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Notes -
You weren't Kirk's target audience.
A poll of 1030 college students found 94% of college students were aware of Charlie Kirk and that 30% of them engaged with his content at least a few times per month. The guy was popular enough to get a parody of him made in South Park. Why would there be so many people that was absolutely gleeful at his assassination, if he was some nobody?
With the singer comparison, I think it would be relatively easy to point to another artist who is currently more popular with young people. Which politician/activist other than Donald Trump is more popular amongst right leaning young people? Maybe Asmongold, but he's not really a politician or even an activist, more of a streamer/commentator who occasionally says things left leaning people don't like.
I think this is indicative of the gap between young people on the right and the older generation. Kirk may not have been a thought leader creating new ideas for republicans to rally around, but he was certainly very effective at getting their message out to the younger people. Who are the young people listening to now? Kirk's death is clearly a big loss for the Republicans.
Kirk having niche popularity with a subset of the population, but not mainstream notoriety of the type I would be aware of, still creates the cognitive dissonance and room for a punchline I'm talking about, among the subset of the population that wasn't really familiar with him.
If Jalyx Hunt were suddenly in every Gatorade advertisement on TV, and "who the hell is Jalyx Hunt?" became a punchline online, that every serious Eagles fan knows who he is (a beloved local event planner for the city) or that he's actually a pretty underrated edge rusher doesn't alter the situation for people who have no idea who he is beforehand.
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