Charlie Kirk was shot and killed this week. I knew that he was a conservative activist and I thought of him as a click-baity social media personality but never consumed his content. We had very little in common as far as our political beliefs. I was genuinely sad when I saw that he’d been killed.
If that was all that happened, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to post because I’d assume everyone I know agrees that his murder was wrong. The rise in political violence is a disappointing and dangerous trend that is going the wrong direction. Unsurprisingly though, what bothered me nearly as much as his murder was the reaction to his murder.
The home page of Reddit is still, four days later, pretty disturbing in celebrating his death. I try to keep in mind that social media isn’t real life. You can find any reaction you want to any event if you look hard enough!
But the celebration crept into my personal social media with multiple people I know posting stories on Instagram. Tim Urban’s tweet made me want to write this post:
Was it Justified?
This is a silly section to write.
No, obviously his murder was not justified. I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on nearly everything. He was a MAGA guy and I truly believe we’ll look back at Trump in decades and wonder how it got this bad. But Charlie Kirk was not some fringe extremist. His views on things like abortion, the 2nd amendment, etc. are shared by nearly half the country. You can root for his show to fail or his events to fall flat, but killing someone for being a voice to millions of people is blatantly anti-democratic.
What I can’t understand about the people celebrating is how they don’t see literally one step ahead. You may be happy Charlie Kirk was killed because you think he was a bad person, or made our country worse, or even has blood on his hands for things he’s said. But someone can take that logic to kill AOC, Bernie Sanders, pick your favorite thought-leader, because they disagree with their views or are convinced they’re a threat to the country. “Well of course we don’t want THAT“, but you can’t have it both ways. Celebrating his death publicly should be whole-heartedly condemned no matter what.
I understand how one may privately rejoice a specific death – those in favor of more gun control may bask in the irony of his stance on that topic – but if you genuinely believe we’re better off as a country after what happened this week then I’d say you’re missing the bigger picture of how a functioning democracy works. People with different legitimate viewpoints have to be able to express them without the fear of literally being killed.
Social Media & Us vs. Them
Social media plays multiple parts here, and they’re all bad.
First, part of the motivation for people posting in celebration is to be edgy and play up to the group-think of their followers. There’s a sort of one-upping-ness about it; that you have the gall to post something funny or derogatory when other’s don’t. It feels like something a teenager would do not realizing how serious it is. And after enough people have done it, then, depending on how deep in the echo chamber you are, you feel like you have post something awful just to show you’re also part of the team.
The problem is, over time, people actually do become comfortable saying things that are so blatantly counter-productive. It starts as posting a meme or joke on your story and devolves into “oh wait people actually think this? I thought we were kidding” but it’s too late to say anything.
That’s what bothered me so much about the people in my feed. I know them, I know they’re thoughtful people, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think they truly believe what they’re posting.
Second is simply the algorithm promoting the most obscene posts to drive engagement, which then feeds into people thinking it’s okay. We’ve known this for years. If you went to Reddit and knew nothing about our country, you would assume 90% of people are happy that he was killed. In reality, it’s a tiny minority. But as we all know those views and voices are amplified in such a way to make it seem like that’s what most people actually think. It drives the us vs. them narrative, which is great for clicks and ratings, but dangerous for the country.
I imagine a Fox News republican believing that I’m the same as someone posting in celebration simply because I’m a democrat when in reality, I feel closer to a moderate republican than I do a far-left democrat.
What to Do?
Like I said, I felt compelled to write this post because of what I saw. I’m not going to become an activist and in a few months this will be a footnote, but I feel strongly in seeing the humanity in people i disagree with. I think more of that would be a good thing.
There’s an entire conversation about WHY this is becoming more common. It’s easy to point to A) the left saying Trump & MAGA figures are a genuine threat to the country, and B) Trump himself fanning the flames of violence and division. I find both sides have valid points there, but I’ll save that for another time.
As far as social media, I don’t know how you curb the negative impact. Who’s accountable? Is there some legislation needed? How do you change the incentive structure of the system for a better outcome? It’s a uniquely complex problem that isn’t going to be solved any time soon. Maybe I’d have been better off if I didn’t go on it at all, then none of this would’ve occurred to me.
I don’t know why this particular instance got to me in a way others haven’t. Probably because the death and reaction were both so public. I feel a lot of empathy for him, his family, and yes, even his followers. What happened was bad.
Recent Comments