By Charlie Warzel

Arguably the most remarkable aspect of the aftermath of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination is how irrelevant its actual perpetrator was to the immediate discourse. I saw the finger-pointing online even before I saw the news that Kirk had been shot. At that point, there was hardly any information about the incident—let alone details about the shooter or a motive. Yet there was plenty of blame to go around: Elon Musk posted on X that “the Left is the party of murder,” even before Kirk’s shocking death had been confirmed. Others blamed the shooting on the media, NGOs, and billionaire Democrat fundraisers.

This is the algorithmic internet at work. It abhors an information vacuum and, in the absence of facts or credible information, gaps are quickly filled with rage bait, conspiracy theorizing, doomerism, and vitriol.

If one thing has united the discourse in the past 48 hours, …

(Read it all here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-assassination-online-reaction/684201/?gift=bQgJMMVzeo8RHHcE1_KM0ZY_8qLLAueznc8lg3WkEto)