"I didn't have to go looking for it: I was immediately confronted with a five-second video in which Kirk, coarsely pixelated and sitting under a tent, crumples to the ground, microphone still in hand, as a fountain of blood spills from the left side of his neck. I saw the clip on X, as did millions of others, perhaps in part because of a feature that automatically plays videos for anyone scrolling through their feed."
"That Kirk, who became famous for participating in viral political debates, was gunned down on a university campus is a tragedy, period. And seeing such brutal violence up close can take a psychological toll on observers, the long-term effects of which are harder to gauge. It's one thing to hear about a murder, or to read about it; it's another to see it as it happened, over and over."
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot on a university campus; a five-second, pixelated video shows him crumpling as blood spills from his neck. The clip circulated widely on social platforms, reaching millions partly because autoplay features present videos automatically to users. Repeated exposure to graphic footage can impose psychological tolls on observers, with long-term effects difficult to gauge. Debates over whether the public should be exposed to images of preventable violence continue, with advocates for stricter gun laws arguing for confronting such realities. X reportedly has roughly a billion users, many of whom visit primarily during major world events.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]