The public, gleeful reaction to an assassination on platforms like TikTok and Bluesky suggests people expect few consequences, not imminent civil war. Civil conflict typically requires intimate, local enmities and rival power centers; today’s vicarious calls to violence come from atomized users unlikely to act, with a unified government holding the initiative.
— It reframes how to read online extremism: as a revealed‑preference indicator of low perceived risk and weak mobilization rather than a reliable precursor to mass violence.
Lionel Page
2025.09.18
45% relevant
Both address public cheers after the Kirk assassination: the existing idea reads them as a sign of low perceived risk, while this article argues such fantasies are maladaptive in modern cooperative societies—two complementary interpretations of the same reaction.
Aris Roussinos
2025.09.12
100% relevant
The article cites liberal 'normies' celebrating Charlie Kirk’s killing online, the absence of opposing mobs, and Trump’s administration having uncontested control over the response.
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