Bulwark Takes - Did Internet Troll Culture Fuel a Killer? (w/ Ryan Broderick)

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Tim Miller speaks with Ryan Broderick about the extremist internet culture connected to the Charlie Kirk assassination. They examine how meme language, online subcultures, and accelerationist networks are radicalizing young men and driving political violence.  Read more from Ryan Broderick at garbageday.email/

Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with BudMGM Casino. Check out our hottest exclusive. Friends of one with Multi-Drop. Once even more options. Play our wide variety of table games. Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here. Up next, I've got an interview with my guy, Ryan Broderick, who's probably the best person out there, or at least my favorite, covering kind of internet culture

and the intersection with politics. And so I went to interview him about the internet culture that the Charlie Kirk assassin was ensconced in, as reflected in the carvings that he did on the bullets, that ended up, at least one of them, ended up killing Charlie Kirk. And I think it's really important. and invaluable conversation for a lot of reasons. But since that conversation, we have had some more breaking news on what the motive might

have been based on this report from authorities and the release of some text messages between the shooter and his trans roommate. Among the texts, he writes, why did I do it? I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. So it's important to just say clearly, there was some ideological motivation here, clearly, related to Kirk's speech. I mean, he says it as clear as day in the text to his roommate. There have been some people that have tried to claim that that wasn't the case, but I don't know how much more evidence you need than that.

in addition to that he also talks about the meme culture that we get into in this interview and he talks about how the engravings that he does on the bullets he says the fucking messages are mostly a big meme so if I see notices bulge uwu on Fox News misspelled I might have a stroke so it also was a troll and it also demonstrates that that he was you know, kind of influence and steeped in this online meme culture. So I think there's next conversation where Ryan kind of educates us about that world and we go over some thoughts if you're a parent and you think you might have a son that is potentially heading down a radicalization pipeline.

And we talk about kind of the broader culture of young men and where things are going and how there were some other shooters, other recent mass shooters. who have used similar meme cultures and were maybe involved in a different subculture that Ryan lays out. Like for all those reasons, this is a super, super important interview and I hope you stick around for it. I just wanted to say we did get into some speculation about this shooter that is a little out of date now that we have the actual text messages between him and his roommate. So with that, stick around from my man, Ryan Broder. Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here. And I'm excited to bring on Ryan Broderick.

the author of the Garbage Day newsletter and he's got a podcast called Panic World and they both cover internet culture and he wrote a great great newsletter about what we kind of know about the shooter and the Charlie Kirk assassination and the markings are on the bullets and these kind of internet subcultures they live in and over the weekend I was watching all of these gray beard pundits on TV argue about like whose rhetoric was the most inciting to violence when the shooters probably never heard of any of them. And I was like, I need to get somebody on that actually knows the world that he was steeped in.

And I appreciate you coming on to do it, right? Thanks for having me. Yeah, happy to try to explain what's going on sort of the best we can, I guess. Yeah, we're still learning. This step is still developing. And so we'll talk a little about the shooter. I kind of want to broaden it out as well. Let's start with just, I guess, what we know in this case.

And, you know, there are these markings on the bullets. Initially, you know, there is some, some report. reporting or whatever that this is that there were transgender markings that seems to be wrong maybe not a thousand percent wrong which we'll get into uh but like mostly wrong and then there was some lefty reports so like that the bullets had some other stuff on it that they were wrong explain like what what we to the best of our knowledge like what we think this guy was getting at with all the various screeds sure yeah let's go bullet by bullet because they are they are weirdly dense i suppose so the bullet that reportedly struck and killed charlie kirk had written on it uh notices bulge

uvoo what's this you know some variation of that which is a like it's a cringe post it's like a thing that has been passing around the internet forever it dates back to like furry role play but it it doesn't mean that robinson was a furry he's 22 years old he's only known an internet where this post has been just part of viral ephemera. The other bullets, the unfired casings, they had... Can we just talk about this? Because this is the one thing that I'm just curious what you thought, because I saw a bunch of chatter about this.

