Thank you for this fascinating podcast. I’m so glad you took the decision to go private and protect yourself from the inevitable unfair harassment that was bound to come your way.
As a brit myself I’ve enjoyed your commentary on this above any other, and I’m unashamed to used the word ‘enjoyed’ because in spite of the horrible revelation of KM’s illness, which of course no one ‘enjoys’, this whole situation / story / débâcle was absolutely fascinating. I’m not sure what people like Helen Lewis think we’re supposed to do when confronted with such fascinating fakery / inconsistencies by this incredibly influential public institution. As a ‘subject’ (unwilling) of the Royal Family, I find it galling that their entire existence is predicated on our interest, and when we’re understandably fascinated by odd behaviour / gaping inconsistencies it’s all ‘Know your place, plebs.’
Thank you for this podcast and for all of your insightful videos on TikTok. I do not think you did anything wrong and what you’re experiencing in terms of backlash is a result of the very thing you described— a moral panic and a failure of palace PR. Your voice is needed and I hope you will continue to share your analysis and commentary, while also taking care of and protecting yourself!
Thank you for being a thoughtful and brave writer and commentator. What you're doing is challenging on many fronts and helpful to the rest of us. In regards to the deification of the royal family, I've recently been reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and simultaneously watching The Crown for the first time. The juxtaposition highlights how the monarchy is a religion (a cult, in my opinion).
I probably should have defined "cult" for people less acquainted with the distinction between religion and cult: a high demand, high control group where the leader claims to have special authority, frequently divinely attributed. A low control, low demand religion with a focus on the divine itself would not qualify but in the middle there is a lot of gray area.
Thank you for this insightful dialogue. Having grown up Mormon and gaining an insight into how institutions purposefully work to seed discontent amongst members in order to deflect institutional responsibility or culpability for anything I see so many parallels. I mean the Mormon church isn’t even that old compared to the British empire so it’s just a new version of an old played out power structure of deification and worship of individuals that end up wrapped up in an institution.
Also. I’m not a conspiracists type thinker in general. I generally think people just can’t keep secrets so conspiracies are always larger in theory than they ever play out to be in the end. But.. Can’t…stop thinking about how maybe the royal pr team is actually smart enough to have purposefully played all this out intentionally in order to regain sympathies and build up the institution and try to humanize Kate by orchestrating the entire pr campaign from January to the March photo release. I do completely believe she has cancer, but they may intentionally be using her diagnosis to gain sympathies re-establish devotion to their institution.
Thanks for the podcast, so many good lines. Based on Diana, and Prince Harry and MM's experiences, it was reasonable to want to know that KM was/is okay, and oi get this information from first person undoctored media, similar to how we did with KC. Abusive systems use shame to control the conversation away from what they have done. Removing the voice and agency of women who are in power systems where they do not have full power/ agency is so familiar that it because the comfort zone the status quo maintains for consistent familiarity and feelings of control. Continuing to put the spotlight on the holders of actual power and looking at what they gain from shame, misinformation, and misdirection helps us to see the power and access our own agency within its structure. Any time asking questions is shamed, we should look even more closely at the power that wants us silenced.
Tbh, Kate might be relieved the world cares when she goes missing and isn't heard from. Isn't that how we catch criminals and abusers in day to day life, by caring, saying something, and not giving up?
You are really spot on. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The fertile ground that KP prepared for all kinds of theories to emerge was but natural. If they had followed KC’s strategy of announcing of his cancer diagnosis at the onset, none of this speculation would have happened. Everyone would have left Kate alone. But now what’s more aggravating is to see how people quickly forgot the chain of events that got us here and are professing how THEY stayed above the fray. It’s the finger pointing and shaming which is so unnecessary. These are specially some royal content creators who perhaps want to keep their access and/or feel superior imo. This holier than thou and ‘pick-me-energy’ from some is what is off putting to me not that very human response we all had collectively.
This was absolutely accurate and thoughtful. She is being bullied all right, but by her own PR/Comm team. And where is William in all this? They let her take the fall for the photo alone while he was out and about conducting business as usual. Then she was pushed to record a video alone about her diagnosis. Why wasn’t he sitting next to her on the bench in support? That seemed odd to me and did nothing to suppress the affair/divorce rumors. If the tables were turned and it was his diagnosis, we would expect her at his side. So where is her supportive partner? Something is still rotten in Denmark (England). Hopefully she can get better representation soon and pay them more than 25,000 pounds a year.
