In middle school cafeterias, high school hallways and across college campuses, Charlie Kirk's death spread phone to phone. Students passed around videos, glanced at photos and saw close-ups, reviewing every angle of the moment he was shot.
“I can't escape it,” 20-year-old Chandler Crump says of the posts surrounding Kirk’s murder. “Every platform I'm opening right now is having discourse about it, groups that have absolutely nothing to do with politics are mentioning it because of Charlie's influence.”
While images of his violent death were a graphic intrusion, Kirk himself was not a new presence in their feeds.
Their parents might not have known who Kirk was, but they did.
Maybe they got sucked in when they saw him debating Kamala Harris supporters on TikTok. Maybe something he said about marriage sparked a reaction in them. Maybe his loud-and-proud brand of politics, no matter how controversial, gave them confidence.
