‘His legacy is cringe’: how Charlie Kirk became a punchline among the young - even his supporters

Jul 09, 2026 - 11:45

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‘His legacy is cringe’: how Charlie Kirk became a punchline among the young - even his supporters

Crude memes of the Maga luminary are exploding online – less than a year after conservatives were suppressing any slander against him

Ten months since his assassination, Charlie Kirk’s name and likeness are still proliferating online. Just not the way the far-right activist would have wanted.

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.