Social media has us in its grip and won't let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case study

Charlie Kirk's mastery of social media was key to his rise as an influence in conservative politics. So the extent to which His death and its aftermath have played out on those forums should not come as a surprise.

In a microcosm of life today, social media is where Americans have gone to process last week's killing in Utah and is the chief tool. his supporters are using to police those they feel aren't showing proper respect. Investigators are looking into the time the man accused of killing Kirk, Tyler Robinson, spent in the "dark corners of the internet" — anti-social media, if you will — before he allegedly pulled the trigger.

On the other side of the world, as the Kirk story preoccupied Americans , Nepal reeled from a spasm of violence that erupted when the government tried to ban social media platforms.

All of this is forcing a closer look at the technologies that have changed our lives, how they control what we see and understand through algorithms, and the way all the time we spend on them affects our view of the world.

Cox emerges as a powerful spokesman against social media

Utah's governor, Republican Spencer Cox, believes "cancer" isn't a strong enough word to describe social media. "The most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage ... and get us to hate each other," Cox said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Democratic Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii urged Americans via social media to "pull yourself together, read a book, get some exercise, have a whiskey, walk the dog or make some pasta or go fishing or just do anything other than let this algorithm pickle your brain and ruin your soul."

Chilling videos of Kirk's September 10 assassination immediately overwhelmed sites like X, TikTok and YouTube, and companies are still working to contain their spread. Confrontational material and conspiracy theories are pushed into social media feeds because they do exactly what they're designed to do — keep people on the platforms for longer periods of time.

I do think we're in a moment here," said Laura Edelson, a professor at Northeastern University and an expert on social media algorithms. "Our country is being digitally mediated. Where we interact with other people, how we interact with broader society, that is more and more happening over feed algorithms. This is the most recent in a long line of ways that society has been changed by media technology.

Divisive content and the proliferation of the video of Kirk's death may not have been the goal but are the direct result of decisions made to maximize profits and cut back on content moderation, Edelson said.

"I don't think there are people twirling their mustaches saying how great it is that we've divided society, except the Russian troll farms and, more and more, the Chinese troll farms," she said.

X owner Elon Musk posted on his site this past week that while discourse can become negative, "it's still good that there is a discussion going." Conservative media star Ben Shapiro , who considered Kirk a friend, admired how Kirk was willing to go to different places and talk to people who disagreed with him, a practice all too rare in the social media era.

"How social media works is a disaster area, fully a disaster area," Shapiro said in an interview with Bari Weiss on a Free Press podcast. "There's no question it's making the world a worse place — and that's not a call for censorship."

How people act on social media is a bipartisan problem, said Shapiro. The most pervasive one is people who use the third-person plural — "they" are doing something to "us," he said. That's been the case when many people discuss Kirk's death, although the shooter's motives Have not become clear, and there is no evidence his actions are anything other than his own.

Collecting inflammatory posts from both sides

The liberal MeidasTouch media company has collected inflammatory social posts by conservatives, particularly those who suggest they're at "war." Meanwhile, several conservatives have combed social media for posts they consider negative toward Kirk, in some cases seeking to get people fired. The Libs of TikTok site urged that a Washington state school district be defunded because it refused to lower flags to half staff.

GOP Representative Randy Fine from Florida asked people to point out negative Kirk posts from anyone who works in government, at an institution that receives public funding, or is licensed by the government — for example, a teacher or lawyer. "These monsters want a fight?" he wrote on X. "Congratulations, they got one."

A Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah , wrote on Monday that she was fired for a series of BlueSky posts that showed little sympathy for Kirk. But she wrote on Substack that "not performing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence was not the same as endorsing violence against them." A Post spokeswoman declined to comment.

"So much of what people use to talk about politics — algorithmically driven social media sites and cable television — is designed to pull Americans apart," said James Talarico, a Democratic state lawmaker in Texas who recently announced a bid for the U.S. Senate. "We've got to find our way back to each other because that's the only way we can continue this American experiment," he said on MSNBC.

