just has full, beautiful black, curly hair.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The unknown becomes known.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
If she If that actor is listening, you have a
open invitation on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
We would love to have you, assuming that it isn't
Kate Middleton, if.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It either way, honestly, either way. So I've heard a
theory that Kate Middleton has actually been dead this whole time.
And then there is my personal favorite theory that she's
actually getting a BBL, a Brazilian butt lift. And if
you've ever known anybody that's got that, you do have
some like downtime where you're not seen in public while
(05:36):
you recover.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
That would be so funny if she came back and
was like, no, I didn't get a BBL, and like,
obviously did.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So that's the.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Thing about this speculation, right, some of it is like
genuinely very funny and some of it is kind of dark.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In researching for this episode.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I went down quite a few Reddit rabbit holes with
people speculating and giving their theories and their evidence. And
I don't want to get too much into some of
that because some of it, some of it is.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Like truly deeply dark. I will just say.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
This, where is Kate to me kind of feels like Cubanon,
but like for normal white ladies, right, Like, it's one
of those things where a lot of the hallmarks of
conspiracy theories where anything can be used as evidence that
we're not being told the whole truth, right, And it's
not just like a mundane truth that they're hiding. Like,
(06:28):
the truth is not just that Kate is exhausted and
wanted to break and you know who wouldn't if you
were a royal.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's like a sinister truth. It's not just a mundane truth.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And everything becomes a data point for the fact that
they are obscuring this sinister truth via lies and obscuscation.
So another truism about conspiracy theories that really helps them
to spread that we're seeing here is that generally there
is some nugget of truth to the theory that allows.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For like some specula of world building.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Right, Like, all of the conspiracy theories that I have
really seen take hold have that where there's some nugget
of something, where it's like, oh, this does seem to
be evidence of something what unclear, But that is what
allows people to really speculate and build a world on
top of it. And the truth here is that there
does seem to be something I guess I'll use the
(07:21):
word uncharacteristic going on. Like I said, I don't really
follow the Royals, but this is coming from Ellie Hall,
who is a journalist she used to work for BuzzFeed,
who really has been doing.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
A lot of great coverage into the Royals.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
She's been on There Are No Girls on the Internet
and the podcast I did with cool Zone Media Internet
hate Machine. Ellie Hall is the real deal, and she's
been talking about how the pr strategy around this has
been uncharacteristic from what we've seen from the Royals in
the past. Charlie Worzel at The Atlantic Summariz is saying
(07:54):
Kensington Palace's public relations strategy has been out of character.
The communications team it doesn't usually respond to God. There's
also been a dearth of speculative coverage from British tabloids,
which Hall notes has aroused suspicions, and then of course
there's the photo, which Hall wrote was distributed by the
Palace in an unprecedented manner. So we'll get to the
photo in a moment, but it does seem to be
(08:15):
that people who have been following the way that the
Royal Palace moves and how they put information out there
and respond to information, are saying whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Right now feels new and feels different, and it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Sounds like a big point of contention is that if
this surgery was like a planned surgery, like they say,
why would Kate have also scheduled appearances that she would
then need to cancel, right Like, if you knew you
were getting surgery, why would you schedule an event and
then need to cancel it. Concurrently, the Palace announced that
King Charles would also be stepping away from the public
(08:47):
eye to get treatment for an enlarged prostate, which many
people think is kind of suspicious to have two of
the most public facing royals both planning a medical procedure
and an absence from the public eye at the same time.
Royal expert and historian doctor Tessa Dunlop told The Mirror
that it is unusual for the royals to talk about
their health in this way that Charles has, where like
(09:09):
you are saying like a specific medical or health need
that you.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Are stepping away to get to get treatment for.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And then when you compare that to how they've talked
about it with Kate, where they're just like, oh, it's
an abdominal issue. All we can say is that it's
not cancerous. It seems like to onlookers that that might
be indicative of like not being told the full story.
