Multiple things have been happening all at once this year in royal gossip. For one thing, royal gossip went mainstream in a huge way, as casual observers and otherwise royal-ambivalents were suddenly engrossed with the mystery around the missing Princess of Wales. While the British media would never admit it, Kensington Palace made the conspiracies a million times worse with a series of bungled messages, lies, manipulated photos and more. What we’ve seen in the past week is the British media’s attempt to regain control of the message and the story, and paint everyone with valid questions as some kind of conspiratorial lunatic. They’re conflating every critic/gossip with a “sinister Sussex Squad agenda” and worse yet, they’re conflating reasonable gossip and Sussex Squad people with Russian interference. The Sun ran a piece this week in which they’re actively trying to demonize all of the “what happened to Kate” people with “the sinister world of the Sussex Squad online trolls making Kate Middleton’s life a misery.” What’s weird about this is that the Sun gleefully printed a lot of those theories:
Their campaign of hate began when they peddled sick conspiracy theories around Kate’s abdominal surgery, claiming she was the victim of domestic violence, was in the middle of a divorce from Prince William or hiding away after plastic surgery. Even when the princess last week bravely told the world she is undergoing chemotherapy, the cyberbullies claimed her video was AI-generated. And the trolls cruelly claim Prince William threw his wife “under a bus” after the princess admitted tweaking her annual Mother’s Day picture.
The so-called squad is championed by New York software engineer Christopher Bouzy, 48, who was responsible for a tech program that unearthed hundreds of bots harassing Meghan and Harry. Bouzy has previously called Prince William a “balding muppet”, and claimed the future King and Kate “look like Harry’s aunt and uncle”. He also claimed The Sun’s exclusive video of Kate at her favourite farm shop in Windsor — the first images after her surgery — is fake.
On the Sussex Squad Instagram page, members peddle dangerous conspiracy theories about Kate’s cancer operation — including allegations she does not have the disease. A blog on its main website insults Prince William’s hairline in a bizarre barb referencing the late Princess Diana.
Branding him Baldilocks, it states: “William is bald because his mother reached down from heaven and snatched her fine Spencer genes back, William’s hairline was also snatched in the process.
LOL, why is the Sun printing sh-t about Baldilocks?? Why are they amplifying it?? It’s one thing to say “there are these people on the internet who love the Sussexes and have a lot of theories about the Waleses,” but to actually put this stuff in print in one of the biggest tabloids in the UK?? It’s definitely weird and I can’t wait for them to mention nicknames like Huevo, Wiglet, Keen and Buttons. And yes, the Sun has never done this kind of deep dive into the sinister world of Derangers, the coordinated bullying/disinformation effort against the Sussexes. That’s because outlets like the Sun have a symbiotic relationship with those online trolls.
Also: the New York Times is sort of backing up the British claims that Russia piggybacked on all of the royal drama this year. The NYT is basically like, most of the internet speculation was organic, but there were some efforts by a Kremlin-linked disinformation network to spread claims about Kate. Which I believe – I think everyone was getting involved and Russian networks used the “Where Is Kate” conspiracy to sow more chaos.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, covers courtesy of The Sun.