A year after the passing of Charlie Kirk, he is remembered less as a political figure and more as a meme. Potentially embedded into the fabric of AI image generation, and definitely embedded in social media culture, a man who was once known for his polarizing debates has instead become an icon of internet humor.
Personally, I never cared much for Kirk and found most of his takes to be simplistic, ignorant and just a bit silly. Many of his views left me wondering, “Does he really believe what he’s saying?” I could go on about how I disagree with many of the positions he had taken in his career, such as his takes on civil rights, abortion, Israel/Gaza, gun control, and gender; the list is extensive, but who really wants to hear all of that? My purpose for writing this is not to rant about my disagreements with a man who can no longer respond. Instead, I am more interested in the “Kirkification” of the internet since his death, which I believe will ultimately become his most lasting legacy.
If you live under a rock and have no clue who I am talking about, Charlie Kirk was a political activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, “the leading force in the conservative movement,” with chapters across campuses in the United States. He actually came to the University of Nevada, Reno on Oct. 8, 2024 and debated with students here on campus. Then, nearly a year later, Kirk was fatally shot at Utah Valley University in a tragic moment that shook the country no matter where you stood politically — one that some said would begin the second civil war. Instead of that, thankfully, the internet turned him into a meme.
I remember when I heard about Charlie Kirk’s death — technically I saw the video before hearing about it, but regardless, I was shocked. He was so popular that despite clicking ‘not interested’ on countless TikToks, he just kept on popping up on my For-You-Page; which is why I was in such disbelief that such a figure was assassinated in broad daylight, with multiple camera angles confirming it for the world to see. I remember going to football practice right after this, and my teammate was genuinely crying. I then realized — people were shook. Soon everyone was posting all about him; some were sad, others were happy, yet everyone seemed to have an opinion. The point is, his death was a big deal, especially on social media.
Now, before Kirk passed, there were already a few memes made out of some facial expressions he had made, but after he passed the floodgates were truly opened. One of the first true Kirkifications was done on IShowSpeed, slapping Charlie’s face onto Speed’s in the viral, “My Mom is Kinda Homeless” clip. This did numbers on X, especially since it was posted 13 days after his death, leading to the meme’s rapid spread across various social media platforms. Not even a month later, seemingly infinite AI images of Charlie Kirk were everywhere, so much so that claims arose that AI began to generate his face unintentionally, permanently granting him digitalized immortality.
The most recent example of this, shown above, is in NVIDIA’s newest AI tool: DLSS 5. The fifth iteration of NVIDIA’s “Deep Learning Super Sampling” is a tool designed to drastically improve the graphics of video games, giving them a more photorealistic look opposed to the game’s original art style. When one X user applied the tool to the GTA VI trailer, it changed one of the main character’s faces to Kirk’s. With the nature of AI images, there is no way to tell whether this was done by the user, or done by the tool, yet regardless it shows that Charlie Kirk has slipped his way into seemingly every corner of the internet.
So, looking back a year later, I say Charlie Kirk is still just as relevant as he was in 2025… just not as Charlie Kirk the political activist — but as Charlie Kirk the meme. His speeches, debates and his work in politics are all less popular than before he passed, and instead he has become a piece of the internet’s big bag of jokes. He even has his own image generator in his namesake, Kirkify.io, where you can turn anyone into the man himself. Through these memes, AI image generators, edits, and the songs in his memory, his legacy has been cemented in internet culture as a whole. Whether you or I think these are made in tribute, or are simply there to mock him, these things exist, and are here to stay. Charlie Kirk the man is forever gone. Charlie Kirk the meme, however, is here to stay.
