Close All Tabs - Groypers, Doxxing and Charlie Kirk’s Death as a S***post

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

What is a “groyper?” The term began trending on Google in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. Kirk, the right-wing podcaster and Turning Point USA co-founder, was fatally shot last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University.  Major news outlets quickly reported that authorities had found bullet casings engraved with a series of seemingly inscrutable messages, including, “Notices bulge, OwO, what’s this?”;  “Hey fascist! Catch!” followed by arrow symbols; “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao”; and “If you read this you are gay LMAO.” For most, the phrases seemed bizarre and incomprehensible. But for Aidan Walker, an internet researcher and meme historian, the messages told a clear story which many media outlets had missed. On today’s episode, Aidan joins Morgan to break down what the messages may tell us about the alleged shooter, how a fringe extremist group known as “groypers” might be involved, and what the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death portends for our political and media landscapes.   Guests:  Aidan Walker, independent writer, content creator, and internet culture researcher Further reading/listening:  a theory of groyperfication — Aidan Walker, How To Do Things With Memes Suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting texted roommate he 'had enough of his hatred,' officials say — Doha Madani & Corky Siemaszko, NBC News Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme — Ryan Broderick & Adam Bumas, Garbage Day Wall Street Journal quietly walks back false claim Charlie Kirk shooter had pro-trans messages on his bullets — Christopher Wiggins, Advocate  Conservatives Are Doxxing Innocent People Over Charlie Kirk — Taylor Lorenz, User Mag  Charlie Kirk Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown — Ken Klippenstein, Ken Klippenstein  Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key Political Issues — Ashley Ahn & Maxine Joselow, The New York Times Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ — Chris Stein, The Guardian  Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at [e-mail] You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts, and also helps edit the show. Sound design by Chris Egusa. Original music, including our theme song, by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Chris Egusa. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Turning Point USA co-founder was fatally shot on stage last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk's death has become a major cultural flashpoint. For many, it's become an opportunity to point fingers at the other side. It's also a moment that has shown a spotlight into corners of internet culture that don't normally make it to quote, normie news. We're going to dive into that in today's episode. But first, let's go through what we know so far. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported that authorities found ammunition engraved with expressions of, quote, transgender and anti-fascist ideology. The description came from an unverified internal law enforcement bulletin. Early reporting did not include any photos of the bullets

or the precise words engraved on the bullet casings. LGBTQ-organized. organizations like Glad, Human Rights Campaign, and the Transjournalist Association spoke out against using the phrase transgender ideology because it's often used to attack marginalized people for political gain. Trans communities faced an onslaught of harassment and violent rhetoric after that report came out. The next day, on Friday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced that authorities had identified and arrested a suspect. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. In a press conference, Governor Cox also detailed the messages engraved on the bullet casings linked to Robinson.

Inscriptions on a fired casing read, notices, bulges, capital O-W-O, what's this question mark? The messages on the unfired casings said, hey fascist, catch, with a few arrow symbols, and Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella, Chow, Chow, Chow. The final unfired casing said, If you read this, you are gay, L-M-A-O. These engravings all contain references to memes and video games. In the days that followed, political pundits, extremism experts, and mainstream news organizations tried to decipher the engravings. And through that, explained Robinson's alleged political motives.

The OUO is a mistype of W-O-W. Really, I would need to actually see these words in the way that they are on the bullet case, in the gun to make a proper interpretation. But just knowing what those words are, I'm kind of overwhelmed with how immature it all sounds and that there is no really chronic theme. That's a piece of evidence that is not normal. And so it shows there was some kind of intent there to deliver a message. But also some of these things don't make a lot of sense. And it almost seems like there might be some type of psych problem here. As of this recording, we've learned that Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder and could face the death penalty. The court documents contained messages

from Robinson to his roommate slash romantic partner, referring to Charlie Kirk. Robinson wrote, I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. He also said that messages he engraved in the bullets were, quote, mostly a big meme. Quote, if I see notices bulges, Owoo on Fox News, I might have a stroke. This information wasn't public when we start started making this episode. But even with the limited details we had, we knew exactly who to call to help make sense of it. When the bullet casing kind of remark came out, I had several people on my TikTok commenting saying, Aidan, talk about this. This is your moment. Aidan Walker has been on the show a few times now. He's an internet culture researcher and meme historian who breaks down these trends

on TikTok as Aiden, et cetera, and on his substack, how to do things with memes. I just sort of felt It was something to analyze and discuss because I think there's a whole part of our politics that people just aren't getting because they aren't online enough. Many of the conversations around the alleged shooter's digital footprint are laced with an undercurrent of trying to find a sigh to blame. But internet subcultures don't always fall into neat little boxes that are clearly defined on the political spectrum. Today, we're diving into the memes and more.

