The Shocking Online Afterlife of Charlie Kirk

In September, the influential right-wing voice Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University on his “The America Comeback Tour.” Some conservatives warned that this act would result in an entire generation of Charlie Kirks determined to keep his message alive. It already seems as if they were right, although not in the way that they predicted. Recently, a small but growing online movement has marshaled AI tools to graft Kirk’s face onto rappers, rock stars, political figures—seemingly anyone they can think of, the more appalling the better. The former head of Turning Point USA has been crudely transformed into Fakemink, Adolf Hitler, Anne Frank, Playboi Carti in the “Cancun” video from 2019, and a furry with a bear costume. Kirk has revealed himself as the secret fifth member of The Smiths; he’s buff, he’s obese, he’s a pornstar, he’s XXXTentacion and Jeffrey Epstein. He’s Rod Wave after the rapper was arrested on weapon and drug charges in Fulton County. Kirk has become an infinitely malleable avatar and source of memes and mockery for people who hate him.

These largely anonymous people have flayed the late influencer into an entire genre of edits called “Kirkslop,” and they’ve coined the verb “Kirkify,” as if it’s an action akin to yassifying an image by sprinkling it with glitter. Random TikTokers are begging their followers to make them look “Kirkified,” while others detest the trend and say the “Kirkification of the internet” has gone too far. Never before has a single person been memed in such a compressed burst (not even JD Vance). And no one is safe—every X girlie posting a selfie is at risk of being Kirkified without consent.

KnowYourMeme traces the trend back to September 23, when an X user planted Kirk’s visage on a gif of iShowSpeed as he tried to resist laughing. The meme picked up steam in October, with people using rudimentary software like Viggle AI to make Kirk twerk uncontrollably. Sora 2, the new AI video software that can convincingly render real people down to the wrinkles on their faces and idiosyncratic mannerisms, kicked the toxic waste dump into turbo. (Thanks to Sora 2, Abraham Lincoln is now a Super Bowl winner and Kobe Bryant has baked 6–7-themed cookies for a disapproving Martin Luther King Jr.) The Kirkverse—or KAU (Kirk Alternative Universe), as some call it—is populated by terrifyingly lifelike clips of Kirk portrayed as the man who died in a so-called “goonicide” after he was filmed masturbating in public.

I’ve identified four main categories of Kirkslop.

Musician Charlie

People seem to take particular joy in mutating this man, who spent his life railing against progressivism, into the antithesis of his straight-edge vibe: An artist—madly tattooed rapper, metrosexual indie boy, cutesy PC Music affiliate. Part of this may be a reaction to Kirk’s attitude toward some of this music when he was alive; he once infamously declared that “it’s time to stop listening to rap and this degenerate hip-hop stuff and go back to the music that built our civilization.”

• People call him “Lil Kirk” and ask newcomers to name their “top five Lil Kirk” songs.
• There is even a plugg song called “tha kirk” and a deranged “tribute” song by the third-generation sigilkore child ocelot that samples Kirk’s anti-rap screed.

Agarthan Charlie

Kirk’s been crowned the gatekeeper of Agartha, a mystical kingdom that some far-right conspiracy theorists believe exists inside a hollow Earth.