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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   23911 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of the Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

“For the first few weeks, the only safe thing to say was praise,” he said. “When you mandate reverence on a medium built for irony [the internet], you don’t freeze the image, you load the spring. A lot of the mockery was that pressure releasing.” Previously, it used to take years for tragedies to become fodder for cynical internet humor (9/11 being one example). With the power of generative artificial intelligence and image-doctoring, however, Kirk was meme-ified in a matter of weeks.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.

As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.

Given that I have spent the last hour or so reading the trial coverage and have also been quite public about how Charlie Kirk's murder, or more accurately some of the reactions I observed on this forum motivated me to spin up this account after over a year of mostly lurking, I suppose I should weigh in.

I didn't know Charlie, but I know people who did, and by all accounts he was a stand up guy if a bit of a dweeb. I suppose being seen as a dweeb is just the price of being earnest in this day and age. I regret to say that i had largely written him off as just another talking head and TPUSA as just another PAC didn't really become aware of how popular he was until after his death

As for the idea that "His legacy is cringe". What does "cringe" even mean in this context? That he's a meme? As @OliveTapenade observes, Charlie spent the better portion of a decade being a meme before he was killed. When people say that "his legacy is cringe" are they saying that they find his legacy overly servile? (Somehow I think that he may have found that amusing) Or are they saying that they find his legacy disgusting, something to be recoiled from, denigrated, and disposed of. If so, I don't care. Thier boos mean nothing to me, because I have seen what makes them cheer.

What does "cringe" even mean in this context?

That "ew kill it kill it kill it" feeling some people get when they see a bug in the bathroom.

So the third option.

With the caveat that it's more "why would we boo you when we can 'Pop. Goes. The Kirkoid!'"

(One doesn't usually "boo" vermin.)

But I quibble.

(I do wish downvoters would remember that quote marks are for quoting other people... I heard that one quite recently too.)

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