What do these references really mean? What context is missing in all of these discussions? And the question that's been Googled countless times in the last few days. What's a groper? This is close all tabs. I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives.

Let's get into it. Kicking off this deep dive like we always do, we open a new tab. What do the engravings? Mean. Before we dive in with Aiden, I want to run through and explain each of the references found on the ammunition. First, the inscription on the fired casing. Here's Utah Governor Spencer Cox at the press conference again. Notices bulges, capital O-W-O, what's this question mark? This seems to be a reference to a 10-year-old meme that makes fun of furry roleplay. The image depicts a grotesque caricature of two sweaty, overweight men hiding behind their computer screens.

A stark contrast to the cutesy, delicate language they're using in their messages to each other. It's a pretty mean-spirited meme. Notice as bulge refers to a man's crotch, and O-W-O is an emoticon, often used to express being pleasantly surprised. The O's are the wide, round eyes, and the W is the mouth, not to be confused with the more coy-woo, UWU. Nowadays, these emoticons are used ironically. Altogether, the phrase has spread to other parts of the internet and has been used in other memes as a joke about the cringiest message you could send to another person.

Then there are the engravings on the unfired bullets. Hey, fascist, exclamation point, catch exclamation point. Up arrow symbol, right arrow, and symbol, and three down arrow symbols. The arrows are not exactly a hidden code. This is likely a reference to the video game Hell Divers 2, a first-person shooter released last year. This series of command drops a giant bomb on any enemies, and in some corners of the internet, has been used as a meme to denote the end to an argument. These are the lyrics to an Italian folk song,

known as a symbol of resistance to fascism during Benito Mussolini's reign. But gamers and other young people might be more familiar with the version of the song from Far Cry 6, the 2021 video game. And then there's the last inscription. If you read this, you are gay, L-M-A-O. This wording echoes classic homophobic trolling. Aiden says he clocks that right away. I know kind of the first headlines I saw about the bullet casings said that they like referenced transgender, idiot And that was before we knew this specific phrasing. And then when the specific phrasing came out,

and it was that one of the four bullets said, if you're reading this, you're gay, LMAO, I sort of totally saw that was bullshit. How would you describe these meme references? I would describe them as deeply ironic, which is the phrase many have used, but also deeply nihilistic, in that they come from a place where the very idea of like saying something sincerely just doesn't exist. They're very old as well. The first one, the furry one, talk about like Owoo or Owo, the pronunciation is up for debate. That's a very old.

That's like a decade old. These are from deep corners of the internet that are kind of illegible to anybody who has not spent a significant portion of their life in these online spaces and made me think of ways that a lot of these dank corners of the internet, which are actually pretty influential and actually very old. It's not some new thing that the kids are doing now. how deep they've gone and how, you know, this probably isn't the last thing like this to reference some arcane meme.

We don't know the specifics of Tyler Robinson's ideology, but do the cultural references on the bullet casing shed any light? So I think what the bullet casings tell us is that he's not plugged into the same conversation about what's going on in the world as you or I would be. Whether that conversation is mainstream media, you know, you're reading a newspaper, you listen to a podcast like this, or it's a bit more online, like you're doom-scrolling Twitter as a normal person would, or you're on Instagram or TikTok. I think these memes come from an image board-heavy culture, from kind of a private

discord chat kind of culture, and not to say those cultures are always dark or insidious in any way, but there means that the general internet, they show up, but they're not, you know, the entry-level sorts of memes. And it makes me think that left-rightly, right, doesn't really adhere here in those spaces. This is a type of politics that's sort of gone past the conversation we're having and is just a purely nihilistic sort of thing. Again, in the messages cited in the court documents charging Robinson with aggravated murder, he allegedly told his roommate slash romantic partner that the engravings were, quote,

