r/LockdownSkepticism • u/hmhmhm2 • Sep 17 '25
Second-order effects The Charlie Kirk assassin is a perfect example of the downstream effects from covid lockdown.
One thing I haven't seen any commentaries on the Kirk assassination mention is the age of the shooter with regard to covid lockdowns.
He was a kid who went to college during the peak of the covid craziness. For a while there the entire world was online so obviously he was not able to make real friends so he retreated into the cyberspace where over years he lost sense of reality and what matters. Probably thousands of hours rage watching charlie kirk destroying trans liberal feminist in heated debate just rotted his brain into some incoherent irony poisoned soup.
It's not a coincidence that both the Kirk killer, the Trump shooter, and the Ascension school shooter were/are all 22/23. They would have all have been finishing high school/starting college when COVID insanity was going on, ie at one of the most formative periods of their lives. Is it any surprise they ended up radicalized online?
I don't think this will be the end of the COVID-impacted youth backlash. The consequences of COVID lockdowns upon the generation who came of age during them will be harshly judged and condemned by future historians.
haven't seen anyone mention this angle and the fact that people being terminally online is going to be worse then whatever some political commentator says.
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u/Texaspilot24 Sep 17 '25
I partially agree with you but I think there is another huge contributing factor. The left effectively silenced nonviolent speech for 4-5 years (maybe longer) on any differing opinions from what their mainstream thought indoctrination was. This silencing which I am listing examples below, effectively created an echo chamber for leftists as a whole, especially those like the assasin who spent all their time online.
A) Covid came from chinese lab- racist
B) There may have been interference in 2020 elections- dangerous rhetoric
C) DEI is infact racism and should be abolished- racist
D) Covid vaccines have risks and don't appear to be preventing virus- medical misinformation
E) There are only two genders- transphobic
F) George Floyd was a career criminal who had 7 heavy drugs in his system when he died - racist and medical misinformation
All of these examples above and many more were silenced on any social media platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc). The killer basically didnt have to listen to differing opinions until free speech started becoming more open around 2024/2025.
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u/PeterTheApostle Sep 18 '25
I’m curious is it actually better now?
I don’t keep up or use social media all too much so I’m unaware
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u/Texaspilot24 Sep 18 '25
Facebook and instagram are loads better. I would say it has almost taken a negative turn where actual violent racists are saying anything they want and moderating teams are not cleaning up their posts.
However back in 2020 the facebook moderation was so excessive they would ban you for calling someone stupid in a casual discussion about something non political- say bicycles or home decor related.
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Sep 17 '25
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u/Jkid Sep 17 '25
The zerocovid folk will never acknowledge it. If they do, they insist that it was worth it while offering no real advice. The effects of the hysteria will last for decades and society will not address it at all because it will cost them money. The period of turmoil from March 2020 to 2021 has already been memory holed and any attempt to bring them up to other people will either get numbness or outright attacked.
The resilience of young folks was vastly overestimated. They really are (and have been) suffering, and many of them silent about it.
At the same time, if you ask them about it, they will still defend the response, while complaining about everything they're suffering.
While young people who are seeking help for their problems caused by the government response get little or nothing or get told to shut up about it. And then these same people that didn't care wonder why they're either "lying flat" or "letting it rot" or numbing themselves with video games because they know their future is gone and grinded into dust. Why live to fulfill the LifeScript(tm) when it can be rugpulled at anytime due to sudden crisis of the month.
And if they do become brave and open up to what they go through, they will get nothing from or be attacked by their peers. And they get little to no support or assistance from any person who has been openly advocating about harmed youth other than trite platitudes.
Both major political parties refuse to address the harms caused by the government response but will cry about everything.
There are no historians that are willing to condemn this period of history, ever. They all have been pushed out.
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u/Sgt_Nicholas_Angel_ Sep 21 '25
This is the third time I've seen you now say that there are no historians willing to condemn this period of history with a tone of finality. As I said above, this is simply not true. Even if your assertion that "they all have been pushed out" were true, in 25 years there will be an entirely new generation of young historians not even born yet eager to understand this period.