There was also this idea that Kate, for lack of
a better phrase, has kind of been framed as like
(09:37):
the reliable royal. Like when you're a royal, they want
you to be in public all the time. All your
moves are like scrutinized and picked apart, but they want
you to like show up consistently and like look perfect
and polished and polite while doing this these public appearances
in which you will be like picked apart regardless of
how you show up. And so historically it does sound
(10:00):
like Kate for years has had this perception of like
going along with that and kind of playing the game.
So now people are saying that for her to be
pulling back if that is indeed what this is seems
uncharacteristic to the point that people feel like there has
to be more to this story. So all of this
is really a hallmark of how conspiracy theories move online,
(10:22):
right the fact that there does seem to be a
small nugget of truth that something at least uncharacteristic is
happening here, and this lack of information that just leaves
a lot of space for everybody to fill in the
blanks and assume that something fishy or you know, malevolent
is going on.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The royal family.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Has been pretty quiet while all this speculation has been swirling.
I think Prince William put out some kind of a
comment that he was like, oh, well, I'm not focused
on what's happening on social media. I'm focused on my work,
and you know, I get that response.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Like for a long.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Time, people, I think the media guidance was like, oh,
you don't you shouldn't respond to rumors, you shouldn't respond
to speculation, don't respond, be above it, ignore it. But
it's clear to me that that strategy is just not
serving them here because it just just leaves space for
people to fill in that gap with whatever information supported
(11:17):
by evidence. Or not, because they're not really saying anything
to dispute it.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Earlier you described it as world building, which when I
think of world building, I think of like games like
Dungeons and Dragons or you know, any number of games
where people are using their imagination for fun to create worlds.
But with this, Yeah, it really seems like people are
(11:44):
using their imagination to build worlds about public figures.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It's interesting, and you have to wonder, like, why why
are people so invested in world building around this?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I don't have to wonder because it's fun, Like I guess.
That's one of the things that I really want to
drive home is that one of the reasons why conspiracy
theories can really take off is because world building is fun.
People play games like that because they are fun. Should
you be doing it and speculating about the lives and
(12:19):
private health information about strangers?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I would argue no.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But the reason why people get so invested is because
puzzles and games and feeling like you have figured something out.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That other people haven't figured out, scrutiny, you know, feeling like.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You were the clever person that was able to read
between the lines, and like spot carefully constructed media or
pr lies four lies and like really get the truth.
That's fun for us, and it's very like validating. It
makes it like if you are somebody who can cracks
what's really going on, that's very self flattering because that
(12:58):
makes you smart, that makes you clever, that makes you
not a sheep, that makes you not somebody who dislike
mindlessly accepts the party line that you've been given. All
things that people like to feel about themselves. And so
in all the times that I've covered conspiracy theories, which
has been a lot on this podcast, that is something
that I really kind of understand about them, how people
(13:19):
can get sucked into them for many reasons, not the
least of which is because it's entertaining. But I think that,
as you said, like there's a difference between world building,
speculative world building for a D and D character that
you spent all this time building up, and a real
person who is a stranger to you, who really exists
and might very well really be going through something.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And so the.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Silence from the Royals really allows for all of this
to build up, right, and it really fuels more theories
that like something fishy is going on, not just not
just like mundane something like bad is we're not being
told something bad. One person on Twitter said, quote, you're
telling me that Kate Middleton, the same woman who posed
(14:03):
outside the hospital like a freaking supermodel mere hours that
they're giving birth, suddenly requires months of recovery before showing
her face and the British press now magically respects privacy.