mostly a big meme. I think we live in a time where our politics is already so scrambled. We're barraged in this media environment of things happening constantly. And the left-right kind of division of one party wants big government, one party wants small government. That isn't really relevant to the lives that I think most Americans are leading are the things they're worried about from or about their government. And I think we live with such sort of this ambient layer of tension and violence going on in this country, you know, National Guard in the streets and so on, that this act to me seems to be. about, you know, it's a shitpost. It's about responding to that, mirroring that back. If the world's

given you that, you give that back to the world. And to me, the bigger issue is like, reality. You know, it's like the IRL world. This is more an act against just reality or just other people or society at large. You said that this killing was a shitpost. Can you elaborate on that? So a shitpost is a post that does not contribute to the conversation, that does not follow the rules of the conversation. One that sort of intentionally disrupts. Sometimes shit posts like kind of gently spread misinformation for comedic effect. Sometimes shit posts are just sort of a form of trolling. But in general, it's kind of you just break the rules in the frame of the conversation to, A, insert yourself and whoever you are into it. and sort of be just, I guess, to protest the idea that, you know, this thing should make sense or that, you know, the people talking about it have any kind of authority or knowledge or standing.

And so by saying this killing was a shitpost, I think that it makes this intervention into our political discourse, which I think for young people in Zumers, Charlie Kirk, was a really major figure into it and just refuses to recognize it as coherent. comes in there like the troll comes into the forum and disrupts the entire conversation, accelerates whatever is happening, radicalizes it, just sort of comes into wreak havoc and destruction. And the impact of that and the appeal of it is to makes the shitposts the center of attention and derails the posting of other people and sucks up the oxygen in the room. Right. Posting for the sake of posting without necessarily deeper meaning.

Yeah, posting for the sake of posting and to just like attack meaning. You know, there's a lot of shit posters that I like personally who are doing interesting work. They're really essential to mean culture and that kind of approach to the internet is essential, you know, to say this doesn't make sense, you know, or we can fool you into saying this because you were prepared to say it anyway. But taking that sort of ethic of discussion and deranging it in this way, I think is really disgusting. And so I don't, it's purposefully incoherent is kind of what I meant by it being a shitpost. And that's its effect. In the search for the alleged shooter's motives, some people

theorized a connection to a white nationalist, alt-right subculture, known for its incendiary practices and very online community. While that theory seems more and more unlikely, the conversation around it is evergreen, as more young people fall into these kinds of groups. That's a new tab. We'll get into that after this break. Support for a key QBD podcast comes from Xfinity. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, your guaranteed five years of reliable Wi-Fi with our best equipment,

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Charlie Kirk was known for his inflammatory comments. Joy Reed and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson and Katanji Brown Jackson. They're coming out and they're saying, I'm only here because of affirmative action. Yeah, we know you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. you had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken somewhat seriously. In addition to his anti-DEI stance, Kirk also opposed immigration, reproductive rights, gun control, vaccine requirements, LGBTQ rights, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the existence of climate change. He was a close ally of Donald Trump and was often lauded as the face of the new generation of Christian nationalism.

But he was incredibly divisive. He was even criticized by other conservatives who said that some of his speech was too extreme. But another faction, led by an even more far-right influencer, criticized Kirk for his mainstream conservative appeal. Some people online have questioned whether the references on the bullet casings could have some connection to this alt-right subculture. To be clear, though there's a lot we still don't know about the specifics of the alleged shooter's beliefs, it seems that his politics leans left of Kirk's. Still, the Groyper's and their beef with Charlie Kirk are a noteworthy part of the context of this story. And that's a new tab. What is a Groyper? So Groypers are the fringiest fringe of online right-wing culture on these image boards, 4chan, Reddit, all the other platforms.

Their de facto leader is the streamer, Nick Fuentes, who famously dined with Trump and Kanye West. Gropers are the people Kanye started hanging out with when he kind of took that turn. And the Grapers are extremely online, and they're essentially neo-Nazis, but it's this sort of shit-poster, edge lord attitude of transgressing any boundary and really having no regard for other people. Their moniker is Gryper, who is a mutation of Pepe the Frog into a toad. but kind of a bulbous, kind of diabolical-looking toad. Pepe the Frog is a relatively innocent webcomic character of a sad, green frog, who was adopted as a mascot by 4chan users and the far right back in 2015.