Well, A, I made a joke on Twitter that we should explain about how people, if you don't know what Oulu is, you really shouldn't be talking about what this guy's world is. So explain to people what OU is first. Oulu is like how you would pronounce, how you would show in text like a furry, face like the w is supposed to be like a cat or a dog mouth and then the eyes are like if they're horny basically it's a you would see it with like the word like glomping i don't know if you know

what glomping is but it's it's a whole part of like furry uh text patterns that you know would get screenshot by places like reddit and fortune and just pass around um and yes kind of like a cute it's cute it's kind of like how the gaze would send that emoticon with the big eyes i call that the bottom emoji it's kind of like cute gay this is like a cute furry kind of version of that and so this is my question about like it's there's maybe some transgender like the notices bulge like furry emoticon like that could be actually related to somebody like seeing a furry or a woman and like noticing that they have a penis right i mean you could use it that way it doesn't it doesn't have any connection like the original context doesn't have any connection it's it's just like you're

having cyber sex and it's just like it's a really embarrassing uh like example of cyber sex basically it there are a lot of trans people in the furry community but it it's not really like it doesn't point to anything specific i guess maybe we'll do this at the end but like if you if you if it ties the other ones but like what could possibly like a cyber sex carving have to do with Charlie Kirk, do we think? It's supposed to be funny. All of it is just a troll. That's how I sort of see it.

The other bullets are a little more specific, but all of them taken together and make me think that this was literally to make fun of this very conversation we're having right now. Yeah, great. Well, I'm just, I know that I'm being chugie. I'm trying as hard as I can

and not be Bryant Gumbull in the famous 1994 Today show clip where he's like, what is the internet? But it's like the only, unfortunately, this is the world we've been given. I know. I totally am with you. And there is like it's worth discussing. But I mean, if you if you want, I can get into the other three because I think it'll be a better picture. Yeah. So the other three unfired bullets, one of them is a reference to the game Hell Divers, which like you play as like a space fascist and it triggers the most powerful

attack in the game. The second bullet is a reference to Bella Chow in an Italian anti-fascist folk song that's like sort of popular right now. And then the third one is literally just just trolling any sort of law enforcement agent that might be looking at this because it reads if you're reading this, you're gay LMAO. So if you take all of them together. I thought somebody else that the Bella Chow thing also might be in the video game or one of the video games or a different video game? Yeah, it's used in the video game Far Cry 6, but it's not like super prominent, but it could be that this kid's just like a gamer and like he's making references to it. But I don't know. If you look at all four bullets that law enforcement has released,

like it makes me think that he's he's making fun of anyone trying to figure out a motive by looking at the bullets yeah and it's iron like that it's steeped in irony right like that's essentially which is maybe something that the gen xers can can like attach to um right it's just like this is just an updated version of kind of irony culture mocking you know kind of mocking mainstream you know culture and like in a lot of times it's something that i as a sarcastic youth can relate to it's kind of like hiding behind like having to take like there's a risk that goes to taking something seriously right taking the world seriously and like a lot of this is like a lot of the culture these guys are in is just kind of mocking that really yeah it's it's the way young people i think have always spoken

but like right now it's very very popular online to just drench everything you're saying in four or five layers of irony so that nobody knows what you mean and so like i guess you know what you wonder is now as you kind of broaden it out and I don't know I don't think there's really anything use in any use in having you did like a long order SVU analysis of like what you think this person's specific person's ideology is but like it's important to kind of think about like the various online cultures like we us olds like we can understand like I understand the Michael J. Fox briefcase Republican that's going extinct right like you know I understand the magut the TPSA like red hat you know kind of whatever anti-immigrant culture warrior reporter report

Republican type archetype. I know Hassan Piker listening archetype. I know kind of a strivy left Pete Buttigieg fan archetype. These are the archetypes we all know. Like this world is like not really, you know, attached to any of that, right? Like it is sort of overlapping maybe in various ways. So you hear a lot about like black pilling, right, which is more like this. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So is that different? Like to me like black pilling and accelerationism. Some people who are listening to this have already tuned out. I'm like,

unfortunately we have to fucking care about this stuff. So, like, that's just where we are. Like, like, is like, to use words that are not internet culture words. Like,

one is, I'm nihilist. Like, you know, and I just, I just can't believe or care about any of this stuff. Like, fuck it.

And then the other is sort of like, anarchists, like chaos, like I want there to be chaos, right? Like, and maybe those overlap at times, but I don't know.

