this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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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!?

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[–] shaggyb@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I'd only heard of him in the sense of him being one of a flock of fascist wastes of oxygen who grifted around the country spewing hate and violence and making people's lives worse and more dangerous. He was a name on a list of scum who we'd be better off with them never having been born.

All I've learned about him since is that I was fucking right. Having him not exist anymore is a net gain in the long term but he's still pissing me off for now by the fact that I'm wasting my fucking time and my fucking attention and my fucking blood pressure on his fucking bullshit even more than I was.

He can fucking rot with Rush Limbaugh and Joseph Goebbels and the rest of their fucking detestable cabal of fucking filth. If I never hear his fucking name again it'll be too fucking soon and the universe still owes me my fucking time back from every moment I've wasted having to fucking be exposed to this shit.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 11 hours ago

I had no idea, but I watched one of the early South Market episodes this season. And Cartman was pretending to be him.

As soon as I watched some of the footage of the deed, I knew exactly who he was based on the South Park. But prior to that, no, absolutely not.

[–] stemy@lemmy.ml 2 points 12 hours ago

Never heard about the guy before his death, but to my credit, i live in Europe. Paradoxically, his death looks like a benediction for the reps, they have now a new pretext to cancel or condemn the dems, they just have to look a bit too happy about his assassination.

[–] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

I was aware of his existence. Saw him say some racist shit once. Wrote him off as a chud mouthpiece. Maybe a Podcaster or something.

[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

I knew barely, just some of stuff he said. He was a nazi cunt. And member of the paedophile cult (christian).

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

He’s a master debater obviously

[–] Geodad@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

He’s a master debater obviously

Was. 🀣

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You probably saw images of Kirk and assumed they were bad photoshops of Shapiro. They basically were two cheeks of the same ass spewing hateful shit for far right to gobble up.

Kirk was often mocked for having a round head and relatively small face, where Shapiro was generally mocked for his numerous bad takes and awful admissions. Both of them had almost identical debate styles of just doubling down on false narratives and denying anything contrary to their agenda even in when presented with proof.

[–] obsoleteacct@lemmy.zip 1 points 40 minutes ago

For years I had no idea that Steven Crowder and Dave Rubin were different people. I found out when one of them got divorced from a woman and I was so confused cause I was sure that guy was gay.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 14 hours ago

Heard of the name but just like ben shapiro, don't know or care about them. The memes about kirk were funny but now getting bored of it. There are worse things going on right now than some streamer getting shot.

[–] fin@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago

Who gives a shit about him anyways

[–] SuperDuperKitten@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Only heard of him when I subscribed to r/ToiletPaperUSA which was a parody to Turning Point USA and learnt tiny bit of what he said but I never gone out my way to research about him as I know Far-Right figures (even the online one) just pissed me off.

I only learnt lot more about him when he died when Liberals on Bluesky pull the "we should debate" and sided with Right-wingers who said it's "The Left" is responsible. Mind you, that's even before we found out both the killer and their political stance which turns out, he's the Groyper (some 4Chan far-right bullshit). Think he killed Charlie as they believe he wasn't Right-wing enough and had for years spread an smear campaign I believe against him.

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 3 points 15 hours ago

which turns out, he’s the Groyper

do we actually know that yet? everything i've seen so far still has it up in the air

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

I never had, but after being told I figured out that he was that meme face.

[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I probably heard of him and saw pictures of him but all the alt right folks look alike and say the same things, so he particularly never registered for me. Whoever he was.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

I'm not even American and I knew who he was. For years I've been seeing memes about his face to head ratio and his gummy teeth.

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Only know him from the Jubilee videos where that have guests on and sit in a circle of 20 people with a different view point than the one in the middle.

He came off as the shamelessly smarmy, creepy, dishonest, and that first impression never got any better any of the few times his videos came up in my feed.

Whomever shot him has made the world a better place. Fuck Charlie Kirk and everyone like him

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the long run, yes. But right now they're grasping at straws to punish anyone for free speech.

Fuck Charlie, fuck the orange menace, fuck this administration. All of them can die in a horrible fire. Come get me.

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think they are grasping at all, they are opportunists and will use any possible exploitation that that can see or invent.

**

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, that's better. I phrased it wrong.