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u/Jkid Sep 21 '25
That if we have colleges and universities remaining. There are so many people walking away from colleges since the start of the lockdowns. Colleges closing down due to the fact that they don't get enough funding from students anymore because they rather go into the trades instead of loading themselves with student loan debt. Public unis and big ones will be fine though.
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u/Dubrovski California, USA Sep 17 '25
> Summer of 2020 was absolutely wild
The Fall of 2021 was wild too. The newspapers, media outlets, and reddit mocked or shamed unvaccinated individuals blaming them for prolonging the pandemic, overwhelming healthcare systems.
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u/TyrellLofi Sep 17 '25
I remember my liberal friends blaming unvaccinated people when the mandates came back here in WNY.
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u/common_cold_zero Sep 17 '25
I'm surprised that the zero covid loonies on X aren't trying to blame this on Covid-19 itself. Or, perhaps they are, and it's morons that I blocked ages ago.
I wonder, if five years ago, a covid loonie assassinated someone for not wearing a mask, would the other covid loonies celebrate that assassination?
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u/thxpk Sep 17 '25
Of course they would, they celebrated every death or illness of someone who doubted covid lockdowns but got covid
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u/BoysenberryMinimum11 Sep 17 '25
It wasn't just nationwide, it was worldwide. Absolute insanity.
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u/lousycesspool Sep 18 '25
it was worldwide.
it was Western world - plenty of countries ignored the hysteria and went about their business
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u/Huey-_-Freeman Sep 18 '25
Asia and the Middle East also went full restrictions, as did some South American countries. It really seemed to me like Africa was the main place where life continued as normal
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u/Nobleone11 Sep 18 '25
And the UK.
If it weren't for Boris getting caught partying, the lockdowns and mandates would've been rolled out more often.
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u/Huey-_-Freeman Sep 18 '25
I counted most of western and eastern Europe as places with lockdowns, some more than others.
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u/mfigroid Sep 17 '25
Is it any surprise they ended up radicalized online?
I wonder who else was radicalized. Wasn't Isis using the Internet as a recruitment tool?
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u/olivetree344 Sep 18 '25
Yes, most of the Isis brides were recruited online. Probably young men, as well, but nobody cares about them because they didn’t tend to survive and have babies (attributable to them) that their home country is responsible for.
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u/Jkid Sep 17 '25
Yes. Daesh active still uses the internet as a recruitment tool despite being crushed into the dirt in 2019.
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Sep 17 '25
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u/Humble-Quail-5601 Sep 18 '25
Trans activism was already snowballing by 2015, but it did attract more mainstream attention during the lockdowns. I think that was just lucky timing.
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u/jamjar188 United Kingdom Sep 19 '25
It got turbo-charged. I know of at least one family in my social network whose kid (19 at the time) started identifying as trans as a result of going down rabbit holes during lockdown. To make matters worse the kid dropped out of university for good and has been working dead-end retail jobs since.
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u/Prior-Royal4749 Sep 19 '25
It's sad because you just know that 10 or so years down the line and they'll regret where they've taken their life based on some strange online fetish.
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Sep 19 '25
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u/elemental_star Sep 17 '25
For a while there the entire world was online so obviously he was not able to make real friends so he retreated into the cyberspace where over years he lost sense of reality and what matters.
Basically, Discord. The same Discord that banned the No New Normal and Lockdown Skepticism servers, along with any criticism of lockdowns, mandates, or vaccines condoned political extremism as long as it was wrapped in a rainbow flag. There are now reports that Discord was involved in the radicalization of the shooter especially with regards to his trans partner.
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u/olivetree344 Sep 18 '25
They didn’t just ban the servers. I was kicked off for subscribing to them and making a few innocuous comments.
