In August, something peculiar started happening on TikTok.
Charlie Kirk, the political commentator and Turning Point USA founder who was killed in September of 2025, started appearing in increasingly distorted, nonsensical and sometimes morbid memes and short-form video clips.
Sepia-toned photos of him smiling were featured in nostalgic, autumn montages between cuts of pumpkin spice lattes and “Gilmore Girls.” His face was superimposed onto iCarly, Birkenstocks and Lana Del Rey. Users remixed Spalexma’s AI-generated "We Are Charlie Kirk" song, originally intended as a tribute, over other songs.
The memes have ramped up in the lead-up to the one-year anniversary of Kirk’s death on Sept. 10. It’s something users across social media are calling the “Kirkiversary.”
On its face, these posts may appear bizarre, tasteless and tone-deaf. But experts who study media and digital culture explain that as Gen Zers make sense of political violence, polarization and constant exposure to bad news, these posts are actually a good example of how many young people today use humor to distance themselves from the emotional weight of reality.
The Kirk content is a striking example of that, as his image and death have been absorbed into the same internet culture that turns celebrities, songs and TV shows into memes.
“Coping mechanism would be the most straightforward way of putting it,” says Joel Penney, an associate professor at Montclair State University who studies media and political communication. “There's all this anxiety around horrible things happening in our world… memes seem to be a way of making it easier to handle those kinds of issues by turning them into a joke.
How ‘Kirkification’ became larger than Charlie Kirk
In the weeks after Kirk’s death, employers censured and fired hundreds of people for sharing distasteful remarks about Kirk, while supporters sought to cast him as a cultural hero, donning his face on clothing and plastering his likeness across businesses and merchandise.
The initial memes surrounding Kirk were, in some ways, a blowback to that reaction.
“Memers on the internet immediately took his image and turned it into something else, literally into everything else. No matter who the celebrity movie character or meme character was, it became Kirkified,” explained meme researcher Aidan Walker in a TikTok. “Instead of turning into a justification for one group of Americans to take up arms against another, the image of Charlie Kirk turned into something that belonged to every American, to all of mankind.”
@aidanetcetera Happy #kirkiversary to all who celebrate We are Charlie Kirk, we carry the flame We'll fight for the Gospel, we'll honor his name We are Charlie Kirk, his courage our own Together unbroken, we'll make Heaven known
♬ original sound - Aidan Walker
For young people who increasingly encounter their news, entertainment and culture in the same online spaces, TikTok became an incubator for reactions, where unpolished moments and niche in-jokes can go viral quickly.
Kirk was already a part of that ecosystem. His short-form video content and public appearances produced a plethora of footage that could easily be clipped, repurposed and remixed, into preexisting memes and trending audios.
At some point, Kirk became an aesthetic, sound and meme, moving, Penney says, to the stage of self-referential humor.
By the first week of September, TikTok users were turning Kirk’s name into a growing lexicon of wordplay.
“I wanna wish you a merry Kirkmas, From the bottom of my heart,” reads one post on X. “Will you be my kirkentinte?” reads another TikTok.
Others have brought the viral moment into the real world. Georgetown University students faced blowback after anonymous posts promoted a proposed Charlie Kirk lookalike contest scheduled for Sep. 10.
Some posts seemingly have no meaning at all — one video using a kaleidoscopic effect repeated images of Kirk’s face into a seemingly endless tunnel that spirals toward the center of the screen.
“It sort of becomes the ‘in joke’ that young people are sharing with each other,” Penney says, adding that it reminds him of “Six Seven.” “Getting that the reference is stupid and has no meaning becomes the meaning.”
How Gen Z uses humor to cope
Gen Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, is struggling with decreasing social infrastructures and disillusioned with the state of their finances, a growing political divide and a job market overshadowed by AI. They’ve grown up watching wars, natural disasters and a pandemic unfold from their screens.
For some, absurdist humor has become a way to cope with that uncertainty, and to turn their anxiety into a shared experience.
Audrey Halversen, a political communication researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, says that unlike other forms of political expression, like protesting or getting involved in local politics, memes can serve as a low-barrier gateway, even for people who are otherwise politically disengaged.
“These memes can give young people a small sense of agency in a political system they otherwise see as being largely out of their control,” Halversen says, adding that they allow young people to channel “their feelings of anxiety, anger and disillusionment.”
But that detachment can have a cost. Halversen says that joking about a politically motivated murder likely also reflects a growing desensitization to political violence.
Chandler Crump, 21, a Republican who grew up in Kirk's movement, says he worries that Gen Z’s indifference to violence has increased since Kirk was killed.
Crump first met the political commentator at Turning Point USA's Young Black Leadership Summit in October 2018. He was 14 at the time and says Kirk inspired him to start an X handle and build an online platform. Over the years, they stayed in touch, and Crump continued going to Turning Point summits, eventually rising in the ranks enough to become a speaker at the events.
“There exist many people that want their ideology to prevail so desperately that they view those they disagree with as mortal enemies not deserving of life,” Crump says. “Conservatives my age are taking the ‘memes’ as a reminder that there is still more work to do.”
Rachel Hale’s role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach her at rhale@usatoday.com and @rachelleighhale on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, many Gen Zers are sharing odd posts. Here's why
