Radicalization

The suspect in the Charlie Kirk shooting apparently likes video games. This makes him indistinguishable from over a billion other people across the planet, but in the eyes of some pundits and politicians, it’s evidence of the corrupting influence of our current online culture. Asked about the radicalization of the person allegedly responsible for the assassination, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently blamed “a lot of gaming going on” and “meme-ification” on places like Reddit.

Cox pointed to the inscriptions on bullets recovered from near the crime scene which have since gone viral. They include, among other things, a famous stratagem input for Helldivers 2 and a reference to the Italian anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao,” which some may know from singer Becky G’s 2021 remix but others might be more familiar with from the WWII strategy game Hearts of Iron IV (or, more specifically, its By Blood Alone DLC). He noted that he had no idea what any of these things meant. For him, up, right, down, down, down and possible furry memes are all part of the same incomprehensible and potentially dangerous cocktail of social media accelerationism.

Utah Gov. Cox: Kirk’s Killer Radicalized By Video Games, “Reddit Culture,” And “Meme-ification” Of Society

“Clearly there was a lot of gaming going on. Friends confirmed there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet.” pic.twitter.com/9PFntfMEpP

— RCP Video (@rcpvideo) September 14, 2025

“Clearly, there was a lot of gaming going on, friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, Reddit culture and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep,” Cox said on Meet the Press yesterday when asked about the radicalization of suspected gunman Tyler Robinson. “You saw that on the casings, I didn’t have any idea what many of those inscriptions even meant, but certainly the meme-ification that is happening in our society today.”

As people search for meaning behind why Robinson allegedly went to Utah Valley University on September 10 to shoot the right-wing podcaster during a speaking event, they’re left rifling through generic pastimes and background noise for clues. A former high school classmates told CNN that the 22-year-old was “very, very big into gaming” and that he and friends “would spend their lunches playing the card games and all that kind of stuff.”

Meanwhile places like Discord, where people meet to play games together ranging from Fortnite to Pokémon, are being cast as internet meth labs where people cook their brains on edge-lord humor and GIFs. Take this ponderous logic to its ultimately boomer conclusion and you get people like Geraldo Rivera trying to defrost half-remembered moral panics from decades ago.

pic.twitter.com/nwZR4StZjD

— Zach Grimes (@GrimisS) September 14, 2025

“Whether Tyler Robinson faces a firing squad in Utah for the murder of Charlie Kirk, my guess is the accused killer will probably have been motivated more by Halo and similar fantasy role-play than by substantive political discord,” he posted on X over the weekend. “The game features Grunts vs Elites. I’m guessing nobody wants to be an elite.” Grok, is this true???

There is an epidemic of school shootings in this country. The increasing rate at which political violence is foregrounded in our democracy is alarming. So, too, is the way open bigotry is not just permitted in national debates but cheered on through platforms that profit off of fueling outrage. It would be not only nice for people to be able to talk about these issues with the level of seriousness they require, but indeed it feels increasingly urgent.

The internet is rife with concerning undercurrents of irony-pilled nihilism, cultural atomization, and hopelessness. They don’t call them brain worms for nothing. The popularity of Discord, Helldivers 2, and Halo are not the problem, but talking about them as if they are is certainly a symptom of the underlying causes.




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