Meghan Markle Died for Our Sins

Fighting the "good" fight on Twitter

More next week about how five women in the SC Senate saved us from a total abortion ban. Today let us revel in the prose of my dear colleague Kendra Hamilton. She has done it all: journalism, creative writing, academic scholarship on Gullah culture and African American literature, and I’m just so delighted to share her work with you here (be sure to grab a copy of her poetry collection The Goddess of Gumbo).

Meghan Markle Died for Our Sins

By Kendra Hamilton

In retrospect, I should have known I had a problem when I created a burner Twitter account for the sole purpose of battling Meghan Markle trolls online.

I’m not sure what it was about her. I’d never followed Suits, never even heard of this American actress who caught the eye of the prince. I wasn’t even a “royal watcher.” While co-workers were getting the “Diana bob” in ’83 and planning elaborate champagne breakfast parties for the big to-do, I just rolled my eyes and went to work. The death of Diana captured my attention—as it did the world’s. But that was the end of the fascination as far as I was concerned. Snippets of royal news flitted across my view from time to time, but frankly, the whole thing seemed a colossal bore.

Of course, when a biracial princess comes along and cracks the glass shoe ceiling, that kind of changes the equation. No effing way I was missing that royal wedding--or missing, once I tuned in, the fact that the happily-ever-after promised by the fairy tale seemed more like a question mark.

Was it the sniggers from then-Consort Camilla and Princess Kate (hello? clad in white?) that tipped me off? Those moments of open disrespect as they listened to the man I knew as The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church in the U.S., but whom British media personalities almost universally referred to as “the black preacher” came close to curdling my pleasure in what was a beautiful service.

Here was a man who represented not just the Church of England’s sister church in America but also the pinnacle of an instantly recognizable African American style of prophetic preaching. The scoffing and scornful smiles, among many other hints, signaled that our Little Sis might be sailing on an ocean of Givenchy silk and organza into royal in-law headwinds.

NYT video of the full sermon.

But the moment that sealed it for me, that completed the cycle from interested observer to sympathizer to guerrilla soldier in the Meghan resistance army, came in 2019: the aching vulnerability in the pregnant princess’s eyes during the infamous “not many people have asked if I’m OK” interview.

Something about her frozen helplessness amid the onslaught of verbal violence from trolls and media haters howling for blood took me straight back to 2016, and my own helplessness in the face of the screaming online hordes that had come for Hillary Clinton with chants of “lock her up.”

Relatively new to Twitter in those days—completely innocent of facts of online life such as programmed bots and paid trolls—I had lurked in the shadows fearful of drawing the attention of this digital lynch mob, confident—mostly—that right and truth must prevail.  Well we all know how that turned out. Three years later, Meghan’s haunted eyes and strained face forged in me a resolve: “Not again, Satan.”

So it didn’t happen in a day, or a week. But four years later I find myself fully transformed into a member in good standing of what one royal watcher, no friend of the Sussexes, called a “social media Praetorian Guard relentless in its defence (sic) of all things Harry and Megan”: the Sussex Squad.

For years now, I’ve been doing battle side by side with an army bearing “Brazen Hussy” and “Sussex Squad” tags against an enemy army of Brexit-addled “derangers”—some of whom may even be actual human beings—in defense of the biracial princess, her hot ginger lover, and their kids… And I’ve gradually been forced to admit that this makes me…

a woman with a problem.

How do you know you have a problem? Well, concealment is one sign. How many people in my large IRL acquaintance know about my Meghan fixation? Until the Netflix series forced me out of my closet, I could say with confidence “zero, zip, none.”

For real, y’all: my besties and I are woke anti-capitalist feminists, not averse to glad rags and a nice Lancôme lipstick special every now and again, but dedicated in most waking moments to dismantling the patriarchy. How could I confess to these scholars, activists, community servants the rapture I felt every time the duchess emerged from the fastness of Montecito perfectly coiffed and designer clad, projecting effortless glamour. How could I explain the protectiveness I felt toward this wealthy, privileged woman who is literally a princess in the face of media and online detractors. In the words of the viral meme, I couldn’t make that one make sense.

How do you know you have a problem? Well, compulsion is the second sign. Yes, in taking up the cudgels in Meghan Markle’s defense, I felt I was standing up for the mostly female victims of an unending succession of online hate campaigns: the straight line we can draw between Hillary Clinton, #Gamergate and #MeToo targets, celebrity wives like Amber Heard and Hailey Bieber, and the Megs: Meghan née Markle and Megan Thee Stallion.

At the height of my compulsion, I’d spend hours a day reporting and blocking single-purpose troll accounts. (Believe me, they are not hard to find.) Back when Twitter had a functioning online safety department, I’d get dozens of accounts suspended every week. I felt a sense of purpose in the work. A sense of purpose that was nonetheless impossible to communicate IRL. Again, I couldn’t make that one make sense to anyone not already inside the bubble.

How do you know you have a problem? Well, the third C of consequences is probably the clincher: the inability to stop, despite negative repercussions. “What negative consequences could there possibly be for such a silly, ultimately harmless hobby?” you may be asking. Well, I’ve already described one—the wedge it drove between me and loved ones, especially my husband, who would sit baffled as I sputtered in outrage over some new slight or misrepresentation in the toxic tabloid press.