I wish I was as eloquent as you or a smart as you! I think things that are exactly as you describe, but I am unable or maybe just feel inferior, to verbalize or write a conversation. I really would like to say I was hooked to your thoughts from the moment I saw you on tik toc and it was about trad wives. I hadn't heard that term, but I did find something bizarre about those videos. And you put it all in dazzling perspective for me and helped me to see the bigger picture and I thank you for that. Regarding Kate, I still feel the palace botched that and I'm still on the fence about it all. I don't have any skin in the game of course, but watching the whole psychological game of it all is mind blowing. My mother grew up in Scotland. She was taken out of school to watch the coronation of the queen. Her undying loyalty to this family is beyond words. As soon as the cancer video came out my mother called me. And immediately I noticed all the shamers. Funny how all that happens and I feel this is the exact reaction that was expected. I feel no shame and I hope you do not either. I also hope you do not stop what you are doing, you make people think, it's so important.
I don’t really have an answer to the question about what the ideal relationship between regular citizens and famous people would look like / how we can avoid these types of global obsessions in the future, but I do know that posing these questions and initiating these conversations is the first step. So thank you for putting yourself out there and creating a space for people to engage critically with these concepts. Maybe part of the answer is better education (at all levels) on the psychology of social media, media literacy, parasocial relationships, etc…
This was such a great listen, thank you for recording this! A couple things that struck me - when you were discussing TSwift, I think the conflation between TS the person and TS the business and brand has been so incredible from a PR perspective bc any criticism is perceived as a personal attack - I think her team has always kept those lines blurry for that purpose, and in a lot of ways I think that’s what’s happened w KM. Does KM the young mother deserve privacy related to her health, absolutely. But does the Princess of Wales future Queen of England get to take an indefinite length of time off work without providing a believable explanation or reassuring her constituents- absolutely not. We can see how KCs team handled his narrative (which is identical to Kate’s), and created confidence in that narrative to suppress speculation, while still creating boundaries / protecting specific details.
With discussion surrounding folks jumping to Kate’s defense, while ignoring the tragedy befalling Gaza certainly speaks to a larger discussion about white supremacy and the ways white women perpetuate it, but I actually think it’d be interesting to see a comparison of women who are defending Kate and women who criticize TS - bc I bet that venn diagram is a circle, and I’d be curious to unpack that (reserving the right to change my mind on this since it just popped into my head and I haven’t sat w it. But it feels right haha)
wow this has given me SO much to think about! I'm obsessed with that idea of the venn diagram between women who defend kate and women who criticize ts being a circle. if there's truth to it, then my best guess would be that it lives somewhere within the innate revulsion we're taught to have about childless women, and the idea that taylor swift is in her thirties without having married a man/given birth/done all the things we associate with "good womanhood." just some unsubstantiated food for thought haha but im really interested in this too!
I’ve been thinking all day about the psychology behind the vitriol from the KM stans, and it just occurred to me, that that level of anger feels like defensiveness. Which would suggest KM represents something to these women / causing projection in some way. I think it was the affair rumors. Because if the perfect wife/mother/woman could be cheated on or left, then where does that leave your “average” woman. Nevermind, the fear of being left were they to receive a diagnosis like cancer like KM did. Studies have shown that in marriages where one partner gets cancer, if it’s the woman, 23% of those end in divorce, only about 1-2% if it’s the man (#s vary by study), maybe this is a stretch (probably) but the anger behind some of the commenters feels like they were going after the other woman. I think the fear that was being projected was different than just the fear of a mother not being able to be there for her kids.
And w the TS/KM contrast, I think it goes beyond just motherhood, and maybe sits more in purity culture ideals - the Madonna and the whore. TS being young and successful and single, dating diff men. And the chaste, proper young woman saving herself for one man (and by certain groups potentially seen as being rewarded for her patience and commitment)
Hi! So happy to have found you before you went private, but I completely understand why you chose to do so. Great listen and I’m looking forward to future conversations. ❤️
Superficial empathy and moral superiority are clearly at play. The "how dare you" tone makes me sick/cringe. Your popularity on TikTok stems from your authenticity as much as the topics you cover, so don't edit yourself too much or make it too heavily curated. Honest/uninhibited reactions are the only kind people want to see imo. I was disturbed to learn she has cancer—it's a frightening ordeal. I don’t regret my speculation about the situation. Their PR team turned it into a spectacle! A circus! I won't be shamed for my reaction, which was to consider various possibilities of what the HELL was going on for such a thing to happen!