This feels sinister, So listen, As I said, I don't
follow the royals that closely, so I won't even pretend
to act like I have some insight into what's going
on here. As somebody who has really studied conspiracy theories
(14:27):
and the way they move online.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I bet the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
That maybe something is going on that the royal family
is not being one hundred percent honest about, and maybe
that thing is a lot more mundane than a lot
of the onlookers would like to believe, and are sort
of like building up in their head, and it's possible
that the motivations for that aren't necessarily like sinister, let's
(14:55):
take a quick break.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
At our back.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It does feel a little bit like there is something
going on, because like stories like this, they could so
easily kill it if there was nothing happening, you know,
if everything was above boards, they could easily kill the
story by releasing a photo of her looking happy and healthy.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Right, well, let's talk about that, because this is actually
where stuff gets real weird. So there has been one
photo of Kate since January that was published on March fourth.
It's that photo where she's in the car with her mom.
It's kind of grainy. The other picture that was published
was on her Instagram of her and her kids for
Mother's Day, which in the UK is March tenth. This
(15:51):
photo was pretty obviously manipulated in some way. Now, the
individual edits on the photo are pretty minor individually, but
like on their own, taken together in totality, like it's
not a good look. And the fact that the edits
are like really amateurish. You know, when you look at
the picture, it's obvious that something is not right with
(16:13):
this photo. And so I think that's why when they
put this photo out there was a complete uproar because
after all of this speculation that where is Kate? Is
she okay? YadA, YadA YadA. The way that you respond
to that is this image that clearly does not look right.
Of course, that's going to be red meat to all
these people speculating that something has gone wrong. So a
(16:36):
lot of people were speculating that those images were AI generated,
or even that they were AI generated deep things, like
the image did not exist in any capacity, Like it
wasn't just an.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Edited image, that image never took place.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
People were even saying that the image was an edited
version of a picture of Kate from the cover of Vogue.
Now this conspiracy theory, to me felt especially stupid because
you had people who were like doing side by side
comparisons of the manipulated image that Kate put out and
the image from the Vogue magazine and being like, look
(17:11):
how they look so similar. That her smiles the same,
her eyes are the same. It's the same person. So yeah,
they do look similar, Like a picture of the same
woman might look the same, Right.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Makes sense if she really is the same woman.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
How deep does this thing go?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
So despite all of the speculation that these photos are
like AI generated deep fakes, NBC spoke to Hanny for Reid,
a University of California Berkeley professor who investigates digital manipulation
and misinformation, who.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Basically said it doesn't look like AI to me.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It looks like somebody just used good old fashioned photoshop
to edit those photos and that they are not AI
generated deep fakes. Hanny says, I think it is unlikely
that this is anything more than a relatively minor photo manipulation.
There is no evidence that this image is entirely AI generated,
So AI or not, the photo had been manipulated so
(18:04):
much that it became a violation of most newswire services policies.
So if you don't know what a newswire is, organizations
and institutions like Kensington Palace or the United Nations or NASA,
they submit photos to newswire services, and those services basically
vet and fact check those photos and then send them
all around for other media outlets to use. Now, anybody
(18:25):
who is submitting a photo to a newswire service knows.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The drill right.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There are very clear and specific rules about how the
photos can be edited, like, for instance, when it comes
to the Associated Press, you cannot even remove red eye
from those photos. This is why if you ever want
to get you know, if you ever see pictures on
Instagram of like an event or an award ceremony and
all the celebrities look perfect and polished. If you go
(18:50):
to Getty or go to ap you can get the real,
unedited photo. And that's how I know that when you're
scrolling social media and you're thinking, like, oh my god, celebrities,
they look so perfect. None of those photos are real.
They are putting the edited photo on their Instagram.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
If you do a.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Side by side of any of those photos, they all
tell a very different story. And that is why nobody
took compare themselves to what they are seeing on a
celebrities Instagram.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, it starts to get into like interesting existential questions though,
like if the you know, if a celebrities photo from
like an award show has been touched up to like
remove the red eye and smooth over their pores, is
it a fake photo?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I mean, like in twenty twenty four, what even is
a photo?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Like, I mean, I don't want to get I don't
want to make it seem like I just did a
massive bong rip before before recording this episode. But like,
you know, I know people who have entirely AI generated
headshots on their LinkedIn of images that don't.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Exist, but like yet there they are.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So I do think we're all sort of grappling with
some larger existential questions about what is a photo, what
is truth, what is reality? And I think that this
whole Kate Middleton thing really demonstrates that were in this
kind of new and precarious territory when it comes to that.