A more serious consequence, though, was personal not interpersonal: the frittering away of my most precious resource, my time. I’d wake in the middle of the night and find myself unable to resist checking my Twitter feed; thus would commence the skirmishes with the Greenwich Mean Time haters and trolls. On weekends, under no pressure to rise and dress for work, I might spend an entire morning—sometimes even a whole day—in bed, on the phone, fangirling about Meghan with other “Squaddies,” scrolling misty-eyed through snaps of her fashion greatest hits, responding to battle cries to defend Meghan from the latest heinous attack.

Image credit ABC News.

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter came in the nature of a godsend for me. Once it became clear the platform had been handed over to Magats, Nazis, anti-Vaxxers, and Q-heads, I downloaded my data and deleted my account. Feeling oh-so-virtuous, too. Look at you, going cold turkey, I thought in smug self-congratulation.

But like every good addict, I had a secret source of supply: the aforementioned burner account.

While with my conscious mind, I dedicated those early post-Twitter days to regular sleep (with the help of a Calm app) and self-care through meditation, exercise, and timed writing in the morning instead of those wasted hours on the Twitter feed—the knowledge of the burner was like a secret bottle in an alcoholic’s junk drawer, held in reserve for that “break glass in case of emergency” moment.

I hit my first “good doobie” milestone at the end of March and awarded myself a mental 30-day chip on the success of the new regimen. Thirty straight days of meditation, exercise, and writing! How I rejoiced!

And how did I celebrate? By logging in—“just a few minutes won’t hurt”—to find Harry and Meghan Twitter consumed with the “will-they-or-won’t-they” do-si-do of the royal coronation. It didn’t happen all at once, but one day I looked up to the realization that I was spending fewer and fewer hours on the new regimen and more on the old … glued to the face of my iPhone scrolling Squaddie news feeds.

Yesterday, I opened my Notes app and realized it had been ten days since I’d done my daily timed writing. Ten whole days.

Now, sure, I had excuses—last few weeks of class, honors projects, advising, the whole end-of-year circus that concludes every spring semester. But I was forced to admit there hadn’t been a day in that ten-day period in which I had not logged in to the burner account to check on my girl Meghan. The famous words of Bill Wilson’s “First Step” floated toward me, menacing with foreboding: I was powerless over the fascination exerted by Meghan, and my life had become, if not unmanageable, then certainly not completely under my control.

My thoughts went back to an article in The Guardian I had read about a week ago: the cautionary tale of a man who discovered only after she committed suicide that his mother had had a secret life as a Twitter troll.

Things started to fall into place.

Now I was no Brenda Leyland, a woman who had relentlessly trolled and harassed a family whose daughter had been kidnapped during a vacation in Portugal and never found. In point of fact I had dedicated multiple hours of every day to battling people like Brenda. Indeed, I’d considered myself … a heroine, icky as that sounds, a bulwark standing between normal folks and crazies. But really, was my behavior that different from hers? A matter of degree not kind? Was it possible, I wondered, stomach fluttering at the thought, that I was the troll?

Maybe—maybe not. But something else was certain. Concealment? Compulsion? Indifference to consequences? … I was definitely an addict.*

But here was where I learned that my month of mindfulness had not been in vain. Rather than dropping immediately into a fetal crouch/shame spiral at my realizations, I instead fell back on muscles I had built during that intense period of daily meditation: I paused, sat very still, and felt my feelings.

And holy grits and gravy, y’all—I had a breakthrough!

First of all, the pausing. When you come from Southern peeps whose lives read like Faulkner fan fiction, the very notion of sitting with your feelings, without judgment, is revolutionary in and of itself. Folks from families like mine don’t do reflection—we do reaction, rejection, projection. Occasionally violence. Occasionally really bad violence.

But in reflection, painful as it was, I was gifted with the knowledge of who it was Meghan née Markle reminded me of. I saw mirrored in the face of 12-year-old Meghan the face of the girl whose place she was holding in my heart. I even figured out the real enemy I was battling every time I swung my sword in Princess Meghan’s defense. None of that is for sharing here—the knowledge is too new, too raw, too unassimilated.

Nor do I know where I go from here. I still have the burner after all. And Meghan is still there. Tantalizing glimpses of her surfaced only Monday--first in a video introduction to her pal Misan Harriman’s TedX talk, then later that evening on the Lakers’ Jumbotron.

I’m not going to lie. I watched the videos.

But I did not log into Twitter.

That time.

I remain a Sussex stan. I love the woke Cali royals, the causes they support, the stands they take on mental health and healing trauma in their podcasts and video projects. I also remain convinced that online troll activity, especially that mobilizing women against women, is a menace to civil society. There’s got to be a better way of combating this thing I hate, though, than getting sucked down the rabbit hole myself. I don’t know yet what that is.

So this morning, I did meditation, exercise, writing—specifically, this writing which I’m sharing with you on Hot Feminism.

And so far today, I’ve kept my social media finger on pause. I rejoice at having exercised a small measure of control—the addictive personality’s final C.

It’s all I can do.

One day at a time.

*My description of the particular form my online addiction took is in no way intended to minimize the harms suffered by individuals and families with more serious forms of addiction.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9819681/Dianas-ex-aide-PATRICK-JEPHSON-weighs-showdown-Harry-Meghan-Will

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/18/my-mother-troll-of-madeleine-mccann-parents