Dude, I had never even HEARD of this guy’s name prior to his death. What is going on here!? Why are people freaking out. Am I that out of touch?
Even my liberal wife was aware of who this guy was. Was anyone else like me?
I know who Ben Shapiro is. But Charlie Kirk!? This entire time both the left and the right either hates or adored this guy? What are you all surfing on your cell phones!?
I had never heard of him either.
I spent half a day wondering why anyone would want to kill the Black Mirror guy. And wtf was he doing in Utah?
Removed by mod
Before the assassination, I just knew him as the tiny face chud with Turning Point USA who spewed insipid talking points to “own” the left.
If you’ve seen him before, it was probably in a meme like this.
I barely knew him as the guy that said fuck the kids and let them die when school shootings happened. Picked that up randomly in the periphery. I think he’s from the Fox News idiocy, echo chamber space.
Funny enough I learned recently he was banned from fox News briefly for insulting one of the on air people
I would wager 90% of Americans had never heard of Charlie Kirk before his death. It’s just this fucking regime is SO FUCKING ONLINE!
Just called it the other day, it’s a reality TV show. That’s why they acquire all the media outlets, the viewer rates are insane.
Being a non-American, zero clue. Seems he was more useful to the regime dead rather than alive.
Ditto. I only know about Charlie Kirk from the memes, and these memes don’t paint him positively so I got the idea that he’s a right wing nutjob, which is not wrong seeing as what he spouted when he was alive.
He’s famous for creating a conservative organization while in college, called Turning Point USA. The org puts out a lot of smug memes to appeal to young conservative folks, so naturally people made fun of them and counter-memed.
He’s said a lot of very vile things, like “Black women don’t have the same kind of brain processing power” (paraphrased) when talking about how bad DEI is.
My BFF hadn’t heard of him either, but they curate their feeds to be mostly uplifting fluff, and they aren’t terminally online like I am lol. I was kind of surprised that he was the influencer that got shot though, I might have expected someone like Loomer or Fuentes
I would say Kirk’s more prominent than Loomer. His TPUSA is also very successful and Trump’s biggest youth wing
Right, I kind of expected that prominence to encourage carrying enough security to protect him. I think he skewed that a bit and thought he was untouchable because of his prominence.
The other two are just as insane, but think they have Trump’s ear despite not commanding anything near Kirk’s audience
Kirk definitely has Trump’s ear. He just doesn’t seem to use it which might be why I think he’s a lot less insane than Loomer. He’s also definitely way less insane than Fuentes who tried to brand Kirk a Fascist in the former’s “Groyper” movement to drive everything further right.
Never heard of the dude either. Didn’t care, still don’t.
I didn’t. Still trying to figure out why I should care.
You shouldn’t.
I literally had no idea who he was until the campus videos of the shooting hit Lemmy. I’m in the US but don’t regularly follow US media sources because gestures vaguely. Lemmy is also my only social media at this point, everything else has been deleted, so when something pops up here, I go digging through the Guardian or El Pais to get an idea of what’s going on.
I will say, I had the absolute delight of taking all the wind out of my deeply religious and conservative coworkers sails by innocently asking, “who’s Charlie Kirk?”, when they were discussing a moment of silence idea and a poem one of them wrote about him. Of course I knew who he was at that point, but I enjoy being an agent of chaos in a small southern town lol (send help!).
a poem one of them wrote about him
what the actual fuck is wrong with peopleHoly shit, I love you wind taking abilities. I too had no idea who he was but thankfully don’t have to deal with confronting propogandized family members.
Getting out of reddit and US centric socials/media does remove a lot of trash you don’t need to know from the feed. You can’t avoid some, when they get through, and filters don’t catch them, but it’s significantly better.
Lemmy and Mastodon FTW.
Unfortunately I knew. I don’t know how you didn’t. I’m jealous.
I also didn’t know. I hadn’t even heard Ben Shapiro’s voice until like a year or two ago. I don’t get how people who aren’t interested in that Far Right Wing stuff end up being exposed to that nonsense.
The algorithms often serve that stuff up to people who aren’t far right if they engage with it. And that includes comments disputing the comments made in the videos or arguing.
The algorithm doesn’t care about your beliefs. It just cares about what gets you emotionally involved enough to engage.
Ah, I guess the idea is usually not to engage.
My YouTube feed is curated pretty well. I don’t really get anything that isn’t related to gaming or computing.
Less youtube, more stories and reels on Instagram and Facebook. I should really delete all my meta products…
And its hard not to engage when someone says ridiculous things like child deaths are acceptable cost to keep 2nd amendment
And its hard not to engage when someone says ridiculous things like child deaths are acceptable cost to keep 2nd amendment
Well, someone definitely “engaged” with that rhetoric! Lol
I just don’t end up watching that stuff. Like, some random guy spewing nonsense into a microphone…I don’t know why I’d even tap on that video.
Cat video, bird video, dog video, food video, travel destination video, retro game video, yes…
Guy with a microphone in a mock studio? That one won’t even start playing.
They know that, that’s why they have the reels auto play hah Its Definitely a problem i can solve
On Instagram, they just sometimes play in the “reel gallery”, but they never draw my attention. Do they play with sound? I have my sound off by default, only turning it on if I want to hear what I’m looking at.
Or are people just swiping through full-screen reels? Lol
I like to browse the menu before ordering. Not walk through the buffet, item-by-item in order, forcing myself to start eating each item before I know what it is.
Gotta know your enemy
Whenever I hear about Ben Shapiro, I always think about Robbie Shapiro. I heard about them through tiktok, in 2020 I listened to some conspiracy theory bullshit and later in 2023 and later listened more left leaning media on tiktok and they still do reactions kinda debates with those people on the right.
Dude where were you seeing this guy?? I’m no stranger to right Wing Provacatures. I know who Matt Walsh is! There no way Kirk was more popular than him
He used to be one of those guys that breadtube dunked on a lot, but he wasn’t as big as Shapiro or Crowder. People used to edit his face small, and make fun of him. He had a few million youtuber subscribers, but a few million less than the other big names on conservative youtube. For context, the largest communist channel on youtube is Second Thought with 1.8 million subscribers, he had more than double that.
Thank you for telling me about Second Thought!
Happy to be of help!
Second Thought even did at least one AMA on Lemmy, through Hexbear. JT’s read words I’ve written, and he’s written words in reply!
I’d heard his name but had no idea who he was.
I looked him up and was like “I gotta join in the pile-on”
Really, I’m here for the spectacle and it’s too rich that this dude spouting gun nut nonsense took a shot to his neck. I don’t care if he lived or died, I don’t celebrate gun violence, I wish I lived in a different kind of society. But I don’t, so I’m gonna laugh
And I’m laughing even harder when conservatives clutch their pearls and demand that feel bad. Choke on my indifference, you fucking phony chuds
