Memes have been written on weapons, quoted in manifestos, and cited by young attackers as the inspiration for acts of mass violence. It's a phenomenon that springs from groups of disaffected people communicating on the web through a convoluted language of impenetrable memes and irony.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox has said about the 22-year-old man charged with the killing of Charlie Kirk: "There was a lot of gaming going on. Friends have confirmed that there was that deep, dark internet — Reddit culture and other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep. You saw that on the casings. I didn't have any idea what those inscriptions meant, but they are certainly the memeification that is happening in our society today."
Aidan Walker is a journalist and content creator whose work explores the "video game to meme to extremist" pipeline. And he's joining the show to pull back the curtain on a world where irony, gaming, and fascist subculture blur together, and how it has become such a powerful engine of radicalization.
For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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