How do you, Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a horseshoe theory at play here. I mean, I would, I've gotten pushback from my own audience by calling this nihilistic. And I understand the argument, which is like you can't really call yourself a nihilist if you're going to carry out like an act of political violence. Like you care about something enough to do it. So I get that. So the term I've been using is accelerationist. And if you read a lot of these different young spreeshooters, young extremists, you know, what they're writing about and what they're talking about online, they want to cause chaos and and hurt people. to speed up what they see is the downfall of society, the downfall of America, because they don't like it. Like, they think it's cringe or it's not helping them or it's broken already. And so it's a real, like, I'm going to destroy my toys temper tantrum mindset. And, yeah, black peeling would be a really good internety way to describe it. Like, they don't care about anything, but they care about that. Like, what are some other things that this, like, overlaps with?

If you're like looking at, like, trends online, like porn, you know what I mean? like other like gaming porn like what are some other things that are in that space i think it's like it's it's absolutely you know on offshoot of what we saw with like in cell ideology in the 2010's this idea in fact it's almost sort of like the next step it's it's like if if you're so angry at the world and not getting laid that you're going to hurt people uh and then that doesn't work then like you're going to go like even further so it's it's it's a total uh rejection of any kind of help, any kind of structure, any kind of ideology, which in itself is a ideology, and then you get all kinds of weird meta conversations about it. But it's very linked to in-cell

stuff. It's very linked to far-right politics, the Groyper movement, which you mentioned earlier. Like they dabble in this a bit. There's also like a whole, like, branch of like weird AI guys that are accelerationists and they want to use AI to cause the downfall of society. It's a real widespread phenomena we're seeing right now. Let's dig in on just that Groyper thing really quick that we've both mentioned. So my colleague Will Sumner who follows this stuff

a lot like more in, you know, kind of far right world than in, you know, some of the the non-political corners of internet culture that you monitor. He has been kind of pushing back on the idea. Like there have been some on the left who I think have wanted it would feel good to be like, Like, this is an inner right war.

And like this guy was a Groyper and he didn't like that Charlie Kirk was pro-Israel. And like it was really something like that. And Summer is like, well, again, we don't really know because he hasn't spoken yet and there's no manifesto. But like based on the information we have, like maybe there is some overlap between like in-cell black pill culture and then the kind of groeper culture. But the Groyper's have like an actual ideology. You know, say what you mean about what was the Lovsky line. I say what we want about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it's an ethos.

Like, at least the groithers at least have an ethos, right? Yeah, I agree with Will. I haven't seen a lot of hard evidence that this was connected to the Gryper movement. Obviously, there are, like, the reason people are saying that is because Nick Fuentes, the live streamer, was sending his followers to disrupt Charlie Kirk events specifically. That was a thing that has been happening for several years. And there's a lot of infighting. The Groypers, as you said, they do have an ideology.

They are largely, uh, Christo-fascist, you know, Trad-Cath, kind of conservatives who want a like totally isolationist America, a brain, you know, based on white nationalism. It's very specific. And they don't like what they see as mainstream Republicans because they want a more extreme version. And I don't think one of them would be using a bullet that has Bella Chow written on it even ironically. It doesn't, it doesn't have any of the calling cards of the Graper movement. We also like, to my knowledge, there hasn't been. a Groper, like, political violence incident. I haven't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, the, the, the, the, if you're

looking for, something, people used to ask me this about going to TPSA events and going to grover stuff, like, are you worried, are you scared? And I was like, in other ways, this is now, we're getting into kind of armchair psychology, but like, the types of people that are drawn to, like, going to political events have, like, a sociability, yes, about them that is different from kind of the loners that do this sort 100%. The thing that I sort of have gravitated towards, if we want, is just be a little speculative just a little bit. I've been reporting on what's called the Com Network and the 764 Terra Cell offshoot. Oh, please tell people about this. Yeah. So this, this to me is like

ringing a lot of bills. And once again, I don't want to be super speculative, but I think it's worth noting. So the Com Network. Even if this guy is not part of this group, we've seen some of this. We have. It's good for people to know about it. Yeah, they've been connected to at least three different mass shootings this year, and they are accelerationists. They sort of believe in gamifying, you know, mass violence. They network on Discord and Telegram, and they create like a structure where you carry out violent attacks to impress the other members, and then they use, you know, all kinds of ways of, like, you know, forcing them or pressuring each other to do this.

