Of everything I saw in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death last week, nothing unsettled me quite like seeing this Facebook post about the shooter, Tyler Robinson, from his mom — written when Tyler was 10 years old. “Almost forgot Tyler!” she wrote. “He can totally avoid us now that he got all of the computer accessories he’s been wanting :)”
“He can totally avoid us now.”
I can’t judge this mother, who was trying to make her son happy in a confusing, quickly changing world. She had no idea what Tyler would find in the dark stretches of the Internet — how he would be exposed to the nihilistic underbelly of blackpilled irony culture reflected in the cryptic “jokes” he engraved on the bullets he used to shoot Charlie Kirk.
Tyler’s mom didn’t know what she was doing, just like millions of other parents living in a system that exploits rather than serves their kids.
The same cannot be said of the most powerful people in the world — that they don’t know what they’re doing. Hours after Charlie Kirk was shot, before we had any hint about who killed him, Elon Musk tweeted that “the left is the party of murder.” Donald Trump lashed out saying, “We have radical left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them” and that he “couldn’t care less” about uniting the nation. Mentions of civil war on X skyrocketed.
It’s all a sign of the same exploitative system that privileges infotainment and team politics above pursuing truth, beauty, or goodness.
Unlike the shooter’s mom, Musk and Trump and plenty of their opponents are using this same system to reward themselves. They’ve tapped into an insane but proven formula: Pick a side to hate and perform the role of “destroying” them to a cheering (and jeering) audience.
It’s World Wrestling Entertainment behind a screen — just as phony, just as performative. In this digital arena, it doesn’t matter much if you’re viewed as the hero or the villain. The cheers and the jeers both give you eyeballs, and eyeballs get you money. Eyeballs get you fame. Eyeballs win elections.
Young people are witnessing this broken system, and many are simply opting out — rejecting both the Republican and the Democratic parties entirely. As one recent Harvard study found, only 15% of young people “believe the country is heading in the right direction,” and “fewer than one-third approve of President Trump or either party in Congress.”
This sense of rejection and hopelessness is mirrored in what we know so far about Tyler Robinson. His messages with his friends on Discord weren’t political, and while he cared about transgender issues, nothing else that I’ve seen ties him to the Democratic party. There’s no hint that he was a fan of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, or even Bernie Sanders, who gets maligned as the leader of “the far left.” Robinson didn’t leave a manifesto outlining why the minimum wage should be higher, why America needs more unions, why healthcare should be universal, or any of Bernie’s other “far left” talking points.
Maybe officials will discover such a manifesto, but it seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that Tyler Robinson will turn out to be what the justice department calls a nihilistic violent extremist, not unlike the young man who tried to assassinate Trump last year — a young man who similarly was perpetually online, who similarly didn’t fit cleanly into the traditional left vs right mold, and who similarly lashed out with violence.
What can we do about any of this?
I’m thinking again of that line from Tyler’s mom:
“He can totally avoid us now.”
It haunts me. It forces me to ask myself: Am I using technology to connect with people or to avoid them? Am I using my device, or is it using me?
These are hard questions I don’t fully have an answer to. I want to be someone whose work online leads to deeper connection and understanding, but it’s difficult. Data shows that what works online is to go negative, use out-group animosity, and push language to an extreme. That will get you likes. That will get you eyeballs.
I know this might be difficult for fans of Charlie Kirk to hear, but if you’re a fan and you happen to read this, I would ask you to consider how much of his fame and wealth came from employing these exact tactics. Notice how he framed his videos:
“Charlie Kirk VS the Wokies at University of Tennessee”
“Charlie Kirk Crushes Woke Lies at Michigan State”
“Charlie Kirk Goes Full Oppenheimer & Drops a Nuke on Pro-Choice Nonsense”
“Student Argument Destroyed By The Bible's Forgotten Rule”
“Charlie Kirk COOKS Atheist on "Biblical" Slavery”
“Woke Mind Virus Takes Over College Kids Moral Compass”
“Race Baiting Leftist Crushed by Facts & Logic”
“College Kid Gives the Craziest Abortion Argument I've Ever Heard”
If you’re a fan of Kirk’s, please ask yourself whether watching his videos causes you to feel more disdain and animosity or more love and understanding for the “wokies" he “crushed.” I say this as someone who mourns his death, who is against all violence, and who respects Kirk’s penchant for in-person argument, as well as his call to release the Epstein files and his refusal to take the latest funding from Netanyahu. None of this is to reduce Kirk to a caricature or heap animosity on him, which is counter to everything I’m saying here. It’s just to point out that one of the major reasons that Charlie Kirk got rich and famous is by employing the tactics that our current system incentivizes — tactics that lead us to avoid seeing each other in all our complexity and humanity.
Life will not always be like this. We will either continue to dehumanize each other — to accuse “the other side” of being the side of murder (in which case more lives will end in violence) — or we will change our behavior and incentive structures so that we no longer reward performative, animus-driven activities that distract us from real curiosity, warmth, and love.
This is amazing. Thank you Jon for always having the right words. By the night of the shooting, I realized for my own mental health, I could not go on social media, but I appreciate this type of dialogue.
Really excellent piece, Jon, I’m in total agreement. The primary issue we have to deal with in America is the constant messaging we receive online that politics must be an “us” vs. “them,” or that the only thing that matters is victory over your ideological opponents by any means necessary—even violence. In this regard, I think the MAGA movement warrants more critique than any movement or party on the left, but the left isn’t blameless at all, especially after the gross response of glee and satisfaction to Kirk’s death. I’m hoping everyone learns to take a step back and see that we’re all being poisoned by the same venomous messaging, from both sides of the aisle.