The Second Death of Charlie Kirk

It used to be that if you died horribly and honorably and happened to be a person of note, your legacy was secure. Amelia Earhart, John F. Kennedy, and Kurt Cobain were served well by their untimely deaths, remembered with more romance and fondness than if they had lived long enough to fade into obscurity. But, as with many things, the internet has changed that. Charlie Kirk died when the bullet hit his neck at Utah Valley University. His legacy died a much slower, painful, and absurd death in the months that followed in a meme trend called “Kirkification.” If you are online and a participant in the meme economy to any extent, whether you wish it or not, there is a version of Charlie Kirk solidified in your mind as a joke.

This effect isn’t drawn along partisan lines, and it opens up questions about Gen Z nihilism, mass coping strategies, and most importantly, what it means to hand your image over to the internet. 

Katherine Dee, a longtime writer on internet ethnography, media theory, digital folklore, fandom, politics, and identity, joins Virginia and Germán to help us unpack how the internet is less something you consume and more a place you go–a place where things are similar but dangerously different. To navigate it, we might need to look back to our childhood fairy tales. In the world of Faerie, we might find the culprits of the second death of Charlie Kirk.

The episode is embedded below. For your long-term convenience, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify.