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Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?
If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.
The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.
And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.
Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.
I grew up in Arizona. It upset a lot of people and was really, really gruesome. Edgy hasan orbiters were outright gleeful about it right after. I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.
It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass, but a lot of the ‘martyrdom’ was coming from ‘why exactly was a somewhat edgy college debater murdered?’ and ‘why are people snidely saying he deserved to be murdered?’
Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes. This is part of why Kirk cringe snowballed, because getting upset at the youth's memes just make them meme harder.
Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.
None of the jokes or memes I’ve seen have been from perspective of ‘Charlie deserved it’, just usual bizarre post ironic references, so I don’t really get what you’re saying. The whole problem people had was with the initial jubilant reaction towards the actual act of violence and people earnestly saying he deserved it.
The only stuff I’ve ever seen people get mad about is mean spirited stuff where people do a finger gun to their neck and intimate that some person deserves what happened to him.
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An interesting position.
Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat.
Damn, check that out, a whole additional post and extensive comment thread where you very much seem to be attempting to frame this as a really serious, chronic problem that demands action! Can you point out any place in either of these posts or the subsequent threads where your critique of "old fart behavior" or "wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe" impinges on your analysis?
Let us speak plainly. I don't think you actually believe anything you write here. You are a committed Blue Tribe partisan, and in each post you say whatever you think will advance your short-term partisan interests in the immediate context, with zero concern for any sort of long-term principle or consistency. You will (and have!) argued in favor of free speech when you perceived free speech to be of benefit to you, and you will (and have!) argued for censorship when censorship is of benefit to you. If you have anything recognizable as actual principles, I do not believe you have ever shared them here; certainly I do not believe that I have seen them.
Now to be very clear, I do not think you are breaking the rules by behaving this way, and as far as I am concerned you are perfectly free to continue as long as it pleases you. This place is for arguments, and you certainly bring arguments. To the extent that your pattern of argumentation is viewed as obnoxious by others, I encourage them to simply remember the things you have said, and repeat them back to you, and those who agree with you, when the moment becomes opportune. As an example, I think it is pretty likely that Blue Tribe is going to, at some point in the next few years, start experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of actual, motivated, grassroots political murder. And when that happens, and when Blues here discuss how prominent members of their tribe being publicly murdered worries them, I am going to quote them this line right here:
...along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?
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No, not all sorts. What you're describing hasn't been believable for over a decade.
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This maybe one of the most egregious examples of outgroup homogeneity bias I've seen in a while.
Yes, Candace Owens joined TPUSA claiming to have renounced her woke ways in 2017, but then she attempted a hostile take-over of the organization in 2024, got kicked out as a result, and seems to have been nursing a personal vendetta against Kirk's wife Erika ever since.
Meanwhile, Carlson and Hanania were only ever "allies" of Kirk in the sense that they were all ostensibly Republicans, A a party that both have been working to distance themselves from for some time now.
Your standards seem ridiculously high if "former employee of 7 years with such a clear crush that people gossip about it" and "guy who literally spoke at Kirk's own funeral alongside the president" somehow don't count.
At that point who does?
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If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him. Right-wing George Floyd 'I can't breathe' memes are scrubbed off the internet, while Kirkist mockery stays online because of leftist bloodthirstiness.
Tu quoque?
Even George Droyd has been banned off most major platforms, including X. It's less about bloodthirstiness and more about who controls the censorship apparatus. Some left-wing employee at YouTube or Meta is the one deciding which accounts get pulled for "harmful content" and which are allowed to continue existing as permitted political expression.
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"Discredit" is the wrong word entirely. Kirk has not been discredited by being turned into a meme, people still widely think it was wrong to kill him (as you can see by the fact his alleged killer is on trial and likely to be sentenced).
BLM was a largely serious reaction by people who mostly took themselves seriously. The Kirk aftermath was silly and hyperbolic by people who didn't even believe in their own words. People like LOTT or Steve Bannon saying "this is war" are not serious. They did not and have not picked up arms or done serious protests (of what exactly anyway? Robinson was caught). They claim war, and yet do nothing. They do not mean what they say.
This goes up to the highest levels even. When we have JD Vance searching for conspiracies to believe in, and guests at Kirk's own funeral making it into a joke, how is anyone else supposed to treat it seriously?
Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it. (The other says its a bad thing, but also deplores what he said, thus negating the virtue of the first.) Virtuous centrists are a rounding error.
Maybe you are sincere. But there are certainly players that are not, and I am tired of listening to the snide and back-biting commentary of the partisans of the other side. You take it seriously because a man is dead because he was killed for speech, a right that he had every freedom to exercise. Nothing can diminish that, although you've certainly tried.
Comments celebrating his death were actually quite uncommon. They were so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that was being passed around had to cast a web so wide for a decently sized list that it includes people saying things like I hope there isn't more violence in response, dark humor jokes, and comments literally saying it was awful he got shot. That's how far the digging had to go, it includes people who literally said it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk and think it's hypocritical to care about him but not dead children. Outside of the generic internet edgelords who say edgy things about everything, there wasn't really much actual pro violence talk, and we can't take the edgy shitposters seriously given that they're edgy shitposters.
Of course if you choose to cast a ridiculously wide net of nonsense, you get a lot of fish. But most of them were not what was actually looked for. If you actually look at what political leaders were saying, anti violence was the general rhetoric from the left.
Come on. You're doing the thing that every edgy leftist is doing, and pretending that their not-so-subtle mockery wasn't concealing their glee at getting him. It does not convince, no more than 'in minecraft' is a defense against conspiracy. No comedian ever went on television and said that George Floyd was probably killed by a commie, and certainly no con was going around saying he deserved to die because he punched a pregnant woman (which is something he actually did.)
And yet, Kirk's assassination is deemed his own fault because of some amorphous harm to leftist causes, or something.
I'm not stupid. I can see the winks and the smiles. Your argument is unconvincing and insults the intelligence of anyone credulous enough to extend you the benefit of the doubt. The people who called him a Nazi have blood on their hands. People who use that word to rile up extremists to kill their political opposition have blood on their hands. If this isn't stoastic terrorism, it is at the very least 'turbulent priest' levels of wishcasting.
It is not too far to suggest that you have some infinitesimal part of his blood on your hands.
"If I substitute what you're saying with this imaginary thing you didn't say, it's just like you said the imaginary thing"
Yeah I guess so.
Damn, not only are words dangerous they can kill too?
Not a thing. It's never been a thing. You can tell because it's a modern invention for something that if it was real, should have been an established concept already. It's what gets said when people can't claim incitement (a legal term with actual standards) but still wanna whine about name calling or insults.
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What's the last update you heard in the news about Goode or Pretti? Or is the slop diagnosis something that's only goes on direction, or only means something one direction?
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