You don't actually know Charlie Kirk
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a Utah campus. His death triggered the usual cycle of outrage and debate.
While I hadn’t intended to write about Charlie Kirk at all, I ended up having enough offline conversations about the event that I want to share some thoughts surrounding it after all.
What’s struck me primarily is that whether they agreed with him, whether they hated him or called him the “13th prophet of Jesus,” most people writing/talking about him never even met him or knew him. Those who did cite one meeting in a professional setting that lasted an hour to an hour and a half.
This is a grave social ill that has been exacerbated by the rise of social media and the increasing shift to “living” most of our lives online.
These technological advancements, marketed as tools to bring people closer together, have instead created invisible barriers. Parents stare at their smartphones at the dinner table instead of engaging with their children. Friends text each other while in the same room. Social skills continue to dwindle, along with basic manners. Face-to-face contact is no longer valued the way it once was.
Ironically, we form emotionally intense parasocial relationships with people we “know” online while simultaneously neglecting those right beside us.
With the rapid adoption of generative AI into nearly all aspects of our lives, reality can be further distorted according to the individual using it.
Skeptics are right to be terrified. So should we all.
I’ve observed a shift in recent years from a largely optimistic perspective of the benefits of online connection to disillusionment and exhaustion—people craving the physical over the virtual again, finally realising how transient and unreliable the digital world is. Our eyes are opening to the soul-sucking nature of being chronically online.
Yet we still can’t remove ourselves from it.
When we check our phones and see the news, whether on a dedicated news app or on social media, the reaction is often instinctual, reactive. We forget about the inherent disconnect the screen creates between us and what we’re looking at. We forget that we rarely get unbiased information. We forget that humans are humans — multilayered, multi-sided, nuanced, broken, beautiful, worthy.
The little device automatically filters everything into something digestible and concrete. It creates a distorted illusion, its own world. And in so doing, it dehumanises everyone you see through it.
Perhaps you, like me, are deeply troubled by this, yet feel powerless to change it. At this point, I think we agree we have a problem. That is why adults set limits on their phones, why parents try to delay giving smartphones to their children, why we go on social media fasts—often all to no avail.
The only thing we cannot do is turn back the clock. The technology is here to stay, even generative AI, whether we like it or not.
So, what are we supposed to do?
The reality is, we as a society have escalated past simply seeing “people I disagree with” to stripping them of peoplehood altogether.
I’m reminded of a Black Mirror episode from 2016 called “Men Against Fire,” where soldiers hunt human-like beings called “roaches.” After his neural implant malfunctions, the main character realises that the roaches are, in fact, fellow humans of a different group; the implant distorted his perception of reality so he would see them as mutants. At the end, one of those in charge tells him this was done so the soldiers could kill enemies without remorse. Our main character had opted to have his memory erased before undergoing the operation.
This episode aired almost ten years ago, but it’s eerily pertinent to what we’re seeing today.
Except we don’t have neural implants showing us people we disagree with as monsters. We do that in our own minds, no memory wipe required.
I said in a recent conversation, “Every person bears the image of God; when we see that, we can treat them with compassion. But screens are a literal barrier between me and the other person, which makes it harder. It takes even more conscious effort to see the human on the other side of the screen as imago dei.”
“To hate a person, you have to reduce them — condense their challenging complexity into something simple and straightforwardly loathsome. Hatred is also inherently egotistical. It is to shrink the personhood of someone else to the emotional impact they have on you personally. To allow them no self and no nuance beyond your own feelings — a set of physical and emotional reactions within yourself.”
The bitterest irony is that we are well aware that we can never truly know anyone (how many times have we said it about people we’ve known, even our entire lives?). Yet we are quick to reduce people we hear about online to a single dimension based on hearsay.
Most of us don’t even really know ourselves.
And in the same way we recognise our own complexities, we must develop the ability to see the same in others. The digital filters we’re now so dependent on make nuanced thinking nearly impossible.
Which includes the ability to hold these two truths at once when it comes to Charlie Kirk: to disagree with someone on core values and mourn that he was murdered, to believe his ideas were wrong and even harmful and feel heartbroken for his wife and children.
In the midst of all the discourse, I’ve seen a few people point out the apparent discrepancies between accounts—some say Charlie was respectful to everyone and welcomed discussion, others say he was belittling. In every comments section, there will be people saying those detracting from their views are lying and don’t know what they’re talking about.
I posit: perhaps everyone is right; perhaps Charlie was like all of us—sometimes at his best, sometimes at his worst, most often somewhere in the middle—changing his mind (because people are not static) as time went on, growing and regressing (never in a linear path).
If we’re to resist the pull toward dehumanization—if we’re going to maintain the ability to see Charlie Kirk and everyone else as complex humans rather than simple symbols—it requires intentional effort.
Here are some thoughts for how to regain our empathy and ability to humanise others:
Engage with your local community. Consuming national and global news can lead to a sense of powerlessness. Significant change begins from home and spreads outward.
Make an intentional effort to befriend those who have different backgrounds and perspectives than you. People are not issues. People are not numbers. You won’t be able to know this until you talk to different people and try to understand them.
Don’t read only books that share the same viewpoints as you. Like the previous point, seek out different perspectives. Solely reading the books that you agree with creates your own bubble.
Algorithms force you into an echo chamber. Make a conscious effort to stop feeding them. Lore Wilbert wrote a wonderful, practical essay about ways you can do this.
When/if you can, take the online offline. Meet your online friends in person. Embrace the awkwardness and discomfort of live meetings where you can’t just log off and run away.
Before you respond to someone online, remind yourself this is a three-dimensional human being whose life circumstances and psychological makeup you know next to nothing about. Consider them in context. Starting from an assumption that the other person is an unenlightened savage is not conducive to dialogue.
Go analog.
None of this will be easy. It takes discipline, conscious effort. Your devices are actively working against you. Your friends will think you’re crazy.
And it will be worth it for the small price of your humanity you’d signed away in the name of progress.
My upcoming short story collection has themes of uncertainty and questioning formerly held beliefs. Sign up here to be notified when it launches.
About Me: I’m Tiffany, a literary fantasy, and memoir author. My writing has been published by The Cultivation Project and Renewal Missions. I’ve been writing this publication since 2023. Order my books here or here.