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On Friday morning, Tyler Robinson<\/strong>\u2014the suspected killer of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk<\/a>\u2014was taken into custody<\/a> after a two-day manhunt. (According to an affidavit obtained by People<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> he\u2019s likely to face charges, including aggravated murder.) At a public briefing<\/a>, FBI director Kash Patel<\/strong> and Utah governor Spencer Cox<\/strong> revealed that the shooter\u2019s bullet casings were allegedly inscribed with bizarre messages: One read \u201cNotices bulges OwO what\u2019s this?\u201d Unfired cartridges in the magazine allegedly read \u201cHey fascist! Catch!,\u201dfollowed by five arrow symbols: one up, one right, and three down. Two others read \u201cOh Bella ciao Bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao\u201d and \u201cIf you read this, you are gay lmao.\u201d Photographs of the ammunition have not yet been made public, and it\u2019s possible that there are minor discrepancies in punctuation\u2014but none that would make these phrases appear any less nonsensical. That is, unless you have a passing familiarity with gamer and internet-forum culture.<\/p>\n The \u201cOwO\u201d casing, for instance, appears to be referencing a popular meme making fun of furry culture<\/a>, a niche lifestyle in which people create alter egos styled after anthropomorphic animals. The combination of arrows found on another matches the combination of buttons players use to call in a bomb strike in the video game Helldivers 2,<\/em> a Starship Troopers<\/em>\u2013style parody of a fascist interstellar empire. The Italian words are the lyrics to \u201cBella Ciao,\u201d an antifascist Italian folk song that was prominently featured in the Netflix series Money Heist<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> And that last phrase appears to be little more than a joke meant to antagonize or troll the reader.<\/p>\n As of yet, little is known about Robinson\u2019s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.<\/p>\n All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say \u201cSkibidi Toilet<\/a>,\u201d a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There\u2019s a movie in the works<\/a>.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known code words for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.<\/p>\n Some memes, however, aren\u2019t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online<\/a>\u2014which doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the \u201cGroyper Wars\u201d of 2019<\/a>. \u201cGroypers\u201d are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes<\/strong><\/a> who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n