Over the last decade, Pepe has evolved, taking on various costumes and forms. This more monstrous iteration, Groiper, has been adopted by an even more extreme group. And they call themselves a Groyper. army, and they famously feuded with Charlie Kirk. Let's talk about the Royber Wars of 2019. Who led them? What happened? And why is this subculture being shoved into the limelight now? So to step into the time machine back to 2019, you have Turning Point USA run by Charlie Kirk, which essentially is an operation that takes donor money from right-wing sources and Kirk's network of college chapters and youth influencers and brings these two things together to stage these massive events.

that are all about bringing young people to the right-wing cause, and in a way, laundering ideas and make them a bit more palatable to the younger generation. Meanwhile, the Groypers are here on these image boards posting radical stuff, many of them extremely young, like 13, 14-year-olds. And the Groypers decide that Kirk is not radical enough for them or that Kirk is purposefully downplaying his radicality in order to get mainstream appeal. And so the Groyper's decide to do this campaign of trolling him

By showing up at these events where people are asking Kirk a question, he's like, debate me type things that he would do, and asking questions that, you know, are goading Kirk into saying something more extreme, more white supremacist, more anti-Semitic than what he was already saying. And this Graper War, they come to his different events. They attack it. This all unfolds in 2019. And the leader of it is Nick Fuentes, who's up on these streams, you know, calling his army

onto Charlie Kirk, essentially. Can you talk about what these memes and the way they engage in internet culture represents beyond like clear cut partisan lines? Yeah. So it's unconfirmed that Robinson was a griper, but I'm certain in the internet spaces he frequented, he heard about it. He posted about it. He knew about it, I'd imagine. Just based off the nicheness of those memes that are on the cartridges and other things we've learned about him. And what these means overall show is Pepe the Frog is a collective self-portrait for a bunch of things. posters. And as a collective self-portrait, Pepe is interesting. You know, you can dress him up to represent whatever identity group, whatever, you know, subgroup you want to have him be, put him in a cowboy hat, he's Western, put him in a Confederate uniform, he's that. But Pepe is also a very sad frog. He's crying or about to cry. He's very wistful. And often he's depicted as sort of very small and in these situations where he's like a little boy or something. And so I think that is another way

this community scrambles our sense of how politics usually work because you expect the fascists to wear boots and be really tough and try to look like a soldier or something. But for these guys, it's all about they're just little guys. They're sad. They're melancholy. And the draw is if you two are lonely, isolated, fragile in the world somehow, come here and you can feel strong. And the price of that is you just reject everything that is normal and coherent in the world. And on the other side of that complete rejection, which you perform by, you know, posting the horrible meme or the, you know, the hateful slur, on the other side of that, you find this brotherhood of violent freaks who will take you in. And I think that's often the pitch that we see with these sort of far right online

communities like Gorbors. I mean, the alt-right and other, like you said, extremist communities have really taken advantage of that kind of sentiment. Can you talk about that? Can you talk about the deep emotional place that this online nihilist culture comes out of? So it's a deep emotional place that has existed long before the internet. You know, people have felt alienated, lonely, angry by society since we had society. And researchers say that one of kind of the key triggers or amplifiers of radicalization is, you know, young people with nothing to do and no hope. And I think looking at the last 10 years of culture, there is a lack hope happening. The economy is bad. People feel isolated. People feel like systems aren't

working for them. People on both the right and the left feel a certain kind of uncertainty, anxiety, and just disillusionment with traditional narrators telling the stories of our lives. Those no longer seem to go here and make sense. And so I think when you are a young person who is confused, who is lost, who doesn't have the support structures that you need, Often the net that catches you is this like an in-cell form or gropers or something online that really does not have your best interests at heart. And really, if anything, encourages whatever pathology you might be experiencing. In the mainstream, whether on your everyday X-feed or the traditional news media,

there has been so much debate over which side of the political spectrum Robinson fell on. But Aidan said he found this kind of speculation counterproductive. The conversation is counterproductive to me for two reasons. The first is that it's such a motivated conversation, particularly from the right wing. You know, before anything at all was known, they were saying this was, you know, a left-wing radical. And there's a very clear reason why they were saying that because they have a political agenda and they have certain people on the left or liberals that they want to crack down on. And this is the pretense to do that.