So one place where this is not precarious is newswire
(20:09):
services because the associated press, Getty Images, and Reuters all
issued kill notices for this photo, which means that they
were advising news agencies to remove this photo from their
archives and from circulation and to not use it at all.
I cannot stress to y'all how big of a deal
this is. In my entire time working at MSNBC, not
once did I ever see one kill notice.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That is how rare it was.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
The Verge reports that quote kill notices are incredibly rare
and unusual. One wire service source told me they could
count on one hand the number of kills issued in
a year. To give you a sense of scale, AP
says it publishes thousands of stories a day and a
million pictures a year. Getty Images covers one hundred and
sixty thousand events annually. That a kill notice of this
magnitude happened is a big deal.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Okay, so that's a pretty big screw up on somebody's part.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Well, Kate says that she was just like innocently playing
with photoshop, like we all do. She put out a
statement that said, like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally
experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for
any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I
hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Signed. See what do you think of that statement? You
seem like you have thoughts.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, it's I can feel the like tendency to want
to speculate and world build like happening within me in
real time here, Because like my initial reaction to that is,
why is Kate Middleton taking her own photos and editing
(21:47):
her own photos and managing her own social feed?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Like?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Is that how it works? I would assume that she
would have staff to do that.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's so funny because I had the same exact feeling
when I read this statement one two, I kind of
almost again and this is me like projecting my own
whatever onto it. I almost kind of like felt this
statement was sort of like like the I hope everybody's
celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day. It kind of
(22:15):
seems like, worry about your own family, don't worry about
what I'm doing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah, it feels like a little bit of a dodge.
And it also, yeah, it feels like a dodge. It
doesn't feel like it's addressing the actual like substance of
the concern here.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That's exactly how I felt.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
So, as you've said, unsurprisingly, this photo, which I feel
like was obviously meant to show that Kate is like
alive and doing well, did not accomplish that. In fact,
just the opposite. So now you have people who really
think that something is up, and the speculation has just
been kicked into complete hyper overdrive. I gotta say, in
(22:56):
my opinion, this was just a terrible com n PR move,
Like I don't know if Kate did innocently edit this
photo and post it, or if somebody else edited it
and posted it on her behalf or whatever happened, but
this is like a textbook conspiracy theory thing that drives
people to speculate even more, Like I can't even it
(23:17):
would be like, you know, the conspiracy theory that.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It would be like if Ted Cruz went out on
stage and was wearing like and I just and had
just gotten a Zodiac tattoo or something, and it's like
that that is the level of overdrive that this obviously
would kick this conspiracy theory up into.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, I mean it feels like if there's conspiracy theorizing happening,
releasing a ambiguously doctored photo would be exactly the thing
to do if you wanted to feed the conspiracies.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yes, so, I know the royals have had a pretty
complex relationship with the media, but this image has become a.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Real sticking point.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Kensington Palace is no longer being seen as like a
trusted source, and part of me feels like that, like
is that really so bad?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But the fact that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
They are putting it in explicit terms like that, I
think is a big change. Phil Setwind, Global News, director
of Ajon's France Press, told BBC's The Media Show quote,
all the agencies validated the photo, which clearly violated our
rules because it's actually not even well photoshopped. When asked
if Kensington Palace can maintain its reputation as a trusted
(24:39):
source after this whole controversy, he said, absolutely not. Like
with anything, when you're let down by a source, the
bar is raised, and we've got major issues internally as
to how we validate the photo.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We shouldn't have done it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
It violated our guidelines, and therefore we sent out notes
to all of our team at the moment to be
absolutely super more vigilant about the content coming across our desks,
even from what we would call trust sources. He goes
on to say something that I think speaks to your
point about what even is a photo? What even is reality?
