The meme-ification of Kate Middleton's absence
Are we getting less empathetic? I'm not sure that's the case
I know little to nothing about the British Royal Family, but if you have any social media presence, you were likely exposed to the meme-ification of Kate Middleton’s absence over recent weeks. Mostly on Twitter, it felt pretty inescapable.
Getting in on the conversation became so lucrative for engagement that even clout master Kim Kardashian posted a carousel with the caption, “On my way to go find Kate”.
Despite Kensington Palace sharing that Kate would not be back in the public eye until after Easter, the online discourse became so intense that she felt the need to come out of her hiatus early to clarify what’s been happening. And what that is, is that she received a cancer diagnosis which, of course, has been tough to process and is something her family wanted and continues to want to manage privately.
Meanwhile, what had people been speculating online? Some assumed she has been trying to leave her husband, others thought she killed two birds with one stone and had also gotten a face-lift or some other type of cosmetic surgery, and some wrote her into other emerging memes like the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience to make the situation as unserious as possible. The list goes on.
But the internet had a moment of self-reflection after Kate’s announcement. People realized they were subject to a social media mind-warp where compassion, patience, and critical thinking went out the window to a degree, and instead, playing into the hive mind that is the algorithmic feed… is what drove their decisions.