Reddit culture, video games, and Discord: What role did the internet play in the radicalization of Charlie Kirk murder suspect?

Utah Governor Spencer Cox weighed in Sunday on where Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk, may have been radicalized: “Clearly there was a lot of gaming going on. Friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep.” With no official confirmation yet, these hints of online activity are all there is to try to understand what Robinson did, and why. The prime suspect in Kirk’s death is so far refusing to cooperate with authorities.

Robinson attended college in Utah on a scholarship but lasted only one semester. Upon returning to his hometown of Washington, Utah, Cox said that radicalization began amid video games, Discord chats, Reddit forums, and obscure memes, while he was between 19 and 22 years old. Cox published a devastating assessment on social media: “I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years. There is no question in my mind. Cancer probably isn’t a strong enough word [to define the role of social media in society]. It took us a decade to realize how evil these algorithms are,” he also said Sunday on NBC.

Does all this explain Robinson’s behavior? There have been political assassinations in the past. Radicalization is a very difficult phenomenon to explain, especially based on information gleaned from the internet: “Radicalization and violent acts are two different things. Just because someone becomes radicalized doesn’t mean they’ll commit violence. In fact, it almost never happens,” says Curd Benjamin Knüpfer, a professor at the Center for Digital Democracy at the University of Southern Denmark. “We know very little about how radicalization works. What we do know is that different types of media (music, video games, political news) play a smaller role than they are given credit for.”

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t toxic online communities. Without the internet, the internet references following Kirk’s murder wouldn’t have existed. Now it’s up to the authorities to establish the links. It won’t be easy because the online activity of young people is more ambiguous, twisted, and satirical than it seems: “There is a deliberate esthetic to certain types of political violence, especially among young extremists online, marked by the tendency to disseminate manifestos or images designed for two audiences: an internal group that understands certain references and winks, and the ‘normie’ [the general public] who they deliberately seek to deceive,” says Knüpfer.

Inscriptions as a manifesto

Governor Cox claimed the influence of social media on murders began “five or six years ago.” It may be a coincidence, but in 2019, the terrorist who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, was the first to openly use memes before his attack: “Remember lads, subscribe to Pewdiepie,” he said, referring to the most popular YouTube channel at the time.

The casing on the bullet that killed Kirk bore the inscription “notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?” There are dozens of videos online of young people spending five minutes explaining all the nuances of the meme, and others joking about why they should explain the nuances of the phrase to boomers. The meme emerged more than a decade ago and is a phrase from the furry community: people who dress up as animals. OWO is an emoji of a pleasantly surprised face. The bulge clearly has a sexual connotation in a conversation between two men. But it’s impossible to draw conclusions and know whether Robinson used it in an original, ironic, or trollish sense.

The same goes for other phrases inscribed on the ammunition: “Hey, fascist! Catch!” along with several arrows used in the video game Helldivers 2 to launch a bomb. Another bullet featured a reference to the Italian anti-fascist World War II song Bella ciao (popularized by the Spanish series Money Heist) and the phrase “If you read this, you are gay LMAO.”

Everyone can interpret these phrases however they see fit, but without living permanently on the internet in 2025, it’s impossible to be fully accurate. The layers of irony and trolling they contain depend on a multitude of factors: “Spaces like 4chan and similar forums have created a subculture in which irony, ambiguity, and trolling are key tools,” says Clara Juárez Miró, a researcher at the University of Barcelona. “These phrases [from the bullets] can never be read solely on a primary level: they can be jokes, internal signals for the community, or, at the same time, ways of normalizing hate messages through ironic logic and confusion.”

Discord messages and video games

In the more than 30 hours between Kirk’s death and Robinson’s arrest, the alleged killer participated in a Discord chat with about 20 friends, where they joked around. Discord is primarily a messaging app closely linked to video games, although many young people use it like WhatsApp, but with a more public feel. Robinson apparently had multiple Discord accounts. In a statement, the company suspended one of his accounts and said no murder was planned on its platform.

But it was later discussed. The New York Times obtained screenshots of the chat thanks to a high school classmate of Robinson’s who said he hadn’t seen him in person for years. A member of the group posted the photos of Robinson that the FBI had published, tagged the alleged killer’s Discord name, and wrote “wya [where you at]?” with a skull emoji. His “doppelganger” was “trying to get me in trouble,” Robinson immediately responded. Another suggested they could turn him in and collect the $100,000 the FBI was offering. “Only if I get a cut,” Robinson said. “Whatever you do, don’t go to a mcdonalds anytime soon,” wrote another, referring to the capture of Luigi Mangione, who was arrested for killing an insurance executive in New York.

Robinson’s messages continued until his arrest was announced. “Our governor wants to give him the death penalty dude” one person wrote. “I truly cannot distinguish if this is for real,” commented another.

Reddit culture

Like video games or Discord, Reddit is another network that often receives attention in these types of cases. Reddit is a forum network where hundreds of millions of users discuss their interests or current events in thousands of themed forums. Most are uncontroversial, but there are others whose survival depends on the platform’s moderation. Reddit has become much stricter in recent years.

All of these communities create their own rules, which are difficult to understand from the outside. “These spaces function as alternative communities where members forge emotional bonds, construct meanings, and express their identity, for example, through humor and memes that encapsulate complex messages in easily shareable forms,” says Juárez Miró. Therefore, it is much more complex to analyze these behaviors using the usual political criteria.

All of Robinson’s online activity revolved around video games. But that’s another trait of this decade’s adolescents: 85% of U.S. teens play video games, according to a Pew Research survey, and four in 10 call themselves gamers. Of all those who play, 72% do so not to pass the time, but because it’s a way to spend time with others, as a social experience. Half say they’ve made at least one friend while playing.

Several testimonies say Robinson played a lot of Halo, Call of Duty, and other extremely popular games. It’s an activity, however, that occupies almost all members of his generation. And it helps them strengthen their identity.

“It’s important to avoid falling into moral panics about specific platforms or online spaces. Although features of each platform can facilitate or hinder political mobilization, participation in these communities primarily responds to users’ social and emotional needs,” says Juárez Miró.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition