Bulwark Takes: Did Internet Troll Culture Fuel a Killer?

Host: Tim Miller (The Bulwark)
Guest: Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day, Panic World)
Date: September 16, 2025

Overview

This episode examines the intersection of internet troll culture and political violence in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Host Tim Miller invites internet culture reporter Ryan Broderick to break down the online subcultures, meme references, and ironies underlying the suspected shooter’s motivations and actions—particularly the meanings of messages engraved on the bullets. The conversation moves from granular explanation of niche internet memes to broader commentary on radicalization, accelerationism, and what parents (and society) can do to recognize warning signs.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Latest Updates & Shooter’s Motive

• New information: Authorities released shooter’s text messages indicating a clear ideological motivation—“I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.”
  (00:58)
• Some engravings on bullets are described by the shooter himself as “mostly a big meme,” reflecting both genuine ideological outrage and a trolling ethos.

2. Decoding the Bullet Engravings: Memes, Irony, and Trolling

• Engraving 1: “notices bulge uwu”
  • Origin: Cringe meme from furry roleplay culture; denotes a cutesy, sexually charged text face.
  • Context: Despite associations with the furry and (tangentially) trans communities, Ryan asserts “it doesn't mean that [the shooter] was a furry. He's 20 years old. He's only known an Internet where this post has been just part of viral ephemera.” (04:16 – 05:06)
• Engraving 2: Helldivers Video Game Reference
  • “A reference to the video game Helldivers, where you play as space fascists. It triggers the most powerful attack in the game.” (07:14)
• Engraving 3: Bella Ciao
  • “An Italian anti-fascist folk song that's sort of popular right now... also used in Far Cry 6.”
• Engraving 4: “If you're reading this, you're gay. lmao.”
  • Overt trolling aimed at confusing law enforcement. (07:41)
• Interpretation:
  • Ryan’s view: “If you look at all four bullets… it makes me think that he’s making fun of anyone trying to figure out a motive by looking at the bullets.” (08:10)
  • The engravings are “steeped in irony”—multiple layers of mockery making it hard to ascertain sincere intent.

3. Troll Culture, Irony, and the Radicalization Pipeline

• Miller reflects on “irony culture mocking the mainstream,” and Broderick expands: “It's very, very popular online to just drench everything you're saying in four or five layers of irony so that nobody knows what you mean.” (08:46)
• This approach enables young people to conceal their intentions and avoid vulnerability by hiding behind jokes, memes, and layered references.

4. Nihilism, Blackpilling, Accelerationism

• Broderick’s distinction:
  • Nihilism: Apathy, nothing matters.
  • Accelerationism: Actively causing chaos to speed societal collapse, “I'm gonna destroy my toys temper tantrum mindset.” (10:32 – 11:23)
• “It’s very linked to incel stuff. It’s very linked to far right politics. The groyper movement... There's also a whole branch of weird AI guys that are accelerationists and use AI to cause the downfall of society.” (11:36)
• Internet radicalization moves quickly: “It's a real widespread phenomenon we're seeing right now.”

5. Groypers, Political Ideology, and the Limits of Overlap

• Miller and Broderick push back on oversimplification linking the shooter to groyper culture:
  • Groypers: Far-right, Christo-fascist, white-nationalist, but with “an ethos.”
  • “I don’t think one of them would be using a bullet that has Bella Ciao written on it, even ironically.” (13:33)
• Groypers actively disrupt events but are not known for this form of violence.

6. The Comm Network and Meme-Driven Violence

• Broderick introduces the “Comm Network” and its 764teracel offshoot:
  • Connected to at least three mass shootings this year, “They sort of believe in gamifying, you know, mass violence.”
  • Gamified competitive atmosphere on Discord and Telegram.
  • Deliberate confusion of law enforcement with playful, irony-laden political references—“lines up more with what we've seen with the Bullets.” (15:10 – 16:21)
• Analogy to “The Leftovers” TV show: “They see themselves as like the end of history and they're just like waiting for the world to end and they want to like push it along.” (16:40)

7. Deciphering the Signs: A Guide for Parents

• Broderick likens extremist gaming culture to soccer hooliganism—most people just play, but a small subculture is radically dangerous.
• “If you’re a concerned parent … keep track of how they talk about women, because it always starts with that or like minority groups.” (19:07)
• Miller adds suggestions for parenting younger children: limit use of headphones, be aware of who kids talk to online, keep computers in shared spaces.
  • Broderick: “If your kid's under 15... they probably shouldn't just be talking to whoever they want on live service video games.” (20:34)

8. Despair, Guns, and the Limits of Blaming the Internet

• Miller: “How fucked are we?” (21:18)
• Broderick: “Yeah, we're fucked... America does not handle mass panic very well and we love to panic and we are in the midst of a very serious one right now.” (21:23)
• Broderick stresses the media element: “Terrorism is a media project… We are now in a world where the Internet is the dominant media platform... The Internet just sort of creates the environment in which terrorism operates.” (22:46 – 24:40)
• Both agree the easy access to guns among American youth—celebrated openly in some cultures—remains a critical, unsolved factor.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On internet culture and expertise:
  Tim Miller (03:15): “I was watching all of these gray beard pundits on TV argue about, like, whose rhetoric was the most inciting to violence, when the shooter's probably never heard of any of them. And I was like, I need to get somebody on that actually knows the world that he was steeped in.”

• On the motivation behind the bullet engravings:
  Ryan Broderick (08:10): “If you look at all four bullets that law enforcement has released, it makes me think that he's making fun of anyone trying to figure out a motive by looking at the bullets.”

• On irony as armor:
  Ryan Broderick (08:46): “It's very, very popular online to just drench everything you're saying in four or five layers of irony so that nobody knows what you mean.”

• On accelerationism:
  Ryan Broderick (11:14): “They want to cause chaos and hurt people to speed up what they see as the downfall of society, the downfall of America, because they don't like it.”

• On the challenge for parents:
  Ryan Broderick (19:07): “If you're a concerned parent... keep track of how they talk about women, because it always starts with that or like minority groups or whatever.”

• On the bigger picture:
  Ryan Broderick (24:17): “The Internet just sort of creates the environment in which terrorism operates... The Internet creates the structure, the superstructure for this. It doesn't necessarily mean that this kid, like, absorbed evil ideas from the Internet and then found a gun and took. You know, these things have always happened. It's just the Internet now plays a much larger role.”

• On the hopelessness many feel:
  Ryan Broderick (21:23): “Yeah, we're fucked. We... are getting dangerously close to like some sort of purge style situation. And that really concerns me. America does not handle mass panic very well and we love to panic and we are in the midst of a very serious one right now.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 00:00–01:10 | Intro & breaking news: shooter’s text messages revealed | | 04:14–07:09 | Detailed breakdown of bullet engravings and meme origins | | 08:13–10:08 | Discussion of irony, troll culture, and internet subcultures | | 10:32–11:23 | Nihilism vs accelerationism—explaining the terms | | 11:36–12:34 | Overlap with incel ideology, far-right politics, and new forms of extremism | | 13:33–14:38 | Disentangling groyper ideology from shooter’s apparent milieu | | 15:10–16:53 | The Comm Network and “gamification” of mass violence | | 19:07–20:08 | Warning signs for parents and radicalization in online spaces | | 21:23–22:14 | Broader societal risks and fears | | 22:46–24:40 | Media, the internet’s “superstructure,” and the evolution of terrorism |

Tone

Conversational, irreverent, and forthright—Miller and Broderick mix dark humor with candid lament over the state of internet culture, political violence, and societal risk, seeking to demystify “internet poisoned” subcultures for a mainstream audience while sounding the alarm about the dangers of ignoring or misunderstanding them.