But the second less kind of specific reason that it feels counterproductive to me is that we're past a point in our political conversation where it's about, you know, do you think that government programs should be smaller or larger? We're at a point where most people are growing up in this context of, you know, disaster and crisis. And the things motivating their politics are resentments and, you know, kind of triggers that aren't really, mappable to someone from like 1995. Like the Republican coalition is not these days about, you know, fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, religious folks. The Democrat, you know, coalition is not necessarily like, you know, the post-civil rights coalition that existed. The reasons people are in these different camps or actually most Americans are not in either camp at all would define themselves as

independent is totally different than it was in the past. And I think I'm, I find myself kind of struggling to find what then the new categories are because it's one thing, like I say in my videos, be like, oh, it's not a left-right issue. Then people are like, but then what is it? And I think that project of figuring out what it is, you know, what it feels like, what it means is something that, you know, all of us are going to have to kind of go through. In wake of the shooting, social media sites and messaging platforms are under increased scrutiny. Both law enforcement and private civilians are monitoring the posts, videos, and comments that other people make about Charlie Kirk, taking action against anyone who criticizes the very controversial influencer.

How will this change the way people engage with each other online? We're opening one last tab. Discord and Doxing. The government is cracking down on online activity revolving around Charlie Kirk's death. In an ex post last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on military personnel and Department of War civilian employees who celebrate or mock Kirk's death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau threatened to revoke visas of anyone making similar posts.

The FBI is reportedly monitoring the messaging platform discord. Even people who haven't explicitly celebrated or mocked the killing are being harassed and targeted for what they posted online. opinion columnist Karen Attia announced that she had been fired from the Washington Post for social media posts in the wake of Kirk's death that called out, quote, political violence, racial double standards, and America's apathy toward guns. It's not just the government monitoring speech online. Private civilians are doing it too. An anonymously run website titled The Charlie Kirk Data Foundation has created a searchable database of people who've criticized Kirk online. Individual social media users have doxed others over their posts about Kirk, publicly posting their real names, phone numbers, home addresses, and other private information to target and harass them. All of this, from the government surveillance to the civilian-led doxing, is a serious threat to free speech on the internet. Here's Aidan again.

I'm extremely concerned about it. I'm more concerned about like a chilling effect on speech or on our online discourse and memes than I am with. this escalating cycle of political violence. I mean, the two go hand in hand, of course. But I think stuff like, you know, J.D. Vance taking over the hosting chair for Kirk's show and using it to, you know, call out NGOs and liberal donors and leftists, I think that crackdown is something that can have much deeper effects and hurt a lot of people. And I also think that in an age where we're maybe seeing an authoritarian consolidation, calling for bans on the internet, calling for restrictions on the internet. The context that's going to enter into is I think that

will lead us down the dark road. Last question. What is the current conversation missing by not understanding the deeply online context of this entire case? I think the biggest thing the current conversation is missing is that it's really not the current conversation. People who read newspapers report for them, you know, follow this stuff from kind of a newsbrained normie side of Twitter. I don't think they realize that they're just one niche among many niches on the internet. They're a pretty big niche and a pretty important niche, of course. But I don't think there's really an understanding that, you know, CNN is no longer a narrator

of American life. And not just from a partisan kind of perspective that really right when people are really left when people don't listen to CNN anymore. Totally normal people don't listen to CNN anymore because it isn't legible to them. It doesn't make sense to them. It talks in a way that, you know, seems to not acknowledge them or seems to treat them in a way that isn't that respectful or doesn't keep up with the times. And I worry that the mainstream conversation, it isn't mainstream, but it still thinks of itself as mainstream. Well, Aidan, thank you so much for joining us and for always explaining these corners of the internet. Thank you so much for having me, Morgan, and for inviting me on.

It's always a joy. And with that, let's close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan's Sung. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Kueva. Chris Agusa is our senior editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Cheyenne, who's KQED's director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris AguSah. Chris Agusa. Sound designed by Chris Agusa. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from

Mahas Sanad. Katie Springer is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Tovin-Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQ80 podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. Keyboard keyboard keyboard, K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gatoron Red switches. want to hear from you. Email us at close all tabs at kQED.org. Follow us on Instagram at close all tabs pod or TikTok at close all tabs. And join our Discord. We're in the close all tabs channel at discord.gg slash kQED. Thanks for listening. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One credit union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 credit union in your best interest.

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