It is pretty clear to me that if the doctored photo hadn’t been published, Kate would never have been forced to make a public statement as that was the point that the palace completely lost the public’s trust.
As a professional photographer myself I still don’t believe for a second that Kate doctored the image herself (or at least it is highly unlikely) and so the palace has been caught in multiple lies (the doctored photo that is a lie in itself and the statement that Kate doctored it herself which is another lie to cover up the first lie) so to then claim moral superiority over people who simply just refuse to believe lies and who are concerned about an institution that doesn’t have the best track record of treating women well, is simply outrageous to me.
I think it’s concerning that people think the cancer diagnosis and wish for privacy somehow justifies the dishonesty.
If the palace had just kept quiet the entire time, they could have retained control of the narrative and respected Kate’s privacy but they chose to unnecessarily lie instead.
I couldn’t care less about Kate Middleton, but it was such a fascinating story to watch unfold and theorise about.
I also think hindsight is obviously playing a big part here. For example, if it had turned out that Britney really needed to have been kept in conservatorship there would be a lot of finger wagging at the free britney movement but now it’s an example of the power of social media and the concerned public banding together.
Superficial empathy and moral superiority are clearly at play. The "how dare you" tone makes me sick/cringe. Your popularity on TikTok stems from your authenticity as much as the topics you cover, so don't edit yourself too much or make it too heavily curated. Honest/uninhibited reactions are the only kind people want to see imo. I was disturbed to learn she has cancer—it's a frightening ordeal. I don’t regret my speculation about the situation. Their PR team turned it into a spectacle! A circus! I won't be shamed for my reaction, which was to consider various possibilities of what the HELL was going on for such a thing to happen!
Thank you for this fascinating podcast. I’m so glad you took the decision to go private and protect yourself from the inevitable unfair harassment that was bound to come your way.
As a brit myself I’ve enjoyed your commentary on this above any other, and I’m unashamed to used the word ‘enjoyed’ because in spite of the horrible revelation of KM’s illness, which of course no one ‘enjoys’, this whole situation / story / débâcle was absolutely fascinating. I’m not sure what people like Helen Lewis think we’re supposed to do when confronted with such fascinating fakery / inconsistencies by this incredibly influential public institution. As a ‘subject’ (unwilling) of the Royal Family, I find it galling that their entire existence is predicated on our interest, and when we’re understandably fascinated by odd behaviour / gaping inconsistencies it’s all ‘Know your place, plebs.’
Thank you for this podcast and for all of your insightful videos on TikTok. I do not think you did anything wrong and what you’re experiencing in terms of backlash is a result of the very thing you described— a moral panic and a failure of palace PR. Your voice is needed and I hope you will continue to share your analysis and commentary, while also taking care of and protecting yourself!
Thank you for being a thoughtful and brave writer and commentator. What you're doing is challenging on many fronts and helpful to the rest of us. In regards to the deification of the royal family, I've recently been reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and simultaneously watching The Crown for the first time. The juxtaposition highlights how the monarchy is a religion (a cult, in my opinion).
I probably should have defined "cult" for people less acquainted with the distinction between religion and cult: a high demand, high control group where the leader claims to have special authority, frequently divinely attributed. A low control, low demand religion with a focus on the divine itself would not qualify but in the middle there is a lot of gray area.
Thank you for this insightful dialogue. Having grown up Mormon and gaining an insight into how institutions purposefully work to seed discontent amongst members in order to deflect institutional responsibility or culpability for anything I see so many parallels. I mean the Mormon church isn’t even that old compared to the British empire so it’s just a new version of an old played out power structure of deification and worship of individuals that end up wrapped up in an institution.
