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I think a lot of these posts are missing the horror that I am feeling.
I personally listened to this guy debating all kinds of people in the background of other things I was doing. I was impressed by how there were very few below-the-belt attacks on the interlocutors, and multiple bouts of praise from Charlie Kirk for the debaters being brave enough to step up and be material for content. I wished I was as skilled as he at setting up such angles of argument so quickly.
When I heard he was shot, it was like I was punched. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe he's dead. It got even more unbelievable with the second video showing blood flowing out of him like a fountain. I wept upon seeing this. This murder is the closest thing to pure evil that I've seen in my life, ala No Country for Old Men. It makes absolutely no sense, he was making arguments that I genuinely agreed with, he was so young, he had kids, he was a good Christian, you've almost certainly heard all this before. He was upholding the values of this country by engaging in such public discourse. Democracy does not die in darkness, it dies in broad daylight in front of thousands of people, in front of its family, viewed by millions online, everyone powerless to do anything as it bleeds out.
None of what happened afterwards was what I expected at all. Immediately, celebrations, dark ironic pitiless humor, and hideous one-liners with no thought put into them started everywhere. It was official, the Hermann Cain Award logic about when it's acceptable to dance on the graves of your enemies extends about as far as certain leftists want it to. If you have certain values, and you express them, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who would love to see you get decorated with your own blood, watch you exsanguinate, a chunk of mineral tearing through your vital structures, turning you into a pile of meat instead of a man. Your entire life will be characterized by years-old quotes picked out of a mountain of words you've spoken over the course of your short life.
Today, after gathering enough stock of public reactions, I've come to an even more disturbing conclusion: there are even more people out there who will run cover even for this awful behavior. Here's a small collection of everything I've witnessed: They're all bots. There aren't that many of them. They're only online. It's because of Trump's escalation of rhetoric. It's because this was where this would lead for the kind of life he lived. He was a white supremacist. He wanted gays to be stoned to death. He accepted gun deaths and became one, such a natural consequence. The shooter wasn't one of us. He was a groyper. We can talk about cooling the rhetoric once the 2026 elections happen. Until those go well, it's perfectly understandable why people talk this way. Let's talk about something else, let's talk about January 6th again. Let's talk about Epstein. Let's talk about the Minnesota lawmakers. Anything but this topic. Even many of the moderate lefty politicians couldn't muster up much other than "political violence is bad", saving face in an easy way. Almost none of them did the difficult thing that Gavin Newsom or Cenk Uygur did and confronted the real issue at no small cost to their own image. Some of them even used it to forward their own agendas. AOC put something out in favor of gun control. That's right: we shoot you, and then we use your death to try to convince you to lay down your issues and let us win. Ilhan Omar doesn't believe that anyone genuinely liked the man or is being genuine. After seeing all the downplaying, I have no doubts that she will lose barely any support, because it's tacitly approved.
So many of my own friends, too. I've tried to reach across the aisle for years. I've even discounted some of my true beliefs to coax out some admission that I really wanted to see. I've always tried to model fairness in my political arguments. It got me nothing. All that goodwill, swallowed up, like water falling on the dusty ground.
I thought such a clear case of senseless murder would make people snap out of the usual sanewashing, but no, and in fact, there's so much on this website, too, even among people who are much better than the median social media poster at understanding arguments and taking context into account. I am incredibly sad that there's actually nothing that could happen that could get people to agree with each other without clearing their throat before doing it. The entire internet is a /r/watchpeopledie thread. There's video, and then there's the awful comments under the video. There's no good ending to this. It's painful. This discourse is a grueling journey to the ugliest end of the country imaginable. This discourse is the cumulative societal hangover from more than ten years of a cancerous outgrowth of the most toxic kind of politics, and just like a regular hangover, the world doesn't stop for you. You have to go back into work in the morning and do it all over again. It's unbearable. I was not willing to believe a large portion of the other side was evil up until now. I hope someone cooler-headed than me can make some headway on this issue somehow, because I will go insane if I think about this any more.
While I loath Sam Hyde he was right about at least to a large extent that the other side wants you dead, your kids raped, and they think it’s funny. This has all been borne out over and over again.
The website CharliesMurderers has amassed twenty THOUSAND (and counting, Edit: now 40k) reports of people celebrating CKs death all under their real names. It doesn’t count any of the anon accounts.
"Dark Humor" guys when the joke isn't about women or niggers.
I don't think I've seen an actual joke, just clapter stuff. I mean, there's gotta be something there, with the small face meme, right? I did have a good laugh at the thought that I'm probably going to have to explain horny anime memes to my parents. Some comedian is going to get a fantastic five out of the situation. It's just not going to be any of the Daily SHow wannabes.
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I’ve seen that meme too. Let’s see your Charlie Kirk joke, I bet it’s real funny
Of course, Charlie was also infamous for his nigger jokes
when you kill fascists
lmao bottom text
It’s about 9000 words too short to be a lefty meme but thanks for trying
You see, this was meant to demonstrate that an edgy Charlie Kirk joke doesn't owe it to you to be funny, just like nigger jokes are often unfunny and serve as an ingroup signal rather than an expression of wit... will that be enough words?
So what you’re saying is they aren’t actually jokes? Okay cool, that’s what we all thought, that leftist think anyone who uses slurs should have their brains blown out in front of their family
Btw what are Charlie Kirk’s best nigger jokes in your opinion?
Never watched any of his content so I don't know.
In case you're trying to lead me into some sort of a gotcha about approving of his death or whatever, I gotta say in advance I do not live in a country that venerates free speech, the lack of free speech is currently not on the side on my ingroup and neither were Kirk's ideas, aside from perhaps being pro-Israel. If he was performing his dunk debates in my country I would see his death as one small step in getting even with the state.
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Does this mean we have open season for dark humor, and you will defend the type of humor you don't like, or is this a lame gotcha attempt?
I'm not really sure there exists a type of humor I don't think is funny because of the subject matter, though there exist many jokes I don't think are funny because of the execution and I suppose you could probably draw a through line that would separate some subject matter out (lazy ypipo jokes that are really about yuppies annoy me, I'm a little old for jokes where the punchline is just foul language). As a general rule I'm a free speech absolutist, and that includes attempts at humor by nature. There's probably a context here, if my priest made a Charlie Kirk assassination joke on the pulpit tomorrow morning I'd be offended.
I genuinely think everything is open for humor, if it makes people laugh it's funny. Please, make this thread your best effort to tell a joke that offends me, I could use a laugh today.
Then the lord said to Moses, "triggered much, snowflake?"
But seriously, I agree. Some time has passed and tempers have cool down, and in the meantime make your jokes in private, with people who you know aren't going to be bothered.
An old Jewish Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven. He gets the chance to speak to God when he gets there. God tells the old Jew, you have a moment to speak to me directly is there anything you want to ask me or have me explain to you? The old Jew says actually I want to take this time to tell you a joke, I'm going to tell you my favorite Holocaust joke. He tells God the joke. God says, man, that's not funny. The old Jew says eh I guess you had to be there.
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