On Friday morning, Tyler Robinson—the suspected killer of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk—was taken into custody after a two-day manhunt. (According to an affidavit obtained by People, he’s likely to face charges, including aggravated murder.) At a public briefing, FBI director Kash Patel and Utah governor Spencer Cox revealed that the shooter’s bullet casings were allegedly inscribed with bizarre messages: One read “Notices bulges OwO what’s this?” Unfired cartridges in the magazine allegedly read “Hey fascist! Catch!,”followed by five arrow symbols: one up, one right, and three down. Two others read “Oh Bella ciao Bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao” and “If you read this, you are gay lmao.” Photographs of the ammunition have not yet been made public, and it’s possible that there are minor discrepancies in punctuation—but none that would make these phrases appear any less nonsensical. That is, unless you have a passing familiarity with gamer and internet-forum culture.
The “OwO” casing, for instance, appears to be referencing a popular meme making fun of furry culture, a niche lifestyle in which people create alter egos styled after anthropomorphic animals. The combination of arrows found on another matches the combination of buttons players use to call in a bomb strike in the video game Helldivers 2, a Starship Troopers–style parody of a fascist interstellar empire. The Italian words are the lyrics to “Bella Ciao,” an antifascist Italian folk song that was prominently featured in the Netflix series Money Heist. And that last phrase appears to be little more than a joke meant to antagonize or troll the reader.
As of yet, little is known about Robinson’s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.
All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say “Skibidi Toilet,” a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There’s a movie in the works.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known code words for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.
Some memes, however, aren’t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online—which doesn’t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the “Groyper Wars” of 2019. “Groypers” are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk.
A Facebook photo in which Robinson appears to reference a Groyper meme has led to early speculation that Kirk’s killing may have been an outgrowth of these intra-far-right skirmishes. But another feature of the modern far-right is an embrace of the post-truth huckster. In these circles, it’s always possible that someone is playing a character—or will claim to be doing so, muddying the waters so no one can accuse them of having a sincere belief beyond the desire to rile up their targets. For people like this, the whole world is a forum board, where lewd public comments and real-world violence are becoming increasingly interchangeable. (Consider the messages left behind by the deceased shooter of Annunciation Catholic School, which were full of references to both other shooters and innocuous memes.)
In every respect, the circumstances surrounding Kirk’s murder are alarming for those with the understandable impulse to make some kind of sense out of terrifying events. It is true that real-life violence is the end result of our cultural coarsening. It is also important to remember that Robinson’s generation is entering public life with frames of reference that are totally foreign to its elders, regardless of individual ideology. We cannot properly comprehend the harm of bad actors or the concerns of the innocent until we have taken the time to learn their language—and sometimes, even then we won’t understand.
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