He says, one thing that's really important is that you
cannot be distorting reality for the public. The big issue
(25:11):
here is one of trust and the lack of trust
of the general public in institutions generally.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And in the media.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
So it's extremely important that a photo does represent broadly
the reality that it's in and therefore it is not
in a sense telling some kind of a lie or
some kind of a false truth around an event that happens.
And so that really speaks to your question earlier of like,
are what are these photos? In twenty twenty four, when
AI and photoshop and all of these ways that images
(25:40):
and reality can be manipulated. What does it even mean
to demonstrate reality? Like, I think this guy is right,
that it is really important that everybody understands and has
that trust that what you're seeing is broadly true, broadly
based in reality. But you and if you don't have that,
it further erodes the trust in both institutions and news media.
(26:02):
But like, there does seem to be some questions about
what that means when the fabric of reality is so
easily and often manipulated using technology.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And I don't have the answer to that. What do
you think?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah, I think it's uh. I mean sign of the
Times is like a you know, kind of a cliche,
But I feel like we're living in a time that's
really characterized by lack of trust in institutions, and not
just lack of trust, but like rapidly declining trust in institutions,
(26:38):
as well as rapidly declining trust in what we even see,
like the images we see on the news and social media.
Like the idea of a shared reality itself I think
feels pretty tenuous these days. And I guess this story
(27:01):
kind of feels like Kate Middleton and the royals perhaps
like stepped right into that. And you know what, maybe
ten years ago might have been like a minor story
about like royal gossip is now solidly in like the
(27:26):
center of this existential information crisis that we're all having
about like what what is reality?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Even? How do how can we know what is a photo?
What is anything?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
And I think I don't know that they realized that
they were waiting into this, into all of these questions
by releasing this photo, But I think I think that
you're right that they really have and I think that
this is some sort of a milestone where it's.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Like, no, we really do need to have an.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Understanding of what reality is. You can't just use technology
manipulation to shape reality.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We will not accept that. We will not tolerate that.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Like John Alsop from the Columbia Journalism Review actually wrote
a piece where he says that he thinks that this
whole debacle is kind of a hopeful sign for our
current media climate. He writes, Yes, much of the discourse
around this episode has been untethered from reality, but much
of it is actually applied do skepticism to a piece
of information that merited it more skepticism, indeed, than credulous
(28:29):
recent statements from traditional commenters about the royal family moving
into a new golden age of transparency. Declining trust and
institutions is undoubtedly a problem of our current information age,
but institutions don't automatically deserve trust either. So I think
that you're right that we're sort of grappling with what
all of this means. But the fact that the wire
services pulled it immediately, that the Royal family had to
(28:52):
come out and say, oh, we edited this picture. It's
been manipulated, I think does in some ways kind of
speak to the idea that we're kind of asking and
answering those questions in real time. But the answer is not,
just like, you will accept the reality that we present
to you without question.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Maybe it is.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Maybe that's the the optimistic take. I mean, I I
hope that news agencies and the public and you know,
you and me as well as individuals like all of
us bring this same skepticism to other stories of you know,
that have dubious evidence, right, Like it's it is interesting
(29:32):
that there is this whole you know, media brew haha
about Kate Middleton, you know where is she?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Honestly is it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Like an American who doesn't follow the Royals, it just
doesn't feel that important. Like I can see how it
is important, and I you know, read an article a
little bit ago written by a Britain about like the
importance of the Royals as like a source of stability
when they're government is feeling very unstable, and so like
that kind of like made some sense to me, but
(30:04):
like in general, it doesn't feel that important, and it
feels like there are so many other like hugely important
media stories where there.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Is a lot of.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Fake evidence, fake photos, fake narratives, like you know, the
war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine. The Dysantis campaign
released some deep fakes, but you know, back in the
primary when they were still a thing, the like fake
robo call that used a deep fake of Biden's voice,
all of those stories got so much less airtime than this.
