Millions of Americans just witnessed a killing.

On Wednesday, scattered amid social media’s banal ephemera — tired memes, partisan agit-prop, and celebrity gossip — appeared a video of a young man speaking into a microphone, then recoiling from a gunshot to the neck.

For hours, this snuff film was impossible to escape, the atrocity autoplaying over and over, as clout chasers capitalized on the human mind’s helpless fascination with violence. It was a horrifying spectacle, made all the more so by the identity of the deceased — the conservative activist and influencer Charlie Kirk.

Kirk evangelized for causes that I despise. But through years of long-form commentary, he had endeared himself to millions of conservatives. Our brains did not evolve to distinguish parasocial relationships fro

See Full Page