And they love to confuse law enforcement with political ideologies. The shooter in Minneapolis, I believe, had, you know, things written on the bullets like, I'm the wokeer baby, why so querious, and a bunch of other meany stuff on it? And that lines up more with what we've seen with the bullets. Now, that said, does that group have an ideology? Accelerationism in the sense of just like, just pure, you know, just messing with people, hurting people. Yeah.

And that's horseshoey, right? Like, some of them are like kind of Nazi-ish and some of them or whatever. They have connections to larger, more well-established, like, neo-Nazi groups. Yeah, but it's, it's, think of it more of like a, I don't know, like, you ever see them, you ever see the show The Leftovers? Yeah, sure, yeah. You know, like how all the teenagers and leftovers are, like, weird nihilists that play, like, choking games in the basement because, like, nothing means anything.

That's how I kind of think of these kids. Like, they see themselves as, like, the end of history, and they're just, like, waiting for the world to end, and they want to, like, push it along. I have a follow up to that, but I'm going to save it for the last question, because I have two. I lied earlier when I said I don't want to be Brian Gumbull. I have two like basic Today Show like questions that I think we should at least address. One is one of the bullets said, hey, fascist catch.

So if I'm like a Fox News watching person that has stumbled on this video, I'm going, these guys are like trying to define some like, you know, gray ideology when it's just like it's on the bullet. Like the guy said he was a fascist, leftist, like Democratic. call, you know, mega-fascists, like, it's not as complicated as you guys think. What would you say to that? It's hard to answer. I mean, in the game that it's referencing, you play as fascist, and the players know that, and there's all kinds of weird discourse about, like, whether they should be or shouldn't

be embracing that. And there's all kinds of stuff that you can get into if you want to go further there. But I don't know. if I wanted to cause as much political chaos as possible in America, that's what I would put on a bullet. Like, it's, it's,

it's not the, it's not the hard evidence that I would sort of point to to be like, this kid is an anti-fascist or something. It's possible. But it's too jokey. It feels too jokey. Yeah, to have that and then have the next thing be like the buttons you press or whatever to do the,

yeah. I'm so old that I thought the buttons at first were the Konami code, but it wouldn't fit on a bullet, I guess. All right. Brian Gumbo, question number two. We've got, I had a DM for, I was, I was tweeting about this. I was a DM from a friend who's a mom. And the mom's like, how do I, like, how would I figure out?

You know what I mean? Like, sometimes, this is like pretty hard to, to decipher, right? Like, between what is a kid that's just like, that just like likes video games, like versus like getting sucked into kind of this nihilist whatever accelerationist type culture like are there sign are they calling cards or they're you know whatever like things to look for i always compare it to like hooliganism like if you think of video games as a sport like there are people who will go to a soccer match and you know have a nice time and then there are people who are like hardcore neo-nazzi altrues that will burn down you know a mosque if their team loses that is what we're talking about here

within the world of video games and what makes it like more complicated is that most video games now have some version of the game where you can just talk to strangers. And so extremists know that they can get into those places and they can radicalize young people. So if you are, you know, I've had the same message from readers. Like if you're a concerned parent and you're trying to figure out like if your kids being radicalized

by the internet or whatever, the easiest thing is just like keep track of how they talk about women because it always starts with that or like minority groups or whatever. I think it gets harder when you're talking about the middle of the country where, you know, Tyler Robinson's family, They've told the media that they're all Trump supporters. So if you're starting from that, I think it's a lot harder to tell the difference between like a well-meaning Trump

supporter and someone who's completely brain-rotted by internet content. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe if they're younger kids is probably, I mean, like this guy's 22, so whatever. But like, I guess my thought would be for younger kids to your point is like maybe not having headphones when they listen to the street when they talk to strangers on the internet, maybe you should like if your kid is 10 and playing this game and talking to

strangers, maybe you should listen to what the strangers are saying to them. I don't want to go full Eric Adams here where I'm looking for a gun under the pillow. But, you know, I have a seven-year-old. So I'm just, I'm thinking about the young kids. No, I would go further. Like, if your kids like under 15, like, I mean, even that's a little young, they probably shouldn't just be talking to whoever they want on live service video games. I don't know. I grew up in a world where like the computer didn't move into my bedroom until like probably like college age.