Also. I’m not a conspiracists type thinker in general. I generally think people just can’t keep secrets so conspiracies are always larger in theory than they ever play out to be in the end. But.. Can’t…stop thinking about how maybe the royal pr team is actually smart enough to have purposefully played all this out intentionally in order to regain sympathies and build up the institution and try to humanize Kate by orchestrating the entire pr campaign from January to the March photo release. I do completely believe she has cancer, but they may intentionally be using her diagnosis to gain sympathies re-establish devotion to their institution.
Thanks for the podcast, so many good lines. Based on Diana, and Prince Harry and MM's experiences, it was reasonable to want to know that KM was/is okay, and oi get this information from first person undoctored media, similar to how we did with KC. Abusive systems use shame to control the conversation away from what they have done. Removing the voice and agency of women who are in power systems where they do not have full power/ agency is so familiar that it because the comfort zone the status quo maintains for consistent familiarity and feelings of control. Continuing to put the spotlight on the holders of actual power and looking at what they gain from shame, misinformation, and misdirection helps us to see the power and access our own agency within its structure. Any time asking questions is shamed, we should look even more closely at the power that wants us silenced.
Tbh, Kate might be relieved the world cares when she goes missing and isn't heard from. Isn't that how we catch criminals and abusers in day to day life, by caring, saying something, and not giving up?
Wish I could edit my typos 🙄 First time on here. Thanks again for the content!
You are really spot on. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The fertile ground that KP prepared for all kinds of theories to emerge was but natural. If they had followed KC’s strategy of announcing of his cancer diagnosis at the onset, none of this speculation would have happened. Everyone would have left Kate alone. But now what’s more aggravating is to see how people quickly forgot the chain of events that got us here and are professing how THEY stayed above the fray. It’s the finger pointing and shaming which is so unnecessary. These are specially some royal content creators who perhaps want to keep their access and/or feel superior imo. This holier than thou and ‘pick-me-energy’ from some is what is off putting to me not that very human response we all had collectively.
This was absolutely accurate and thoughtful. She is being bullied all right, but by her own PR/Comm team. And where is William in all this? They let her take the fall for the photo alone while he was out and about conducting business as usual. Then she was pushed to record a video alone about her diagnosis. Why wasn’t he sitting next to her on the bench in support? That seemed odd to me and did nothing to suppress the affair/divorce rumors. If the tables were turned and it was his diagnosis, we would expect her at his side. So where is her supportive partner? Something is still rotten in Denmark (England). Hopefully she can get better representation soon and pay them more than 25,000 pounds a year.
Yes I thought it was bizarre not to have William beside her.
I wish I was as eloquent as you or a smart as you! I think things that are exactly as you describe, but I am unable or maybe just feel inferior, to verbalize or write a conversation. I really would like to say I was hooked to your thoughts from the moment I saw you on tik toc and it was about trad wives. I hadn't heard that term, but I did find something bizarre about those videos. And you put it all in dazzling perspective for me and helped me to see the bigger picture and I thank you for that. Regarding Kate, I still feel the palace botched that and I'm still on the fence about it all. I don't have any skin in the game of course, but watching the whole psychological game of it all is mind blowing. My mother grew up in Scotland. She was taken out of school to watch the coronation of the queen. Her undying loyalty to this family is beyond words. As soon as the cancer video came out my mother called me. And immediately I noticed all the shamers. Funny how all that happens and I feel this is the exact reaction that was expected. I feel no shame and I hope you do not either. I also hope you do not stop what you are doing, you make people think, it's so important.
I don’t really have an answer to the question about what the ideal relationship between regular citizens and famous people would look like / how we can avoid these types of global obsessions in the future, but I do know that posing these questions and initiating these conversations is the first step. So thank you for putting yourself out there and creating a space for people to engage critically with these concepts. Maybe part of the answer is better education (at all levels) on the psychology of social media, media literacy, parasocial relationships, etc…
This was such a great listen, thank you for recording this! A couple things that struck me - when you were discussing TSwift, I think the conflation between TS the person and TS the business and brand has been so incredible from a PR perspective bc any criticism is perceived as a personal attack - I think her team has always kept those lines blurry for that purpose, and in a lot of ways I think that’s what’s happened w KM. Does KM the young mother deserve privacy related to her health, absolutely. But does the Princess of Wales future Queen of England get to take an indefinite length of time off work without providing a believable explanation or reassuring her constituents- absolutely not. We can see how KCs team handled his narrative (which is identical to Kate’s), and created confidence in that narrative to suppress speculation, while still creating boundaries / protecting specific details.
