Camilla and Meghan: How outrage porn and a Netflix series have fed hate against female royals

How online hate and disinformation - largely focused on Queen Consort Camilla and the Duchess of Sussex - has taken over the internet.

Then Prince Charles, with the then Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, during a garden party at Buckingham Palace in London in 2018. Source: AAP / Dominic Lipinski

Key Points

• Online hate directed towards Meghan Markle and Camilla, Queen Consort, is dominating the internet.
• Online hashtags such as #camillahomewrecker and #meghanmarklegohome have gained traction

The Duchess of Sussex had barely finished walking the streets of London to greet mourners for the Queen with her partner Harry, Prince William and Princess Kate when #GoHomeMeghanMarkle started to surface as a trending hashtag.

During Monday's funeral, Meghan's choice of outfit came under close online scrutiny, as did whether she was suitably emotional.

And Camilla, mourning Queen Elizabeth and supporting her husband the new King Charles, was labelled a "homewrecker" online.

The vitriol against the two women stepped up following the death of the Queen, and there appears to be more negative commentary on social media about the women than Prince Andrew, the Queen’s son, who earlier this year was facing a civil sexual assault case until he came to an out of court settlement in which he reportedly paid millions of dollars.

What the internet has focused on following the Queen's death

Commentary around Markle’s every action and reaction following the death of Queen Elizabeth has been closely analysed and criticised.

This has included the widespread sharing and commenting on a video of a brief interaction she had with a royal aide, while greeting mourners outside Windsor Castle, for which some have labelled her “rude".

Abuse of Harry and Meghan stepped up since they announced their departure from royal life, according to a report by research firm BotSentinel which added: "There has been an increase in disinformation and targeted harassment directed at the couple on social media platforms, particularly towards the duchess.

"Some put 'parody' in their profiles, although it wasn’t a parody account. Others would use racist coded language about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to avoid detection."

Technology expert Ming Johanson said social media feeds on “micro-expressions” where a small gesture or action captured in a photo or short video is used as proof of something grander, and described much of the Markle-related online content as “outrage porn.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex viewing the messages and floral tributes left by members of the public at Windsor Castle following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Source: AAP / Chris Jackson

“There is this sense that headlines are driven by outrage and our overactive amygdala [part of the brain responsible for emotions] are just running towards it because we love drama and the internet certainly perpetuates it,” she said.

Similarly, Curtin University Professor of Internet Studies Tama Leaver said there was a sense some people felt entitled to criticise the royals online.

“I think I think there is a real sense that especially the royal family, perhaps more so than any others, that it is their duty to be publicly available and that it almost means that people think that they should just have to take it," Professor Leaver said.

How Netflix series The Crown is also playing a role

Camilla has long experienced public judgement too, in relation to the breakdown of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Much of the TikTok content around Camilla compares her with Princess Diana and much of it centres on appearance.

Professor Leaver said a lot of this content was created by, or for, a younger audience whose knowledge of Camilla was likely gleaned from episodes of the Netflix series The Crown.

“The Crown has covered Princess Diana joining the royal family effectively in his last season, I think that makes the whole sense of Camilla, as sort of the ‘intruder’ much more in people's minds than perhaps it would have been otherwise,” he said.

Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Princess of Wales appearing in the fifth season of Netflix series The Crown. Source: Supplied / Netflix

Professor Leaver said much of the time, people were creating this type of content because they know it would get reactions, which can sometimes result in a financial payoff, but most often is just about achieving responses.

“If you see one of your photoshopped memes gets mentioned on the nightly news in the UK, then you sort of go: 'right, I’m a sort of 'master amplifier,'” he said.

Professor Leaver said social media algorithms were created to amplify what people were talking about.

"TikTok will amplify whatever it thinks people are going to respond to and watch,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that means that online hate is radically amplified, unless there's a filter to explicitly stop it and it will be very hard to filter Camilla memes, or Meghan Markle memes or something like that, it's very difficult to filter all of that stuff manually and most filtering is done by algorithms.

“So it's not a huge shock that that's the sort of content that rises to the surface.”