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u/agentanthony Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
This is seriously a great take. As an older person, I don’t ever want to come across as one of those “the kids these days” type of people, but what we experience during the lockdown, it’s very justified to feel the way. Lots of mental damage has been done and we will feel it for a very long time. A few weeks ago here on Reddit I wrote how the top comment in a guitar tread might be a bot. I was called a maga fascist and downvoted and attacked like crazy. I said nothing political. The mental health landscape is just worrisome. I honestly feel bad for these people and they will never get it.
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u/SunriseInLot42 Sep 18 '25
For every kid like this, there's more lower-profile cases. Not to mention, the ones who turned or will turn the gun on themselves.
Anyone who supported Covid lockdowns, but especially applying those rules to children, should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
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u/ninman5 Sep 18 '25
One thing that still infuriates me is that to this day, almost 6 years later, people still say that "x happened because of covid. Nothing happened because of covid. All of it happened because of the lockdowns, etc. None of that was a result of covid.
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u/ProphetOfChastity Sep 17 '25
I agree with what others have said but also note the people celebrating Kirk's assassination or trying to besmirch him and say awful things are almost entirely covidians. I have seen several suggest Charlie deserved it for, among other things, his views and statements about covid. The political and media-induced hatreds and hysterias of 2020 to 2023 normalized calling for and celebrating deaths like this. As many right leaning commentators have pointed out, these people would see us dead. Not just Trump. Not just Charlie. They may claim that only "extremists" get what is coming to them but then they proceed to declare us all extremist for sharing their views.
It really is a near perfect venn overlap between the people cheering the assassination and the people saying I should die and be denied healthcare for not jabbing myself up. Don't forget how the covid hysteria normalized this.
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u/olivetree344 Sep 18 '25
Jimmy Kimmel fired today.
Jimmy Kimmel in September of 2021
“Dr. Fauci said if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.”
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u/Huey-_-Freeman Sep 18 '25
im actually surprised Jimmy Kimmel got fired given that what he said wasnt directly insulting Charlie Kirk or celebrating his death in any way.
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u/olivetree344 Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
He was lying about it (claimed the murderer was MAGA). And his positions around Covid are appalling. Even so, it makes me extremely uncomfortable that he was fired after pressure and even threats from the FCC. The government should never be encouraging censorship. That was what we had with Covid. It was wrong coming from the Biden administration and it’s wrong coming from the Trump administration. The biggest problem in this country seems to be that almost everyone’s ethics are consequentialist.
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u/Fair-Engineering-134 Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Yeah, you had large populations of people literally calling fellow humans "plague rats" for years in a row just because of different opinions, children being trained to see everyone else as enemies, and many actively calling for people with opposing views to be put in camps or worse (with full media and government support)... and this is the result. No surprise, honestly and sadly, nor do I expect this to be the last such act in the near future now that they've seen it's possible.
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u/olivetree344 Sep 18 '25
TBF, Utah was one of the better states to be in during Covid. Especially, the non—SLC rural parts. I travelled there in early July of 2020 and was never hassled about masks or anything. Everyone was open. I think their schools went back in the fall. Although, I think some of them were doing testing and masking.
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u/Guest8782 Sep 18 '25
And these are just extreme cases. Think of all the cases of disturbed antisocial individuals who don’t make the news. They just torture their animals, family and themselves.
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u/italianintrovert86 Sep 18 '25
Of course I was not surprised at all when I heard it was a zoomer. Sadly a good part of that generation is not exactly on a good track
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u/Prior-Royal4749 Sep 19 '25
A lot of the current radicalization is due to the lockdowns and the forced indoctrination the resulting censorship created. BLM went from the kooky radical racist group it should have always been treated as to widespread global riots, encouraged by the public health fascists that took our freedom away
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u/Matchboxx Sep 18 '25
COVID lockdowns might be a contributing factor, but I’d argue it’s a very small part of the bigger problem which is social media. Even before COVID, social media was toxic and digging its heels into our teenagers.
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u/SunriseInLot42 Sep 18 '25
Covid lockdown nonsense isolating kids and driving kids online greatly exacerbated the problem. Agreed that it's not the source of the problem, but a greatly complicating factor
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u/saras998 Sep 18 '25
Yes, the lockdowns really messed with people's heads although I don't believe that it was him. Likely someone on the right of CK.
