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For weeks, hundreds of people online have spread conspiracy theories, posted memes and cracked jokes in an attempt to answer one question: Where is Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales?
Kensington Palace repeatedly said that Kate was recovering from a planned January abdominal surgery. Still, official responses, as well as an edited image posted to the palace’s social media channels, only fueled more unsubstantiated rumors.
But many people who had partaken in the online frenzy found themselves expressing regret after the princess broke her silence on Friday. In a video message to the public, the 42-year-old wife of Prince William, Britain’s future king, announced she was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.
Actor Blake Lively was among the first to make a statement online apologizing for her now-deleted Instagram post, a Photoshop joke inspired by the manipulated Mother’s Day photo released by Kensington Palace.
“I’m sure no one cares today but I feel like I have to acknowledge this,” Lively wrote in an Instagram story. “I made a silly post around the ‘photoshop fails’ frenzy, and oh man, that post has me mortified today. I’m sorry.”
That sentiment dominated much of the reaction on social media, where users said they wished they hadn’t poked fun at the princess.
“Yeah i definitely feel bad about laughing at all the ‘KateGate’ memes. wishing her a speedy recovery,” wrote Saint Hoax, an influencer who has amassed a following of 3.4 million on Instagram, where they post memes related to current events.
The fervor around Kate’s whereabouts — and subsequent online remorse — has underscored a pattern in which the absence of information provides perfect fodder for creators chasing relevance on algorithm-driven social media platforms.
“Everybody’s trying to jump in to get a piece of the viral pie, so to speak,” said Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media technology at the University of Alabama….
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