As I listened Friday morning to officials brief the public about the suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, I did not know what to expect. Misinformation had circulated online Thursday about the bullets apparently having references to “transgender ideology” and “anti-fascist slogans.” But when Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shared the details about what was etched onto shell casings, I let out a groan. The alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was yet another young man who had engraved various memes on the ammo used to kill a prominent political activist.
As an academic who studies how online culture is translated into real-world politics, the information presented Friday morning hardly surprised me, but it made me worry. Cox said that one of the inscriptions — the words “Hey fascist, catch this!” followed by a series of arrows — “speaks for itself.” He could not be more wrong. The shell casings are not in and of themselves evidence of any mainstream political ideology.
This is the key to understanding online culture: irony and performance are king.
Cox seemed unaware of the fact that those arrows — “up, right, down, down, down” — apparently referenced the popular video game Helldivers 2. Specifically, it’s the code players input for a Eagle 500kg Bomb airstrike. This offensive stratagem drops a massive bomb on a location, often killing many bugs, robots and players. Its destructive power against both foes and allies has made it a favorite meme within the Helldivers 2 community. And because the game has an incredibly large player base, even people who have not played Helldivers 2 themselves have likely seen memes of it on various gaming forums and Discord servers.
Helldivers 2 is very reminiscent of the movie “Starship Troopers,” a satire in which a fascist regime masquerades as standing for liberty and freedom. In Helldivers 2, the players are soldiers fighting for “managed democracy,” in which all voting is AI-assisted and almost certainly rigged. The memes that emerge from Helldivers 2 usually recognize the clear satire that the game is going for. But some players either fail to grasp the actual themes of the game or — as is very often the case with online culture — embrace concepts such as “managed democracy” in an ironic way that is indistinguishable from sincere belief.
This is the key to understanding online culture: irony and performance are king, and sincerity is often considered “cringe” or uncool. If the shell casings can be said to show an ideology of any kind, it is an ideology of “being terminally online.” And there have been a string of shootings in the past year where the performance of online culture played a key role.
Indeed, all the references can be tied back to internet culture in some way. The “if you are reading this, you are gay” inscription, for instance, is just a standard gotcha gag that has its origins in parodies of a 2015 Drake album cover. You can find various iterations of this phrase online, substituting gay with an almost countless number of other potential identifiers.
The inscription most likely to confuse the average person is the one on the bullet that was fired: “notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?” To the very online, however, the phrase is immediately recognizable. Fully explaining the reference, which goes back to the mid-2010s, would require a whole article in itself. But in brief, it was essentially a way to mock “furry” role-playing, where people pretend to be anthropomorphic animals. There is absolutely no indication that Robinson himself was a furry or was involved in that subculture in anyway. Rather, its inclusion shows how memes and references online often evolve the more they are iterated upon.
It suggests a view of the world and morality warped by total immersion within a culture of deep irony and antisocial behavior.
The final inscription will likely draw the most scrutiny and discussion about potential ideological motivations: “Bella Ciao,” the title of a song dedicated to anti-fascist partisans in Italy in World War II. Surely, people will say, this points to a clear ideological motivation!
But covers of the song “Bella Ciao” often appear in World War II-era video games. In 2022, for example, the popular grand strategy game Hearts of Iron 4 released downloadable content that focused on Italy, with a version of “Bella Ciao” included for users who preordered. Hearts of Iron users have created “mods” for the game (some of which imagine Germany winning the war) that include Bella Ciao in their music packs. The song has also appeared in Far Cry 6 and the Netflix show “Money Heist.” Assuming that its inclusion is inherently ideological, and not just another reference to a piece of culture that the culprit enjoyed, would be a mistake. There is even evidence that groypers, online fans of the far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes, have co-opted the song, with a single remix appearing on a Spotify playlist. But this is simply one of many possible ways Robinson might have learned of the song.
Until other evidence about Robinson’s mindset emerges, what is public does not prove any political ideology. Instead, it suggests a view of the world and morality warped by total immersion within a culture of deep irony and antisocial behavior. Cox was wrong in saying that any of these references “speak for themselves.” But he was right about one thing: All of us need to “log off, turn off and touch grass.”