Lu Zwei wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 2:01 pm This reaction absolutely sums up this entire administraion's work.

It seems this kid was so online, that only very online people would understand the layers here. Like, who knows what a Groyper even is? I doubt many people know this. So, this is a perfect storm of a possible extremist from the right killing another rightwing extremist because of some silly online feud. Expect more people to get hurt from all the confusion and the right from the top down using this to incite violence and other cruel punishments.

Gramsci wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 10:01 am On another topic. This channel is amazing



Kind of Adam Curtis crossed with the funny parts on Qanon Anonymous.

Seriously worth watching/listening.

This is great! I wondered why people consider
shitty comedians Tony Hinchcliffe and Shane Gillis funny.

Krev wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 2:27 pm
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this guy turns out to be a rival Christofascist. Demented TACO will still blame it on "Radical Left Lunatics!!!!! #Gropecoin".

he’s mormon

The Elephant Graveyard is one of my favorite channels. He makes some pretty cool music too.

jimmy spako wrote: Baking is the instant conspiracy stuff, interpreting, it was Mossad, Ghislane ordered it, all that 80-levels-deep with no substance stuff.

Gotcha. In the fog of war in the immediate wake of an event like this, everybody looks for answers and goes on pulling on every thread they see, and most of those threads end up being either nothing or flat-out wrong. Speculation turns to "fact" and bad actors will throw completely wrong shit in there on purpose. Throw in some distrust of institutions and dismissal of actual facts because we're supposed to disbelieve the "official narrative"* and you've got Alex Jones. People who should know better all "this was a false flag to distract from the Epstein files."** It's a bummer to see people on the left take that route. You saw it with the attempt on Trump last year too.

*to be fair the initial official word was WAY wrong but that's due more to gross incompetence than an attempt at subterfuge.

**While I'm going off, can we quit saying that everything this administration does is a distraction from something else this administration does? At some point you've got to just say "All this stuff is just what they do and they're doing a lot of it at once." Especially the Epstein shit, everybody knows nothing is going to happen to him and he's got no reason to distract from it. "oh shi, they've got the emails, better bomb somebody" c'mon

One thing this has exposed is how much people are living in Crazy Bubbles.

90% of the population in the US probably had no to little idea who Kirk was, remember most people do not engage with politics in any way in their daily lives.

Then Kirk’s widow goes on a stream and says her ‘cries will echo around the world like a battle cry’… Lady, it’s sad your husband was killed, but he was just a dude that worked for a political advocacy organisation… no one will remember him in a month.

I predict the usual media flare up then this barely being mentioned once the next shiny thing happens.

cakes wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 4:24 pm

Lu Zwei wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 2:01 pm This reaction absolutely sums up this entire administraion's work.

It seems this kid was so online, that only very online people would understand the layers here. Like, who knows what a Groyper even is? I doubt many people know this. So, this is a perfect storm of a possible extremist from the right killing another rightwing extremist because of some silly online feud. Expect more people to get hurt from all the confusion and the right from the top down using this to incite violence and other cruel punishments.

this newsletter has good background information on the groyper angle, as well as pushing back on the idea that Kirk was doing something non-harmful or correct in his approach to politics:

Other writers provided the response that Klein’s title demanded. “Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way,” wrote Jason Koebler in 404, providing some more detail on what Kirk has actually said and done, including “claim[ing] that his Turning Point USA sent ‘80+ buses full of patriots’ to the January 6 insurrection” and operating a “Professor Watchlist” to focus the harassment of his cadre of followers on individual college professors who were reported for espousing allegedly leftist ideas by their TPUSA-aligned students.

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/groyper-war-2-turns-hot

Gramsci wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 1:57 am One thing this has exposed is how much people are living in Crazy Bubbles.

90% of the population in the US probably had no to little idea who Kirk was, remember most people do not engage with politics in any way in their daily lives.

Then Kirk’s widow goes on a stream and says her ‘cries will echo around the world like a battle cry’… Lady, it’s sad your husband was killed, but he was just a dude that worked for a political advocacy organisation… no one will remember him in a month.

I predict the usual media flare up then this barely being mentioned once the next shiny thing happens.

Everyone in the US here is kind of telling you that's not how the US works these days, but you're not listening.

It's not really a question of bubbles either.

Silly example: I went to a county fair out on the Olympic Peninsula in August with my family and brother who lives there, as I have done when I go back to visit family in summer for the past three or four years. There was an ultra-MAGA booth still vigorously contesting 2020 right near the entrance, as there has been for the past three or more years, as well as an "election reform" booth and the local Republican party. No progressive stuff, no surprise. The event skews massively right, of course, but it is not "a bubble" in the sense that we used to use that word. I don't think that it makes sense to speak in generalities about the population if you do not have broad first-hand experience of it.

jimmy spako wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 2:56 am

Gramsci wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 1:57 am One thing this has exposed is how much people are living in Crazy Bubbles.

90% of the population in the US probably had no to little idea who Kirk was, remember most people do not engage with politics in any way in their daily lives.

Then Kirk’s widow goes on a stream and says her ‘cries will echo around the world like a battle cry’… Lady, it’s sad your husband was killed, but he was just a dude that worked for a political advocacy organisation… no one will remember him in a month.

I predict the usual media flare up then this barely being mentioned once the next shiny thing happens.

Everyone in the US here is kind of telling you that's not how the US works these days, but you're not listening.

Sorry but voter turnout says the opposite. Last presidential election it was less than 60% and lower than the previous. That is incredibly low. Mid terms 46%… I think you confuse people yelling at each other online and the odd rally/protest as mass movements. They are not. Because of the first past the post voting system a small minority of weirdos can easily high jack the whole political structure.

I reiterate, the majority of people in the US, UK etc think about politics very little. We live in the era of the low information voter. It’s the system that throws up these seemingly unlimited insurmountable majorities, not voter sentiment.

Oh and fuck the media and socials.

PS I’m not denying polarisation, it’s just not as “active” as I think you suggest. Asking someone’s opinion in poll is not the same as their headspace 24/7.