The internet was never going to be a safe place. One of the trade-offs of America’s First Amendment is the acceptance of speech and content that do not align with our personal worldviews. The freedom to communicate independent thought is a vital societal function, but in the age of meme culture, it’s also a telling symptom of what is happening inside a nation’s heart.
In early May 2026, news broke that TikTok users were filming outfit transition videos to the sound effect of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination. When the gunshot that killed Kirk fires in the audio clip, the TikTokers, some of whom appear to be high schoolers, show off their prom attire, new hairstyles, and other cosmetic enhancements. The glamorous reveals are briefly soundtracked by the screams that erupted at Utah Valley University that day.
This latest iteration of posthumous Charlie Kirk mockery continues an existing trend in online spaces. Indeed, the internet abounded with memes and witticisms following Kirk’s demise. The image of Kirk in his final moments, thrown back in his chair, eyes squeezed shut, microphone in hand, as blood cascades from his neck, remains a favorite template for scornful humor.
Meme culture’s heart-hardening wouldn’t be symptomatic of an entire country’s sickness, though, if only one political side weaponized it. Conservatives bear equal guilt for deriding the dead, if their reaction to Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s shootings earlier this year is any indication.
A popular meme bearing the Minnesotans’ faces circulated shortly after their deaths at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Its caption read, “Q: How do you think ICE is doing in Minnesota? A: Pretti Good.” On Facebook, an AI-generated satirical movie trailer depicted the pair as drooling “retards”.
Regardless of one’s personal opinions of Charlie Kirk, Renee Good, or Alex Pretti, level-headed Americans should be able to agree that widespread demeaning humor and celebration of real human deaths reflect negatively on our nation’s mental and emotional well-being. The trend of tragedies-as-entertainment is unlikely to end anytime soon, but Americans can make a concerted effort to respond to serious events in healthier ways. Before that, though, let’s take a look at how we got here.
The Devolution of Memes
Memes have been a staple of online expression since the 2000s and 2010s, serving as easy vehicles for social cohesion and shared humor. While many memes were harmless—think Nyan Cat and the Philosoraptor—others, like Pepe the Frog, an artist’s once-innocent creation, mutated into symbols of extremism on sites like 4chan.
4chan launched in 2003 as an online discussion board for anonymous users, but it quickly morphed into a haven for far-right ideology. Pepe the Frog and other famous memes, like Wojak, flourished there and seeded much of the meme culture we see today.
It didn’t take long for 4chan’s memes and the beliefs tethered to them to spread to the wider internet. Reddit, Twitter, and Tumblr also proliferated demeaning, offensive content that gradually terraformed the digital landscape into a place where dignity and respect are prizes seldom won.
Wojak is a famous late-2000s/early-2010s meme that endures to this day. It has evolved into sociopolitically symbolic variations, including Chad, Trad Wife, and Coomer. Wojak is frequently used for poking fun at people who ideologically differ from the person posting it. Crying Wojak, for example, acts as an auto-dismiss button for anyone speaking their mind, while NPC Wojak accuses people of being unthinking conformists; Soyjak attacks effeminate or perceived cuckolded men.
Over time, particularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, meme culture has shifted into a series of thought-terminating clichés. Many of the darker memes surfacing now arose from a cultural climate already poisoned by inflammatory discourse, eventually evolving into a discourse of their own. The conversations offensive memes generate are rarely productive and often function as a contagious form of harassment. Notably, those who demonstrate antisocial behavior online exhibit traits of the “Dark Tetrad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.
Dark Humor and Dehumanization
Internet trolls, the likeliest actors spurring our corrosive meme culture, are assessed to possess lower affective empathy. Although many trolls comprehend their impact on their targets, they often lack the ability to genuinely feel and internalize others’ emotions.
”Trolling behavior is associated with aggressive humor as well as katagelasticism (i.e., the joy of laughing at others)… Some authors suggest that katagelasticism may be a cause of trolling behavior,” the National Library of Medicine notes. “Previous research has also shown that humor styles are associated with the Dark Tetrad. The four dark personality traits are linked with inadequate humor, e.g., schadenfreude in social, academic, and mourning contexts … Importantly, katagelasticism not only involves enjoying laughing at others but also actively seeking out situations where one can ridicule others.”
Psychology helps us frame why memes have been wielded against sufferers of tragedy and violence, and in modern America, politics play a major role in determining who gets mocked and how hard. Charlie Kirk drew the ire of left-leaning citizens who felt that his murder was justified because of his influence. To many conservatives, Renee Good and Alex Pretti symbolized the obstruction of deportation efforts, their deaths emblematic of justice overriding dissent.
The response to both cases was the same: dehumanizing dismissal via memes. Increasingly, the belief across party lines seems to be that those who differ from us—whether we believe this implicitly or explicitly—deserve to suffer and even die, and we deserve to laugh when they do.
Such thinking is fundamentally inhumane and hazardous, like battery acid eating away at our democratic identity. Celebrating assassinations and shootings because individuals with certain political leanings exercised their First Amendment rights reveals grave instability and also exposes a bent toward favoring authoritarian tactics to suppress opposition.
Reducing fellow Americans to laughable caricatures not only robs them of the basic human dignity owed to them and their loved ones, but it also dehumanizes those propagating the cruelty. Rehearsed for too long, cruelty as social currency may numb consciences, leading to the allowance, or even the endorsement, of egregious behavior.
Desensitized and Radicalized
A culture that glories in people’s suffering risks its soul and intellectual sovereignty. Desensitization anesthetizes us to others’ pain, and as we succumb to the novacaine, we may grow to tolerate more death, loss, and anguish. We may even begin to shrug at the extreme measures unstable people take to inflict it on societal “enemies”.
It’s possible that, if tragedies are continuously steamrolled by callous humor, we will find ourselves in a society that doesn’t believe in civility or restraint. That society will be a perilous place to live.
History remembers such cultures unkindly. Twentieth-century Germany is a stark example of how nations can incrementally accept dehumanization, partially influenced by humor and grotesque caricatures. Look no further than Julius Streicher’s antisemitic tabloid Der Stürmer (1923–1945), which promoted Jewish hatred with articles and cartoons depicting Jews as scheming, sub-human creatures—in one particular image, as a collective “misfortune”.
We might feel we’re shielded from those extremes today, but hatred is an insidious force that slinks into our consciousness through conditioning. Memes alone won’t bring about a dreadful society. Even so, their highly shareable, understated nature makes them effective and subtle weapons against the collective psyche when circulated far and wide, often enough. Soft power is still power.
While it isn’t realistic to grieve deeply for those we dislike, or those whose moral compasses point toward a dramatically different “North” than our own, making light of their deaths can only cause harm in the long run. Fortunately, we each have the agency to affect positive change in our own small – but no less powerful – way.
The Path Forward
Human nature is inclined toward retaliation, and meme culture thrives on the eye-for-an-eye approach. Charlie Kirk mockers cited conservatives’ George Floyd memes as justification for swiping at the right-wing commentator, and in reply, conservatives smeared Alex Pretti and Renee Good to stick it back to liberals. The strategy, if one can call it that, is essentially slinging feces at one another without realizing that both sides are already up to their eyes in it.
Healing is possible when we withdraw from this degrading contest and instead embrace maturity and self-composure. This isn’t to say that political cartoons, jokes, and all memes are toxic. We will simply best preserve dignity when we refrain from using humor to violate boundaries around death and tragedy.
In practice, this could mean avoiding the creation or sharing of unnecessarily cruel content. It might require distancing ourselves from caustic, reactive spaces, unfollowing certain creators, and departing communities that reinforce harmful attitudes. These decisions require personal conviction and warrant serious consideration if we’re concerned that our surroundings might compromise our inner well-being.
It may also help to consciously remind ourselves that everyone we see and hear about is, at their core, a human being. Not all people have commendable character. Not all people are likable—in some cases, not even remotely. We shouldn’t excuse a person’s unethical actions or beliefs, but neither should we engage in our own unethical actions to further the senseless cause of hatred. All people are born with the same inherent value. If someone relentlessly sullies their life with immoral behavior, they are a squandered heartbeat—a “What if?” to quietly grieve.
Something that helps me when I dislike someone is asking myself what events may have shaped that person into who they are today. What might have gone amiss in their childhood? Who influenced them for the worse? What insecurities and grievances fuel them? It’s a diagnostic rather than a reactive approach, and it protects my sanity as much as my spirit.
At the end of the day, free speech is a constitutional right in America, and we’re entitled to use it however we see fit. As with anything, though, consequences will follow. The question we ought to ask ourselves is whether we’re willing to accept the sort of society those consequences inevitably create—and the people we become in the aftermath.
Works Cited
Bramesco, Charles. “Feels Good Man: the disturbing story behind the rise of Pepe the Frog”. The Guardian. 31 August 2020.
“Der Stürmer”. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Furian, Lauren and Evita March. “Trolling, the Dark Tetrad, and the four-facet spectrum of narcissism.” Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 208, July 2023.
Hamilton, Philip. “Why Are TikTokers Using Audio Of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination For Transitions? The Viral ‘Counting Or Not Counting Gang Violence’ Memes Explained”. Yahoo. 6 May 2026.
Jones, Ja’han. “Epstein met with 4chan’s founder just as the site’s infamous political thread began”. MS Now. 5 February 2026.
March, Evita and Natalie Sest. “Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy”. Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 119, 1 December 2017, pages 69-72.
“Pepe The Frog.” Save the Frogs!
Volkmer, Sara et al. “Troll story: The dark tetrad and online trolling revisited with a glance at humor.” PLoS One. 10 March 2023.