With discussion surrounding folks jumping to Kate’s defense, while ignoring the tragedy befalling Gaza certainly speaks to a larger discussion about white supremacy and the ways white women perpetuate it, but I actually think it’d be interesting to see a comparison of women who are defending Kate and women who criticize TS - bc I bet that venn diagram is a circle, and I’d be curious to unpack that (reserving the right to change my mind on this since it just popped into my head and I haven’t sat w it. But it feels right haha)
wow this has given me SO much to think about! I'm obsessed with that idea of the venn diagram between women who defend kate and women who criticize ts being a circle. if there's truth to it, then my best guess would be that it lives somewhere within the innate revulsion we're taught to have about childless women, and the idea that taylor swift is in her thirties without having married a man/given birth/done all the things we associate with "good womanhood." just some unsubstantiated food for thought haha but im really interested in this too!
I’ve been thinking all day about the psychology behind the vitriol from the KM stans, and it just occurred to me, that that level of anger feels like defensiveness. Which would suggest KM represents something to these women / causing projection in some way. I think it was the affair rumors. Because if the perfect wife/mother/woman could be cheated on or left, then where does that leave your “average” woman. Nevermind, the fear of being left were they to receive a diagnosis like cancer like KM did. Studies have shown that in marriages where one partner gets cancer, if it’s the woman, 23% of those end in divorce, only about 1-2% if it’s the man (#s vary by study), maybe this is a stretch (probably) but the anger behind some of the commenters feels like they were going after the other woman. I think the fear that was being projected was different than just the fear of a mother not being able to be there for her kids.
And w the TS/KM contrast, I think it goes beyond just motherhood, and maybe sits more in purity culture ideals - the Madonna and the whore. TS being young and successful and single, dating diff men. And the chaste, proper young woman saving herself for one man (and by certain groups potentially seen as being rewarded for her patience and commitment)
Hi! So happy to have found you before you went private, but I completely understand why you chose to do so. Great listen and I’m looking forward to future conversations. ❤️
Superficial empathy and moral superiority are clearly at play. The "how dare you" tone makes me sick/cringe. Your popularity on TikTok stems from your authenticity as much as the topics you cover, so don't edit yourself too much or make it too heavily curated. Honest/uninhibited reactions are the only kind people want to see imo. I was disturbed to learn she has cancer—it's a frightening ordeal. I don’t regret my speculation about the situation. Their PR team turned it into a spectacle! A circus! I won't be shamed for my reaction, which was to consider various possibilities of what the HELL was going on for such a thing to happen!
It is pretty clear to me that if the doctored photo hadn’t been published, Kate would never have been forced to make a public statement as that was the point that the palace completely lost the public’s trust.
As a professional photographer myself I still don’t believe for a second that Kate doctored the image herself (or at least it is highly unlikely) and so the palace has been caught in multiple lies (the doctored photo that is a lie in itself and the statement that Kate doctored it herself which is another lie to cover up the first lie) so to then claim moral superiority over people who simply just refuse to believe lies and who are concerned about an institution that doesn’t have the best track record of treating women well, is simply outrageous to me.
I think it’s concerning that people think the cancer diagnosis and wish for privacy somehow justifies the dishonesty.
If the palace had just kept quiet the entire time, they could have retained control of the narrative and respected Kate’s privacy but they chose to unnecessarily lie instead.
I couldn’t care less about Kate Middleton, but it was such a fascinating story to watch unfold and theorise about.
I also think hindsight is obviously playing a big part here. For example, if it had turned out that Britney really needed to have been kept in conservatorship there would be a lot of finger wagging at the free britney movement but now it’s an example of the power of social media and the concerned public banding together.
On point! Everything. Thank you for this!
Superficial empathy and moral superiority are clearly at play. The "how dare you" tone makes me sick/cringe. Your popularity on TikTok stems from your authenticity as much as the topics you cover, so don't edit yourself too much or make it too heavily curated. Honest/uninhibited reactions are the only kind people want to see imo. I was disturbed to learn she has cancer—it's a frightening ordeal. I don’t regret my speculation about the situation. Their PR team turned it into a spectacle! A circus! I won't be shamed for my reaction, which was to consider various possibilities of what the HELL was going on for such a thing to happen!