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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Tyler Robinson, Kirk shooter, has been caught after a family friend turned him in

The markings on the bullets described by authorities indicate that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was steeped in online culture and included references to the Antifa , or the anti-fascist, movement. A fired shell casing was inscribed with “notices bulges OwO what’s this?” - a reference to a “copypasta” - a piece of text that is repeated over and over again, often to troll people online.

Authorities say one unfired casing had the words “Hey fascist, catch!” and three down arrows - a common symbol used to represent the anti-fascist movement. A second casing had the lyrics to a song “Bella Ciao” inscribed on it. The song honours WWII-era partisans of the Italian resistance who fought Nazi Germany.

The third unfired casing was inscribed with the words “If you read this, you are gay lmao” - again an apparent reference to online trolling humour.

Parents, keep your kids away from Discord. Will be interesting to see if this guy is a true believer or just ragebaiting.

"OwO notices bulge what's this" is a gay 4chan joke, nothing to do with trans, it's more femboy-coded if anything but first of all anonymous imageboard coded. I'll spare the inane details because the truly funny thing here is that 4chan "investigation" pinning this on some random weird transgender went viral, and that was fueled in large part by initial reports of "trans" messages on casings. This can be spun into "radical far right killer 4chan tried to pin the blame on trans", and to an extent it will be. This is such a disaster.

This can be spun into "radical far right killer 4chan tried to pin the blame on trans", and to an extent it will be. This is such a disaster.

Visceral video clip of a father of 2 getting shot in the throat vs "something something 4chan", I'm not seeing it, and if you are, you must be smoking something. I'm taking bets.

What? How is that a "vs"? That was a national manhunt, the EU Parliament almost had a minute of silence for said father of 2. If the killer can be traced to 4chan, and with OwO shit he almost certainly will be, the blood in the visceral video is also on their hands. I am not proposing some far-fetched guilt by association here, this is imageboard slang, and people were getting ready to obliterate trans rights when it was suggested that casings have some "trans" stuff, why do you think another guilty group would suffer less ire?

Because imageboard slang is incomprehensible to normies, and they're not going to follow you along as you try to explain it to them, while they will immediately understand "leftist shot right-winger". Trying to redirect the ire at gamers is going to come off as utter desperation. Like I said, I'm taking bets.

Reading what you said, I agreed to the point that I would put down a (virtual) bet, but thinking some more, I've seen some crazy, crazy deflections and downplayings from people I thought were normies. I think certain leftists are extremely uncomfortable with the facts that are being put forward here, and they refuse to accept the framing of right wingers at all. In these circumstances, I could easily see many of them try to redirect in the fashion he means, similar in the ways that his image is tarnished - on this very site! - with out-of-context quotes in a mad attempt to make this seem more like a natural outcome of the line of work he was in, rather than the pure evil murder it was. Will anyone buy it? I'd argue probably a lot of people. The left was willing to swallow anything to ignore all the utterly insane activists calling for the police to be defunded during 2020.

The only way I can picture a 'next shoe dropping' big congealing shift happening among normie liberal masses is more based on who comes out with a strong take, more so than necessarily what the take is. It seems like it takes someone like Chappelle or Jon Stewart to successfully rein people in and to feel a bit ashamed for their previous zeal, or to give the go-ahead that their righteous feelings are directionally correct. I can't think of many others, but these figures are a step above the basic Colbert/Kimmel cultural level (who can come up with great rhetoric for any position but lack authenticity).

I could be wrong about this, but my recollection of the post-George Floyd time period was that it was pretty easy to be hesitant about Floyd as a victim for normies, for the first week. But then Chappelle went viral with his '8 minutes and 46 seconds' angle, and the gas pedal was just locked to the floor after that. And obviously on the flip side, the 'moderating gatekeeper' role is well established.

If nothing like that happens, then everyone is just kind of shooting from the hip, and blame/justifications are going to stay all over the place.