Where is Kate' carnival grinds to a halt

What a difference a video message makes.

- SARAH LAING

In speaking on her own behalf and emphasizing her active role in all this protecting her children, focusing on her healing, drawing a clear boundary with the public as she recovers the Princess of Wales made it obvious she is not the hapless victim so many soap opera subplots painted her as, Sarah Laing writes.

Before Friday’s update from the royals, the “Where is Kate?” carnival was in full swing. The latest attraction to hit the midway was dissecting that grainy video purported to be the “missing princess” at a farmers market, internet sleuths attempting to poke holes in its veracity with the same excitement you’d try to throw rings around milk bottles to win a giant knock-off Minion.

However, the mood has now shifted. In just a few deeply dignified minutes of screen time, Kate, the Princess of Wales, shut down the circus herself, emerging back into the public eye with news of her cancer diagnosis — and a renewed plea for privacy, if only for the sake of three very young children whose mother is facing a universally agreed upon Worst Nightmare.

Within minutes, the rides came to a grinding halt, the whirligig of conspiracy stopped spinning and — to mix metaphors here — the lights went on in the club and this whole dystopian disco of disinformation was revealed for what it was: Sticky, sordid and very, very silly.

Was it our collective finest hour as a species? No. But in our defence, we’re not the first humans to lose the plot like this — the line between Beatlemania and the Salem witch trials is a fine one; it’s always fun for us and a nightmare for them — and we live in an epoch where algorithms mine other people’s pain for our entertainment all the time.