Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you’ve seen stories and social-media posts speculating on the demise of Kate Middleton, a.k.a. Catherine, Princess of Wales.
There’s no proof of this, of course. But in our current age of evidence-free accusations, you don’t need no stinkin’ proof.
Kensington Palace says Kate is recovering from abdominal surgery and probably won’t resume her royal duties until after Easter, which is all very straightforward.
But conspiracy theorists think otherwise.
They say she’s missing and possibly no longer among the living, and that the royals are scrambling to cover it up, including use of a body double in a recent video.
As one Twitter user put it (in all caps, as befitting the finest conspiracy theories): “KATE MIDDLETON IS PROBABLY DEAD.” The post included skulls and screaming emojis, just to demonstrate its veracity.
Needless to say, conspiracy theories almost always turn out to be nonsense. But the internet in general, and social media in particular, are unusually adept at dressing up nonsense in that-may-be-true clothing.
“What lingers is an urge to question reality, misinformation experts say,” The New York Times observes. “Lately, despite extensive and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the same sense of suspicion has contaminated conversations about elections, race, healthcare and climate.”
Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of media, ethics and digital platforms at the University of Oregon, told the paper that conspiracy theories are way to process “a really precarious, scary and unsettling moment.”
“The darkness that is characterizing our politics is going to insert itself into even the more lighthearted articulations of speculation,” she noted. “It just speaks to a sense of unease in the world.”
Whatever it is, the subgenre of dead celebrities in the universe of conspiracy theories has long been one of the most baffling forms of misinformation.
Most famously, many people bought into the notion that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in the 1960s. After all, there are all these clues if you play Beatles songs backwards, or parse the images on album covers.
For the record, Paul isn’t dead.
It would be nice if people stopped killing off celebs prematurely. But that would mean accepting official accounts of their well being (or lack thereof).
In this polarized age of questioning all information sources — the more official, the more questionable — it’s easier for some people to just assume the worst.
And also for the record, John was both the Walrus and the Egg Man.