People are being weird about Meghan Markle again, and the reason couldn’t be more random. On social media, the Duchess of Sussex shared a clip of her trip to Europe for Paris Fashion Week. People began reaching immediately when they noticed her rolling past what people reported is the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
For our readers who might not know, that’s the site of Princess Diana’s terrible crash back in 1997. Internet commenters, anticipating engagement and a little traction, started posting about her Instagram Stories almost immediately. From there, the usual suspects online glommed onto the story and began to pillory her for a post that never intended to offend anyone in any way. (Maybe some people are truly offended, but social media is hard to pin down.)
Even still, here we go with another opportunity for people to be weird about Meghan Markle on the Internet. It’s a strange cyclone that seems to follow the Duchess of Sussex everywhere she goes. Can’t even go to Paris Fashion Week without a hungry press trying to turn everything into a referendum on her as a complete person. It sounds exhausting from the outside looking in, especially when there’s social media sleuths saying it was Pont Alexandre III instead!
Meghan Markle’s latest media moment explained
This all fits in neatly with larger trends around Meghan Markle on social media. Any one who’s spent any amount of time scrolling the royals beat on social and in print notices a certain level of hostility when it comes to the Duchess of Sussex. It’s pretty apparent to scholars who study this sort of thing. Kendra Marston wrote about it in a Routledge study collection back in 2021.
The media scholar observed, “Staged fantasies of Markle’s expulsion from the Royal Family and indeed from Britain — neatly encapsulated in the Twitter hashtag #Megxit — seek to preserve a fantasy of the British monarchy as an exclusive symbol of national heritage that is conservative, patriarchal, white and, importantly, legitimate.”
It’s as troubling as it is predictable. Unfortunately, as markets demand more sensational news, the barriers to accurate reporting actually erode more fully over time. For now, rest assured, this latest hubbub around Meghan Markle is just more bluster that you don’t have to get more upset about.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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