"The suspect in the Charlie Kirk shooting apparently likes video games. This makes him indistinguishable from over a billion other people across the planet, but in the eyes of some pundits and politicians, it's evidence of the corrupting influence of our current online culture. Asked about the radicalization of the person allegedly responsible for the assassination, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently blamed a lot of gaming going on and meme-ification on places like Reddit."
"They include, among other things, a famous stratagem input for Helldivers 2 and a reference to the Italian anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao, which some may know from singer Becky G's 2021 remix but others might be more familiar with from the WWII strategy game Hearts of Iron IV (or, more specifically, its By Blood Alone DLC). He noted that he had no idea what any of these things meant."
Bullet casings recovered near the Charlie Kirk shooting contained inscriptions referencing a Helldivers 2 stratagem input and a reference to the Italian anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao, which also appears in popular culture and WWII strategy games. The inscriptions went viral online. Some political figures and pundits attributed the suspect's radicalization to extensive gaming, Reddit subcultures, and the meme-ification of online culture. Many observers noted that gaming is extremely common globally and not inherently indicative of violent tendencies. Some commentators described the inscriptions and related memes as part of an incomprehensible, potentially dangerous mix of social-media accelerationism.
Read at kotaku.com
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