[–] lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I heard of him, but never thought he was this damn important. And this is why the censorship campaign is so frustrating to me. For anyone who hasn't heard of him, he was not "doing politics the right way".

Charlie Kirk was a bigot.

Charlie Kirk was a bigot. Charlie Kirk was a bigot. Charlie Kirk was a bigot.

All the firings and censorship and hand-wringing about "lowering the temperature" do not change this simple fact.

Charlie Kirk was a bigot.

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Wow I’ll bite - what makes you label him a bigot?

[–] julietOscarEcho@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)
[–] locuester@lemmy.zip -1 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, that’s hate and intolerance. I disagreed with Charlie sometimes, but never saw hate or intolerance.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

He wasn't that important, he's being used to create more terror on avg people who didn't give a shit about him. Fuck Charlie, he got what he literally asked for.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Anyone who thinks Charlie Kirk was just some nice Christian who loved the First Amendment needs to get MUCH better sources of information than they currently have.

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip -2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I’ve watched his videos for years. What other sources should I review to discover why this man is so hated? His videos all portray him quite nicely.

[–] DreasNil@feddit.nu 6 points 1 day ago

Never heard of him before. Now I've learned that he seemed like a really horrible person...

[–] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Be thankful that you're not online enough to know him. Enjoy the beautiful outside!

I'm online 247 and was aware of him but never watched 1 minute of his propagonda. Similarly, never watched or clicked on any MrBeast or Logan Paul videos or podcast in my entire life.

[–] sleeplessone@lemmy.ml 73 points 2 days ago

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.

[–] thewebroach@lemmy.world 0 points 17 hours ago

Nope. I did know some morons out there thought mass or school shootings weren't a big deal and complained civil rights encroached on their feelings of white supremacy. Never knew his name specifically because it feels like there's a whole cluster of those idiots who no one ever taught the Golden Rule to. Be kind and treat all people respectfully.

I felt bad about him dying because having idiotic ideals doesn't mean he didn't deserve life, but I also kind of chalked the event up to darwinism. If someone constantly puts themselves in front of the masses promoting hate and violence, its only a matter of time before hatred and violence finds them. In that aspect, he probably wasn't fully innocent of the event himself as so many have made him out to be. I never heard of Hitler himself ever personally killing anyone, but his rhetoric and influence of others was the cause of plenty of deaths. Murder is always wrong.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I had seen his face on Rick & Morty before. That's it I had no idea the hate he peddled or anything

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[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Being a non-American, zero clue. Seems he was more useful to the regime dead rather than alive.

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[–] FalseTautology@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago

I had no idea. Turns out if heard of him a couple times but he was not relevant enough to remember. He was just another bootlicking sycophant and quite frankly I laughed out loud when I heard a conservative advocate for 2nd amendment rights had been shot. After reading through his history of opinions I just wish I'd had the opportunity to laugh harder. I'm not really political as an accelerationist, but it is pretty fucking funny, and the pearl clutching from all the big talking conservatives is simply priceless.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You're lucky. I normally would disagree with ignorance being bliss, but as someone who's seen his stuff and probably gotten angry enough to kill my own brain cells, be glad.

[–] JandroDelSol@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

i knew he existed but i didn't know he was actually relevant. i thought he was just, like, an annoying guy

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

I knew who he was, but just grouped him together with all the other manosphere shitspinners.

[–] DaniNatrix@leminal.space 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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!).

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I was just perma'd from reddit for commenting on him "getting slimed." It was a fucking JOKE.

Look, if people are celebrating your death, no amount of revisionism is going to change a god damn thing -- you're a terrible human being. All this censorship and chilling effects? Not going to make people shut up forever. You're going to embolden them.

[–] Generica@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

For a split second the first time I heard about him I thought Kirk Cameron had been assassinated

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] j4k3@piefed.world 41 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net 33 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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!

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I knew him because of the memes that distorted his face to look like β€œButthead” from the cartoon and the β€œchange my mind” meme. I didn’t know how ingrained his shitty answer-as-accusation or racist dogwhistle was in right wing circles.

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[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

I learned about him from South Park, just trying to make his nut

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

I'd never heard of him. Or Ben Shapiro. Online shit talkers are boring on average.

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