(30:37):
And you know, I guess, optimistically, maybe this big story
that's like using the sort of cultural hook of the
Royals to get people thinking and talking about these things,
maybe that will kick off kind of a new era
(30:57):
of skepticism.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I hope you're right, and I feel very strongly that
it doesn't matter if it's a like quote small story
or like a cultural story or whatever, or if it's
something as big as you know, a ongoing war or conflict.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think that I've said this on the show before.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I'm sure people are sick of me saying it, but like,
the truth isn't important. The truth matters, and we all
deserve the truth, and so it doesn't matter if it's
like a pop culture story that seems quite small or
a big story. In fact, in my mind, those things
are connected, right, And so I agree with you that
maybe this is an indicative of like how we will
be thinking about other quote bigger stories of medium manipulation
(31:40):
and how we understand them through this quote smaller story,
you know. Remac molavi Vesi, a digital rights lawyer and
senior researcher at the Mozilla Foundation, told CBS something along
these lines that I really agreed with. Quote it shows
our vulnerability toward content and toward how we make up
our realities. If we cannot trust what we see, this.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Is really bad.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Not only do we have already a decrease in trust
in institutions, we have a decrease in trust and media.
We have a decrease in trust even for big tech
and for politicians. So this part is really bad for
democracies and can be destabilizing. And so I kind of
agree that it doesn't matter if we're talking about, you know,
a campaign or a war or a pop culture event
(32:23):
that if you if you don't have, if people no longer,
if trust is no longer a thing that just exists,
the entire thing breaks down, and the entire thing is destabilizing,
and democracies are really fragile, and so like, I think
it really does matter.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
More.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Absolutely, yeah, I totally agree, And I think you know,
you talked about earlier on the show that when there's
a lack of good, reliable information, people like to world
build and it's fun to speculate about what might be
going on, and that is harmful. But then what's even
(33:23):
more harmful is when nefarious, bad actors with an agenda
step into that space and world build in a way
that is not just you know, fun speculation, but intentionally
trying to like mislead and push authoritarian narratives exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And this is where I'm kind of like having my
own come to Jesus moment. Like everything I'm about to say,
I'm saying in a mirror essentially to myself, which is
that I am someone who loves pop culture.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Loves celebrity gossip.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I read de Mois like I enjoy that as a pastime.
But I do not think that is wholly unconnected from
the bad actors who are using that very same dynamic
to manipulate people and destabilize democracies. And so I don't
have the answer of where one ends and the other begins,
but I think we got to ask those questions. And
(34:18):
then I think, so you have all these questions about
what is truth and manipulation, but when you add in
the Royals, it just takes on another layer.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I read that piece and the cut that you referenced
earlier about how the royal family kind of needs this
magic to exist as an institution, like a stable institution,
to survive, And I think that what we are seeing
right now is that people have really lost trust in
the Royals as an institution and the people who make
media and cover the Royals and media more broadly. And
(34:49):
so I think folks saw how Megan Markle was treated
before her and Harry left their royal duties, Prince Andrew's crimes,
that whole thing, and I think general questions about the
place of a monarchy as this whole over of harmful
colonial legacies has really got people asking some questions about,
you know, the royals and how they exist so that
magic that they're that they the cut piece describes that
(35:11):
the Royal family kind of needs to be working for
us all to believe in the institution as something that
is stable and good. Kind of like, isn't it really work?
