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The news that Kate Middleton has been diagnosed with cancer comes after months of speculation about the royal’s whereabouts. Has the Princess of Wales, who has not been seen in public since Christmas, absconded to a remote hideout? Was it troubles at home—perhaps an affair—that kept her out of the public eye? What’s the truth behind this apparently doctored family photo? #WhereisKateMiddleton started trending as the online world offered up a complex set of what-ifs increasingly divorced from reality. In this episode of Critics at Large, staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz Discussed how a specific brand of “fan fiction” has enveloped the royal family, and how, like the #FreeBritney movement, this episode illustrates how conspiratorial thinking has become a fixture of online life. The host discusses “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” a 1964 article by historian Richard Hofstadter that traces conspiracy thinking throughout history, as well as Nao Naomi Klein’s 2023 book Doppelganger. So how should we respond to a world in which it is increasingly difficult to distinguish fact from fiction? Fiction itself may hold some of the antidote. “Those of us who are less conspiracy-minded can spend more time studying these conspiracies,” Cunningham said. “Learning about what many of our fellow citizens find disturbing is a tonic.”
Read, watch and listen with critics:
“Don’t blame Kate’s lies on ‘dumb people on the internet’” Will Bunch (Philadelphia) inquirer)
“The Doppelgänger” by Naomi Klein
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard HofstadterHarper’s Magazine)
“Parallax View” (1974)
“The Path of the Blade” (1981)
“Reddit’s IPO is a content moderation success story” by Kevin Roose (New York era)
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