This is part of a 3-part series examining the dangerous psychological and social effects of modern social media — and how platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) have reshaped attention, identity, and ideology.
Part 1: The system
The Age of Dumbification
How social media rewires our brains, fragments attention, and turns thought into reaction.
Part 2: The archetype
All heil the peddler of death
Charlie Kirk, gun culture, and how social platforms turned him into a martyr of manufactured rage.
Part 3: The consequence
Ode to the Second Amendment
Why we should not mourn the architects of violence when they fall to their own tools. Public sympathy for men like Charlie Kirk normalizes extremism, justifies hatred, and sustains the very system that kills us.
Jay Swackhamer is a systems thinker and cultural critic writing about technology, psychology, and power. This article is part of his 3-part series on the dangers of social media and digital tribalism.