Among the most persistent examples of those divisions are the lies and misinformation about elections that have spread for years through online social channels. They have undermined faith in one of the country's foundational institutions and contributed to the anger that led supporters of the President Donald Trump to violently storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Whether meaningful change is possible remains an open question. Nepal's unrest illustrated the dangers of government involvement: Social media sites were shut down and users protested, suggesting it had been a way to stop criticism of the government. Police opened fire at one demonstration, killing 19 people.

Persuading social media sites to change their algorithms is also an uphill battle. They rely on attention and people spending as much time as possible on them. Unless advertisers flee out of fear of being associated with violent posts, there's little incentive for them to change, said Jasmine Enberg, a social media analyst at EMarketer.

Young people in particular are becoming aware of the dangers of spending too much time on social media, she said.

But turn their phones off? "The reality of the situation," Enberg said, "is that there's a limit to how much they can limit their behavior."

___

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social .

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Opinion | Waqf Act: When BJP Mocked the Procedure

The Modi-led coalition cares two hoots about Parliament.

If you are looking for more examples to support this proposition, which the Opposition often makes, then the week began with another Black Monday for the Union government. The Supreme Court did more than just reprimand those who engaged in legislative trickery. In its interim order, the highest court in India stayed two of the most controversial provisions of the Waqf Act, 2025. First, a person has to be a practicing Muslim for five years before he can dedicate a property as waqf. Second, the designated officer can adjudicate the rights of personal citizens. Both these key provisions were stayed.

The passage of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025 in Parliament was marked by trickery and evasive tactics. Even a casual observer of Parliament can outline how the BJP-led coalition is making a mockery of parliamentary procedure.

1. The motion to refer the Bill to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament was, again, moved on the last day of the session.
2. When the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was presented in Parliament, dissent notes by members of the Opposition had been erased using a whitener. (I am not making this up! This actually happened this year in Parliament.) After aggressive protests by the Opposition, a corrigendum was added, which contained the notes that had been redacted.
3. "For the night is dark and full of terrors" - Game of Thrones The Waqf Bill was passed in Parliament in the dead of night. Around midnight in Rajya Sabha, and before one in the morning in Lok Sabha. Incidentally, Manipur was discussed at 3 am.

Presumption of Constitutionality

One major argument made in this case was of the principle of presumption in favor of constitutionality. This means that when a law's constitutionality is challenged, courts should generally presume the law to be valid and uphold it unless it is clearly proven otherwise. This doctrine originated to maintain judicial restraint, uphold the separation of powers, and respect the legislature as the representative body enacting laws within the constitutional framework. It assumes that legislatures act in good faith and within their authority, and that invalidating laws should be an exception, not the default. The Supreme Court of India, like many constitutional courts worldwide, has repeatedly affirmed this presumption, stating that courts should only strike down legislation if it is "manifestly unconstitutional" or violates fundamental rights beyond reasonable doubt.

However, given recent trends where laws have been used selectively to impose disproportionate burdens, regulate minority rights restrictively, or enable the state to overreach in areas constitutionally protected (such as religious freedom and equality), the presumption in favor of constitutionality merits re-evaluation.

Targeted Laws

Governance under the BJP has revealed a striking pattern: the emergence of customized, targeted laws designed to affect specific communities while leaving others untouched. Legal pluralism, where various religions govern themselves, was a system adopted by the country with the intention of respecting diverse customs. However, this is increasingly being used as a source of legal exceptionalism, where groups are treated not as citizens under a single rule of law, but as subjects of special, more restrictive legal regimes. The effect is highly symbolic: the law itself becomes a political message, not merely a regulatory tool. Citizens are left with a sense that laws are designed "for them," not to protect or administer society, but for surveillance, constraint, and to signal hierarchy.

The State As Judge Of Identity

Some examples of these laws are the religion-specific Citizenship Law, which creates exclusions based on faith, and anti-conversion laws in states targeting interfaith marriage and religious conversion (12 states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan). Along with targeting, what these laws also do is place the state in the position of judge of identity. Including the five-year requirement in the Waqf Act, these laws rely on the State to decide who qualifies as a minority and who does not. Once the State assumes the right to decide who qualifies as a legitimate member of a community, it establishes a precedent that identity is conditional; citizenship, faith, and rights can all be reduced to state-certified categories. When the State gets to decide who counts, democracy itself is at risk.

