People online are making dark jokes about throwing ironic "Kirkiversary" parties on Sep. 10, the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death.
One poster for a Kirkiversary event gained over 1.3 million views and 187,500 likes on TikTok in late August. Kirk is shown passing a Solo Cup to the viewer in the AI-generated image – a method of meme creation that feels apt given the AI-ification of Kirk's face
that has dominated social media since his death."Be there," the TikTok post urges.
Hype for the Kirkiversary is real ... on social media at least. A search of the term on X yields countless viral tweets, not counting the other nicknames meme creators have given the date. "How I’m going to be monitoring the situation for memes on Kirktember 11th," reads
one viral Sep. 2 tweet. "Kirkentines's Day" is another competing portmanteau – with some asking a uniquely 2026 one-liner: "Will you be my Kirkentine?"
It's yet to be seen if Kirkiversary parties (or Kirkentine's dates) will become real-world events. Online irony has manifested into in-person gatherings before. But the build-up fits with the Charlie Kirk memes that have populated social media over the past year, ones that show how a public figure's image can spiral out of control when their likeness is hijacked by online humor.
how I’m going to be monitoring the situation for memes on kirktember 11th pic.twitter.com/xT6QJf9f1H
— kar (@bustitopen420) September 2, 2026
The "Kirkification" trend began soon after the right-wing activist was fatally shot at Utah Valley University on Sep. 10, 2025. TikTok commenters flooded the app with their AI-generated edits of famous memes, in which a celebrity's face was replaced with Kirk's.
"RIP Kirk, your sacrifice meant something," is the sarcastic caption of one viral TikTok video from October 2025, showing several "Kirkified" images of Michael Jordan and Bart Simpson, among others.
@ilovetigbittys Thank you🙏 #rip #charliekirk
♬ original sound - ⚕️
Cam Carey, a TikToker with over 292,000 followers on his account @ifyouseethisdonttellme, says he immediately posted a Charlie Kirk meme on social media after his coworker showed him a video of the shooting.
Carey says he's not a fan of Kirk's politics, and despite the gravity of his death, adds that "I think it's funny to make fun of him." He adds that conservatives "made fun of George Floyd in almost the exact same way for like five years … making edits of him, turning him into a cyber robot that carries out jobs for AI Jeffrey Epstein," referring to the George Droyd memes, created in 2024 to promote a meme coin.
"And then it happens to Charlie Kirk, and they're like, wait, no, you can't do it to us. That's not fair," adds Carey.
radical centrism is finding both kirkification and george droyd funny
— dan (@aristophaneet) December 29, 2025
Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College who specializes in memes and digital culture, suggests Kirkification leans into humor to make a particular point. Meme creators, he says, seem to believe that "he became a pseudo-martyr, but he didn't deserve it … They're taking action in that joking space, that ironic maneuvering of martyrdom."
Other posts are considerably darker. While mainstream media outlets avoided airing the clip of Kirk's assassination, the raw footage proliferated on X and Reddit, entering the flow of online discourse and memes that day. Meme creators ultimately blended real-world tragedy with internet-native irony.
Some even latched onto Kirk's final words – "Counting or not counting gang violence?" in response to a question about gun control. "D'you think the Kirk shooter was waiting for him to say something ironic before shooting him or was it a coincidence," asks one recent tweet with over 230,000 likes.
Kirk was already an internet culture figure before his death. He was known for embracing social media as a tool for political influence, seen through his podcast series and viral college campus debate clips.
In September 2024, he appeared in a Jubilee YouTube video originally titled "Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?" One clip shows him smiling after saying that "fetus" means "little human being" in Latin; it gained significant meme attention. One user on X drew him as a monster with a gummy, haunting smile.
"People have this desire to believe the internet to be another place," Cohen says, "Kirk represents the crossover between [that] other place and our place," the real world.
It's unclear what will happen in real-life on Kirkiversary day, but some on X are already predicting that it will "be a top 5 day on this app."
Carey says, "It's just another opportunity to mock him and mock his supporters." The TikToker said in a recent video about the day, "If you were not laughing along with us the day, the hour, the minute that it happened, you don't get to join in the festivities." The same sentiment has been echoed in viral tweets.
@ifyouseethisdonttellme only true patriots may sit at my dinner table #kirkaversary
♬ original sound - cameroncarey
Of course, there are more serious Kirkiversary events scheduled – one is a remembrance called Freedom Built to Last at Utah Valley University, organized by Kirk's organization Turning Point USA. Meanwhile, a tonally different "Charlie Kirk lookalike contest" has reportedly been organized at Georgetown University, according to Fox News, sparking outrage among conservative outlets.
It's difficult to know what will happen on Sep. 10. Cohen says the Kirkiversary is "unprecedented in terms of internet culture."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is the 'Kirkiversary?' Charlie Kirk's death is a meme, again