Like I had the desktop. I'm the desktop generation. And like, I saw bad stuff on the internet. at least like there were people around. I don't know. That's good advice. All right, good.

I just, you know, I was like, I don't want to be too helicopter parenting here. No, I think that's reasonable. I think that's appropriate advice. All right.

Last thing. How fucked are we? I just, I'm listening to your, to that, you know, comment about like, just how deep,

you know, like the advanced in-cell culture. And it has me pretty decently despairing. Yeah, we're fucked. We, I'm less I mean obviously I'm concerned about like you know copycats and spreeshooters and all the rest of that but we've lived with that for 20 years at this point I'm I'm very very worried about how the Trump administration will continue to respond to this like personal freedoms being taken away I'm also worried about just like what this powder keg will inspire among other people you know like we are getting dangerously close to like some sort of purge style situation and that really concerns me America does not handle mass panic very well and we love to mass panic and we are in the midst of a very serious

one right now so i'm i'm really concerned about that and then i don't know it's i think it's funny i've done a lot of interviews about this this week and like no one ever brings up the guns and like i guess we're all just tired of talking about it but i i brought up the guns on the podcast i just you know that's just not your role no i know i hear you i think that like well it is i just meant like you know That's not the expertise I was bringing on for it. But I hear you. And to me, I just look at, I brought up the guns in the context of, like, you mentioned that family, that he steeped in this maga culture.

And for me, it's just like, I don't, this is something you wouldn't say because you immediately go to, like, what are gun laws and background checks? And I don't know. And I feel like we need to start to have more of a conversation about, like, what is appropriate for what you do with guns, like, in the public square? Like, the idea that you have an 11-year-old, like, doing a smiley picture. with the fucking massive semi. Like, it's just crazy to me.

You know, like, the analogy I made to it was like, I don't, I'm not in gun culture. I live in New Orleans, so we have a drinking culture. And so my child will probably drink before 21, which some people might judge, right? And maybe I will have a drink with her at some point before 21, probably so during Marty Graw. I'm not going to take a picture of her at age 12, like doing shots.

Doing a margarita at $1.00. Yeah, yeah, doing a cake stand. Like, and if I did, friends in New Orleans the other parents would be like bro like what the fuck are you doing like they would shame but I feel like in gun world like that is now like celebrated I don't know how to roll that back but I think that's a huge issue with this kid right like if this kid grew up where I grew up in suburban Denver never touched a gun you know could they have could even able to do that like I couldn't have done it so I mean I will spin this back to sort of my

realm which is that like terrorism is is a media project. I keep banging on about this. But, like, terrorists think about the media. They think about how the news, like, they used to think about how the newspaper or the TV would deal with what they've done. Osama bin Laden was very interested in how, like, television would transmit images of 9-11.

We are now in a world where the Internet is the dominant media platform. So if you're right now saying, like, the Internet caused this kid to go after Charlie Kirk, it's like that, this attack would have happened with different window dressing 30 years ago, 40 years ago and did in fact we've had instances like this before the internet just sort of creates the environment in which terrorism operates so now instead of thinking about how what you would do if i blew up a building would would news channels cover the footage you now you're thinking well i'm a targeted influencer because he's got to see if smartphones pointed at him already and that's i think how you should be thinking about this how your your listeners or audience should

be thinking about this which is like the internet creates the the structure the the super structure for this. It doesn't necessarily mean that this kid like absorbed evil ideas from the internet and then found a gun and took, you know, these things have always happened. It's just the internet now plays a much larger role and sort of understanding that is tough. And I think it's really tough for law enforcement and really tough for mainstream media to kind of wrap their heads around. All right, man, this has been really good. So come on back. Unfortunately, I'm worried that we'll have reason to talk again. I think so. I appreciate it. Everybody go check out his newsletter, Garbage Day.

It's great. And we'll be talking to you soon, man. Thank you so much.