Does the Waqf Act violate rights such as equality before the law (Article 14)? Does it violate freedom of religion (Articles 25 and 26)? Does it violate the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of religion (Article 15)? These are the probing questions that India hopes will be addressed by the Supreme Court.

Research credit: Chahat Mangtani

(Derek O'Brien, MP, leads the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

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Op-Ed - TikTok University: Inside the World of "Alt-Right Femboys" [Video]

This article is an opinion piece and reflects the personal views and experiences of the author. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of Baller Alert, its staff, or affiliates. All individuals are encouraged to form their own perspectives and engage in respectful dialogue.

I'm going to say it: I love TikTok. It teaches, it entertains, and "TikTok University" keeps serving lessons you won't get anywhere else. After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 15, 2025, my FYP went into overdrive with politics, identity, and a surprising topic: femboys. Not trans. Not drag. Just feminine-presenting guys talking about how some in their space lean conservative or even far right. So I started digging. The deeper I went, the clearer the contradiction became and the more it revealed about how today's extremism markets itself online.

What a "femboy" actually is

"Femboy" is a slang term for mostly cisgender men who adopt feminine style or behaviors. The look and the community grew on forums and then exploded across Reddit and TikTok with trends like #FemboyFriday. It isn't a gender identity in itself and doesn't dictate sexuality. It's fashion, vibe, and sometimes performance.

Why does the far right talk about femboys at all

On the surface, the alt-right worships traditional gender roles and hyper-masculinity. You'd expect them to reject femboys outright. Many do, framing them as symbols of "civilizational decline," a long-running talking point in that world's writers and influencers.

But internet culture is messy. The same anonymous spaces that incubated 4chan-style edgelord politics also hosted queer and androgynous aesthetics. The overlap created a strange pipeline: some femboy creators echo right-wing dog whistles, while some alt-right posters flood meme threads with femboy imagery, sometimes lusting, sometimes mocking, often playing it off as "just jokes." Queerty's reporting captured creators and commentators calling it out directly: "the femboy community has a fascism problem."

Post-irony: the mask that makes propaganda shareable

A lot of this happens through layered humor: memes so absurd you're not sure what's real. Pitchfork documented how TikTok's "brainrot" feeds serve whiplash pairings, a goofy femboy-fantasy skit followed by anti-immigrant dog whistles over a hardstyle beat, turning bigotry into background noise. That confusion is the feature, not a bug, because it launders ideology as entertainment.

The case study everyone points to: "Nazi catboys"

Back in 2019–2020, far-right streamer Nick Fuentes promoted "Catboy Kami," a kawaii-coded troll in cat ears who spread racist shock content. Why platform him? Because he was good at going viral; entertainment value was the gateway to politics. That's not me guessing. Australian public broadcasting documented Fuentes praising Catboy Kami's meme power as a recruitment advantage. It worked. The content spread, audiences grew, and the contradiction, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric packaged with camp aesthetics, became a calling card.

What this mash-up really reveals

Transgression as branding. The alt-right thrives on shocking the mainstream. Embracing a symbol that clashes with its macho image keeps attention locked and makes the movement look "internet-native."

Masculinity anxiety You'll find users who rant about "effeminacy" one minute and lust after femboy aesthetics the next. Reports and creators describe real-world overlaps and relationships within these circles, which expose the gap between the tough-guy posture and lived reality.

Identity becomes flexible online. If you post the right politics, some communities overlook the aesthetic contradiction. That's the power and danger of avatar culture.

Normalization through the feed. When extremist cues ride along with cute, chaotic, or funny content, they spread further with less resistance. The more this cycles through For You Pages, the more desensitized audiences become.

Why Kirk's killing changed the online temperature

Kirk's murder increased the volume of political content across platforms. It also triggered an increase in threats and hoax calls, according to national outlets, as algorithms filled feeds with "us vs. them" narratives. That climate is exactly where post-ironic propaganda thrives: highly emotional, highly shareable, and easy to misread as harmless.

So what do we do with all this?

Separate aesthetics from ideology. A skirt, eyeliner, or cat ears do not make someone progressive or reactionary. Pay attention to the rhetoric and symbols embedded in the jokes.

Clock the "it's just a joke" shield. If the punchline keeps circling racist, anti-LGBTQ, or authoritarian themes, that's not random.

Curate your feed like your diet. Tap "Not Interested," block generously, and avoid boosting content you wouldn't endorse.

Support creators who educate. TikTok can be a classroom. Elevate those teaching media literacy and calling out manipulation.

Femboys didn't "become" alt-right. A loud minority inside extremist pipelines learned how to use femboy aesthetics as bait. The contradiction gets clicks. The clicks build audiences. And the audiences are easier to radicalize when the politics hide behind a wink.

Sources

• Definition and growth of the femboy aesthetic.
• Coverage of the Charlie Kirk investigation and political fallout.
• Queerty's 2025 article on far-right currents in femboy spaces.
• Pitchfork on TikTok "brainrot" and normalized bigotry.
• ABC reporting on Catboy Kami and the far-right's entertainment-as-recruitment strategy.
• Background on "decline" rhetoric in far-right thought.

Check out some tiktok videos on the subject:

The post Op-Ed - TikTok University: Inside the World of "Alt-Right Femboys" [Video] appeared first on Baller Alert .

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Young Woman Balanced Work, School, and Family Without Any Complaints, But Her Family Treated Her Enjoyment of Her Free Time Like a Crime

Pexels/Reddit

Young adults still living at home often find themselves caught between independence and their family's expectations.

Despite holding down a job and managing her responsibilities with poise, one 20-year-old's frequent time out with friends has caused growing friction at home.

You'll want to read on for this one.

Am I the asshole for going out every day?

I (20F) live with my parents, my uncle, and a sister. I have a full-time job where I leave very early and usually have the whole day free.

She works hard, so she wants to play hard too.

Over the past year and a half, I have been going out a lot. I have kept in touch with high school friends. Since we now have adult money, we like to hang out every once in a while.

I have also made friends from work, and we like to get together and hang out. I have a boyfriend, and I also like to spend a lot of time with my sister.

She is proud to have an active social life that brings her fulfillment.

The activities are endless — from going hiking, watching movies, going shopping, playing sports, trying new food shops, playing video games together, attending the occasional event, and more. I go out with someone different about 3–4 times a week (sometimes 5).

In addition, I have my own things to do, such as going to the gym, attending health appointments, or working an extra shift at work.

But not everyone is so pleased that she is thriving.

My mother and uncle (they are siblings) think it is not okay for me to go out so much. They believe that is not right, and that as long as I live with them, I need to respect their rules.

My dad doesn't care too much because I'm always honest with them about what I'm doing, and he thinks I'm responsible.

In her eyes, she does more than pull her weight around the house.

Mind you, I pay household bills every month and buy two weeks' worth of groceries a month. I study and go to school. I save money from each paycheck. I keep my room relatively clean. I work a full-time job.

She thinks they have absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to her activities outside of the house.

I share my location at all times. I tell them what I'm doing and who I am with. I come back on time for curfew.

I am also doing safe activities. I don't do anything illegal and avoid situations that could get me in any legal trouble. I respect my mom and uncle and want to continue doing so.

Regardless, things have been incredibly tense between them.

This is the first major disagreement we have ever had. It's come to the point where I lie to my friends and tell them I can't hang out with them anymore because I'm busy doing something else. (I am not—I'm just at home doom-scrolling with all my chores done.)

Am I the asshole?

She's honest, thoughtful and careful — but for her family, it's still not enough.

What did Reddit think of all this?

Maybe it's time to break free from her family's oppressive rule.

She's paying the bills, so she more than deserves a little freedom of her own.

Now's the time to seize the day and enjoy her youth, not be bogged down by her family's expectations.

Maybe her family is simply stuck in the past.

She's doing everything right, yet she still feels like she's being punished for simply living her life.

This is no way to start your twenties!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to disappear without a trace.

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The post Young Woman Balanced Work, School, And Family Without Any Complaints, But Her Family Treated Her Enjoyment Of Her Free Time Like A Crime first on newsrealtime .

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