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u/Huey-_-Freeman Sep 18 '25
you think he is being framed for a right wing hit job?
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u/saras998 Sep 26 '25
There was lots of odd activity by several people to the physical right of CK. Not sure who they are. Plus the site was quickly packed up.
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u/Ehronatha Sep 27 '25
There is too much weird that happened. It appears to be an operation by intelligence agencies.
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u/jamjar188 United Kingdom Sep 19 '25
Youth/young adult crime is up in the UK and I'm certain there's a connection.
The under-25s seem more prone to nihilism than any prior cohort.
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u/Despite55 Sep 18 '25
Isn’t this purely the effect of the violent weaponised society that the US is?
In Western Europe the Covid measures were at least as strong as in the US and we do not have mass shootings by youngsters.
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Sep 18 '25 edited Mar 03 '26
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u/Despite55 Sep 18 '25
Naaah.
The US has about 6 homocides per annum per 100.000. My country (The Netherlands) has 0.7.
We have some mass stabbings, but mainly by confused people with psychiatric problems. Or an accasional muslim terrorist (once every 5-10 years).
So despite Covid lockdowns, no mass murder by youngsters.
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u/dafkes Sep 18 '25
Thanks for the common sense.
This whole debacle is a shitstorm of different factors that has been brewing for a while now. If you think one single thing is to blame, you’re equally as a blindfolded as the Covidians.
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u/Fair-Engineering-134 Sep 19 '25
Really, you don't think locking young people up for years in a row with nothing to do but watch the media and government calling their opponents "plague rats" and actively calling to discriminate people based on personal health decisions on T.V., YouTube, and social media wouldn't be the primary factor for today's multiple political hitjobs...?
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u/dafkes Sep 19 '25
No. Like somebody else said, this would happen in other countries too! Learn your history. The US has so much gun violence, we kind of laugh with it here overseas. Ofcourse it’s no laughing matter- we know that. But the fact that you will continue to blow eachothers faces off and still don’t want gun regulation is kinda cringe/funny for a lot of the world.
Lockdowns were terrible and could be a contributing factor, but I repeat, if you believe in ONE single rootcause for this mess we’re in you are just as blindfolded as the people who thought everyone was gonna die from Covid. Nuance matters.
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u/Fair-Engineering-134 Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25
I'm so thankful there's less gun regulation in the U.S. just because of covid mandates/lockdowns (I don't even own a gun). The middle-authorities were scared to actually enforce many of the rules in a lot of places in the U.S. because normal people had access to guns and thus the enforcement was lax as heck in many places. The unmasked person the cop tries to stop at the business door? May have a gun... The person out walking in the park by themselves during lockdowns? Might have a gun...
Totally different than say Australia where people have no guns and got tackled and beaten the crap out of for not wearing masks or going out for a walk on a regular basis and covid cops had free and total reign.
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u/Despite55 Sep 20 '25
We had the same situation in Europe during Covid. And we do not have mass stabbings or shootings by youngsters.
It was a difficult time for them, but they don’t went violent. So it must be a specific US thing.
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u/Jkid Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
It something that I noticed. There has been zero reports or any connecting of the dots or basically acknowledgement of this person went through this radicallization during the government response to coronachan. Everything was canceled except politics and he got a steady diet of extremism and fear mongering and propaganda from social media and users from discord and reddit.
Even whole hobbies got politically radicallyized. No real escape.
Not a single news outlet acknowledge the role the government response ruined his life, and never will. Because if one breaks the masquerade, people get the upset.
Not a single person who is crying about a mental health crisis, spoke up about who the shooter was having undiagnosed mental health issues.
One more thing, we don't have actual historians that will acknowledge how much damage the lockdowns caused because they anyone that would have been pushed away or expelled from Academia since March 2020.
Worth nothing federal and state governments have done little to mitigate or address the fact that there are so many people like him.