UK Catch-up: Princesses and Pogroms (Premium E258) Sample
You’ve heard more than your fill about terrible news in America. So you should take a break by hearing some terrible news from a nation more experienced in empire death.
UK Correspondent Annie Kelly returns from maternity leave to explain the most significant recent outbreaks of British brainworms.
First we meet the online community of obsessive “Royal Watchers,” which spawned conspiracy theories to explain the mysterious but brief absence of Princess Kate Middleton from public life. Then to reaffirm our commitment to brutal tonal shifts, Annie tells of Twitter-amplified misinformation about a teenage triple murder suspect which helped to fuel race riots. It’s an awful tale, but also usefully illustrative of how Elon Musk likes to moderate his social media platform.
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Annie Kelly on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/annieknk.bsky.social
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 266, Princess and Pogroms.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Liv Aker, Annie Kelly, and Travis View.
Wonderful news, my sweet little darlings.
Your UK correspondent, Annie Kelly, has returned.
For those of you who aren't aware where I've been, and perhaps feared that I've been arrested for thought crimes by the woke police, not to worry, I've just been away having a baby.
More specifically, the nicest, cutest and smartest baby ever to have lived.
But he's six months old now, which in this country is considered about the right time to be shipped off to boarding school.
So, I'm back on the podcast and ready to resume my duties as your source of information for all things British and weird.
So, what's been happening while I've been on maternity leave?
Well, you'll be pleased to hear that my country has only gotten more normal.
There's been a couple of events that have unfolded while I've been on leave that I really, really wanted to talk about at the time.
Those events are the supposedly unexplained absence of Kate Middleton from public life, and the rumours and conspiracy theories that it sparked about the royal family, and the race riots that ripped through the UK over the summer, seemingly set off by one racist lie that went viral.
Those two stories might seem completely disconnected from one another, but I think they're both incredibly illuminating when it comes to social media, institutional failures, and the combined impact of the two on the lives of both this country's aristocratic elites and its most marginalised communities.
So, if you'll forgive the retrospective, I thought I'd do a little mini roundup so we're all up to speed in case any more normal things happen around here.
The case of the cloned princess.
Let's start with a story that unfolded literally right as I went on maternity leave, much to the dismay of many of you on Twitter who kept requesting that I cover it.
By now, even if you weren't following it, many of you will have heard of the Kate Middleton saga from earlier this year, but I think it's worth revisiting for what it tells us about how one of the oldest institutions in the country, the royal family, are handling this new era where celebrity gossip and conspiracy theories are increasingly intertwined online.
I assume the answer to that question is not very well.
No, I think they're doing a marvellous job, as this story will reveal.
To begin with, I'd better introduce you guys to an online community who call themselves Royal Watchers.
They're a kind of fandom for the British Royal family, specifically.
Although, calling it a fandom might make it sound as if the users in this community uncritically support all of the Royals, The reality is a little more complicated.
The Royal Watcher sphere is dominated by feuds between supporters of different royals, with the family's interpersonal dramas frequently spinning out into wider tensions within their online fanbase.
And again, not uncommonly for these cloistered online communities, the depth of feeling that these feuds inspire can feel extremely puzzling to an outsider.
I was gonna say, like, they've invented, like, Stan culture for the royal family, but I feel like it's probably the opposite way.
Like, I'm sure that there's been a Stan culture about the British royal family for longer than...
Yeah.
Yeah, you could say, like, the War of the Roses, for instance, was maybe just the first Stan battle.
Gradually though, one juicy bit of gossip that had been circulating round the Royal Watchers began to break containment, with bizarre and eventually kind of depressing results.
In February 2024, some users began to speculate that Catherine the Princess of Wales, who is still more popularly known by her maiden name of Kate Middleton, hadn't been seen in public for over a month.
Now, while this might be normal for you or I in the Depression months of the early New Year, it's basically unheard of in the royal family, who, today, function a bit like the country's human pets.
They're kept in unimaginable wealth and comfort, but pay the price of being constantly shepherded around, picked up and poked at by the media on behalf of us, the jostling, gawking masses of the general public.
One enterprising user in the Royal Watcher community called Phantom, whose account seems to be dedicated more broadly to celebrity news and gossip, organised all the information they could find on the princess's public appearances before her seeming disappearance into a loose timeline.
They posted this to Twitter in February, announcing...
The UK press is clearly unwilling or forbidden to do their job, so I might as well do it for them.
Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, hasn't been seen by anyone in 58 days, nor her parents and children.
Official reports highlighted speculation, contextualisation in grey.
The timeline they put together was pretty lengthy, so I've abridged it to a few salient details.
The user noted that in September the princess had been seen with a finger injury, and that in December an ambulance with a police escort had been witnessed leaving Sandringham, where the royal family spends Christmas every year.
Then, in January, a spokesman for Kensington Palace had announced that Middleton had undergone planned abdominal surgery on the 16th, and would be in recovery until early April.
Phantom also noted unverified reports from a Spanish journalist, which claimed that the Princess of Wales was in a coma, citing, quote, an unnamed palace source.
Finally, they pointed out that on the 20th of February, Prince William had put out a statement on the Israel-Gaza War, signed only by him, using his solo monogram rather than the joint one more commonly used by the couple.
Phantom added this...
Not one visit from Kate Middleton, parents, siblings or children during her alleged two-week hospitalisation.
This strongly suggests she was not there at all.
As far as I know, neither Buckingham Palace nor any royal relatives sent her best wishes and a speedy recovery publicly as they often do when a royal is ill.
The provided details of the surgery also don't add up.
The hospitalisation and recovery time for a non-cancer-related abdominal surgery is considerably less.
I guess this is a situation where they're, like, lying poorly then.
Like, I don't know how the royal tracking works.
I'm not sure if it's like one of the, like, Elon Musk jet sort of things where you can see them move throughout.
Yeah, I mean, I guess they just don't ever do anything privately, essentially.
Like, kind of every day is a sort of public appearance somewhere else.
So it quickly becomes noticeable when one of them isn't doing that.
And yeah, the press, like, usually expect an explanation.
Which, in fairness, was given.
It's like when you go to Disneyland and Goofy's not there.
Everybody's like, what the fuck?
This guy's always out and about.
He's always shaking hands, he's taking pictures, he's signing autograph books, but he's not here.
What's going on?
Yeah, then all the Disney adults go to their blogs and Twitter accounts to announce the absence of Goofy and what's up.
This is the most like explaining the royal family to an American analogy.
Yes, yes, exactly.
These are the Disney characters.
They dress up in elaborate costumes.
They're very hot.
They're very hot.
They have to deal with lots of children and adults sort of picking and poking and looking and taking pictures and waving.
Very similar.
They have a breakfast, a very expensive breakfast every morning where you can come and you can hug them.
It's like after Soleimani was killed by Trump, there was that Iranian cleric that's like, who are we supposed to kill, SpongeBob?
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
For access to the full episode as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion.