Orem, Utah – The killings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk began three days of some of the ugliest, most divisive social media reactions the United States has seen, leading the Utah governor announced Friday enough.
Republican state Gov. Spencer Cox announced his arrest at a press conference. “I encourage people to log out, close, touch grass, embrace family, go out and do well in your community.”
Since his suicide, his words immediately resonated in a country that was shocked by many. Kirk was filmed by a sniper at the University of Utah, and the graphic video of the killing immediately spread around social media platforms, enhancing emotions.
Some troops on the right used killings to appeal to liberal attacks, some compared it to a civil war. Others celebrate Kirk’s death.
Hours after the killing, police briefly detained two men. Social media is crazy, even if they are cleared of any affiliation with the deadly shooting, so are their names, backgrounds and photos. Things got so bad that Utah officials urged people on Thursday not to threaten them because they did nothing wrong.
“These people are not suspicious. They are people who are interested,” said Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason. “They should not be subject to this kind of harassment.”
Cox said the horror of watching Kirk be killed highlighted the bigger problem of the platform that repeatedly surfaced such images.
“We are not human connections – biologically, historically – we are not developing in the way we can handle these types of violent images,” he said. “We are in desperate need of some recovery.”
In Orem, a college town where Kirk was killed, mourning violent residents were shocked by the levels of sulfuric acid they experienced when they opened a social media app.
Jillian Green, a Utah student Post on tiktok In honor of Kirk’s death, she was shocked when she began to make hateful comments about him.
“I got a lot of positive feedback, but then I got a lot of negative people, like what he deserved, and it was really disgusting,” said Green, 20.
But after careful inspection, she said, almost all negative comments were posted by no real account. They have one or two followers and no posts.
Experts have long warned that these types of posts are often from machine “robots” deployed by bad actors to stir up turmoil. Cox said at a press conference that Russian and Chinese robots are working online to “indo disinformation and encourage violence.”
Green tried not to let them down.
“It’s unfortunate because there’s a lot of negative and hatred that happens,” she said. “But in reality, I’ve seen a lot of positivity.”
Orham City Councilman Jenn Gale urged people to find ways to move forward that are positive and not sow more divisions on social media.
She said: “Let’s put it on Facebook posts Write in her voter’s post.
Kirk is a beloved figure in the conservative movement, winning conversations (although sometimes intense) in his death to express his case. He is known for his right-wing and unfiltered opinions on intense topics such as abortion and gender identity, which often generate intense criticism, especially on university campuses he visited.
President Trump, a major supporter of Kirk, called the 31-year-old “a patriot who has devoted his life to the cause of open debate.”
Officials did not disclose the motive for the alleged attack, although they said the alleged gunman was getting angry, etching “Hey, fascist, capture” and spotting ammunition with a rifle.
Famous figures, including Elon Musk, have entered social media platforms to blame the party Kirk for deadly shooting.
“The left is the murder party.” Musk posted on X.
The platform is full of conspiracy theories, racist metaphors and violent threats.
Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican of Louisiana, said he would use Congress’s power to demand that large tech platforms “force bans devalue the lives of every post or commentator assassinated by Charlie Kirk.”
“If they open their mouths with clever hatred, celebrate the outrageous murder of that beautiful young man…the profile of those people must fall,” He said on X.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) Enter the discourse When she shared an interview video of her reaction to political experts, she claimed Kirk’s death was a democratic issue. In the interview, she objected to Kirk’s claim that he “just wanted to have a civil debate.” Some social media users are angry that she will criticize the day after he was shot.
Some experts are deeply troubled by what they have seen this week.
“It’s really about the idea that our country accepts the notion of different perspectives, and the right to have those differences and express them is really really challenged at this moment,” said Karen North, a professor of digital and social media at USC.
“The most marginal perspective is at least the broadest shared perspective in our opinion because we know not all words are equal online,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at UCLA and host of podcast Utopias.
What this presents to users, including young people, is a flooded message that is often divided and has no room for coping.
Srinivasan said social media users were overwhelmed with information, feeling that the future was always crashing, and speed seemed to be the new normal.
But now, more than ever, people need to realize: “The world shown to us online is not the real world, it has become the real world, partly because we are so dependent on our phones and devices, many other things besides accessing content.”
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for Hate and Extremism Research and Professor Emeritus of San Bernardino, said foreign opponents and extremists have been using Achilles heels perceived in American society for years to promote polarization. Sulfuric acid was no different in the online after Kirk’s death.
“Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of the polarization incident is the fact that not only domestic pranksters, but internationals will take advantage of it,” Levin said.
Sometimes the goal is to use fear to divide and hate for a particular civic ideology, Levin said. In other cases, people just want to “throw the monkey wrench into democratic equipment because for opponents, weakening the United States is something they are trying to do.”
Cox said he was deeply frustrated with social media this week, but “actually, Charlie’s words pulled me back.”
“Charlie posted on social media, ‘When things are going very fast and people lose their minds, it’s important to stay grounded, turn off your phone, read scriptures, spend time with friends, and remember that internet anger is not real life, it will be OK,” Cox said.