That magic is really kind of not magicing so much.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, And you know, the other piece of that article
in the Cut was not just how the Royal family
needs the magic to exist, but also how the like
British people kind of need them to exist.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
And I found that interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
You know, again, as an American, it's not something that
really resonates with me, but you know, it's it's been
a long time since I read anything that was sort
of celebrating the idea of a constitutional monarchy. It always
just seemed like a weird colonial relic to me. But
it was interesting to read in this modern era that
(36:05):
we're in, when you know, survey after survey shows that
people are open to other forms of government than democracy,
which is like very alarming and concerning. But it feels
like that is a little bit related here as well.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And this thing with the whole Kate Middleton image, I
think to me really reads like the last gap of
really trying to use technology like photoshop to create this
reality where people can see the magic, have trust in
it and believe that it exists, right, and then have
it translated back into trust in that institution and that
(36:44):
as a like governing body.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
It does make sense in a weird way.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And so, you know, I think a lot of the
tools that the royals and other famous people have to
keep this machine sort of going, you know, pretty photos,
a careful relationship with the media and the public, I
think those tools are beginning to break down and become
less effective in twenty twenty four, in part because we
have the Internet. Right, people love to be slewed as
(37:10):
a hyper focused on images to point out like what's
not right with them. None of this is really new,
like onlookers have been doing that with the royal family forever,
but this new technology and internet fueled climate that is new.
So I think these old tools will not work in
this new climate. As Charlie Warzel puts it at the Atlantic,
people have recently lost trust in both the Royal Family
(37:31):
as an institution and in the organizations that cover the monarchy,
in part due to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's departure
from royal life. There is a new found sense of
the Royals as conniving and manipulative, and the press plays
into this. This trust vacuum when it collides with a
still new technology such as generative AI, creates the optimal
conditions for conspiracy theories to grow. It seems clear, at
(37:52):
least in the case of the Royal family, that the
institutions aren't sure how to handle any of this. It
makes sense then that the two biggest is it real
image controversies of the past year have centered on figures
from archaic cultural political organizations, the papacy and the monarchy.
He's referring to that AI image of the Pope wearing
a popper poat, which I always say, like, completely fooled me,
(38:15):
And it does make sense that, like, I think that
you're right, that it reflects a larger disillusionment in these
arcane political and cultural organizations.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, and also arcane political cultural organizations that have tended
to be very conservative, right. And I think in the past,
one of the ways they maintained power was by tightly
controlling information. And with social media, that's suddenly so much harder, right,
(38:49):
Like you maybe in the past you could talk to
twenty news outlets and get them all on board.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
That's not the case.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Now there's you know, hundreds of millions of people reposting
stories all over the place. And yeah, then with generative
AI and you know, lack of confidence in the veracity
of photos, videos, audio. It's so it's a weird time
(39:16):
for all of us. And yeah, it's not surprising that
it's an especially weird, difficult time for these storied institutions
that have developed most of their tools of power from
a previous era. That feels increasingly it leaves them feeling
(39:37):
increasingly ill equipped to deal with the current media environment
that we're in.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, and I mean to that point, this is loosely related,
but I feel like I'm sort of personally reckoning with
wanting to read all the speculations about what's going on
and also being like engaging in this feels icky a
little bit like, like, engaging in speculating about somebody's health
information feels really wrong to me, And so I think
(40:05):
it speaks to how much we as the public feel
like we are owed information about famous people, like the royals.
Like on the one hand, you might be like, well,
that's the drill when you become a royal, and maybe
that's true, but I do think it speaks to like
when what happens when people feel entitled to information, even
sensitive health information about people they don't know, in a
(40:27):
climate where information feels so tenuous, so easily manipulated. In
my research for this episode, I did see like a
level of entitlement around information and like ownership of people's
public selves that I just did not think was healthy.
And it is clearly gendered, like it is will link
(40:47):
to a study, but it is very well documented that
women public figures face greater criticism than male public figures,
particularly around like health and well being. Like attitudes around
health and well being are incredibly gendered. So it feels
like a biased, unfair, not equitable conversation in general to
(41:09):
be speculating on.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
And I do think.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
There's this like strange parasocial thing that happens with the Royals,
like when I was doing research for this episode. This
British tabloid journalist Liz Jones published this piece when Kate
first left the public eye. The title is this feels personal.
The news Kate is in the hospital has hit me
like a young member of my family has been struck down.
(41:33):
That is a wild piece to publish that. The fact
that was the title of a piece is wild to
me because she's not a member of your family. You
don't even know this person. It is wild to publish
a piece about how this is a personal drama for you,
the health issues of someone that you have never even met.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
And so I think that this is another thing that.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
People are just starting to question, along with these archaic
social and political, you know, rule parties. I think people
are starting to ask questions about this level of parasocial
scrutiny and is it healthy and is it something that we,
you know, and by we I mean institutions media journalists
should even.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Be contributing to.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
And this is just my opinion as like a casual
observer of all of this, is that, you know, I
obviously thought that the scrutiny that Megan Markle faced was
not Okay, it was really gendered and racist because she's
a black woman.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
And I think that you when you take her as
this figure that people love.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
To pick apart and beat up on in this really
charged way, when you remove her from that conversation and
all of that scrutiny is sort of being put on Kate,
I think it becomes clear like just how much that
scrutiny is, like how much that weighs?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Although I will say, in researching this episode, I did
see a few pieces where they quote like sources close
to Kate who basically blame Megan Markle for what's going
on with Kate, or like, oh, all those horrible interviews
that Megan mark will put out and Kate just has
to wait to see when the next horrible Megan Markle
interview will drop.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
That would make anybody ill.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And so it's like, damn, even when Meghan Markle is
not even in the mix anymore, you guys cannot help
blaming her. You cannot help like keeping her name in
your mouth even when she is not there.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
My god, Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, it's gendered.
It's just focused on the two women.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Exactly, like gendered and racialized because it obviously frames Meghan
as like being to blame, not to mention that you
have the same media figures who like would write these
really nasty racist pieces about Meghan now saying oh, Kate
deserves privacy and empathy, you know, the double standard becomes
really obvious, and let's be clear, both of them deserve
(43:43):
that same empathy and privacy. So just a side note
is that my girl Sophie from Cool Zone Media and
I were talking about this via text yesterday that she
was like, isn't it funny how people are saying Megan
Markell needs to speak up for Kate and what a
bad take, Like, she sure doesn't. If she doesn't want
to get involved in this and just wants to mind
(44:04):
her business, she absolutely should. The idea that she should
be like sticking up for anybody to me is wild
and just like really confirm some of my thoughts about
the how people feel owed to the labor and like
public morality of black women sometimes even when they have
done nothing to earn that. Uh So, yeah, all of
this is to say, I do I think that we
(44:25):
are really in an interesting space when it comes to
both the royals, how we think about them, how we
talk about them, how we think and talk about these
these archaic ruling systems in general, and what all of
that means in twenty twenty four in the context of
things like generative AI, photo manipulation, and medium manipulation. More broadly, Like,
(44:46):
I don't really have the answers, but it does seem
like this feels like a line in the sand for
the fact that people are really asking these questions and
that the party line of you will accept the reality
that we present to you and you will not question
that is not working for any of us.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it'll be real curious that, you know, a year
or two from now to look back and see like,
was this that kind of event that was you know,
something of an inflection point about how we think about
photos and evidence and news sources, And maybe it will
you know, it's it's kind of an optimistic note to
end on we we often it's often a lot of
(45:24):
doom and gloom on this show. But yeah, maybe this
is a sign of better things to come.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I'm hopeful about it.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
And y'all, again, I am not the royal expert, so
I want to hear from you. Maybe we'll do a
follow up episode with your takes and your thoughts, so like,
please reach out to us, you want to hear them,
let me know what you think about all of this. Yeah,
thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, Bridget, How can people let you know their thoughts
and takes?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (45:52):
You can find me on email at hello at tangoia
dot com. You can find me on threads at Bridget
Marie and I think my thread's name is the same
as my Instagram handle. You can find me on blue
Sky at Bridget Todd. You can try to find me
on Twitter, although I'm not really there anymore.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yeah, hit me up. I want to know your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
out our merch store at tangoti dot com slash store.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can reach us at
hello at tegodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by Me Bridget Toad.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
(46:40):
Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tarry Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
I have very w
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