This is a helpful and frightening perspective on why Americans have such different views of who Charlie Kirk was. Screenshot from FB; original poster's name is in the screenshot but I'm not typing it because she might not want it searchable outside FB:

"One thing that has become really clear since yesterday is that we live in at least two different realities. Talking to a friend who only knew Charlie as a Christian motivational speaker because that's all that ever came across her feed. Showed me videos I've never seen before of him saying perfectly reasonable and empowering things.

"I showed her videos she'd never seen before of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, advocating for violence against specific groups of people. She was horrified by his remarks about Pelosi's husband's attacker being bailed out and celebrated for his violent act. She was horrified by a number of things that he said, but she had never seen or heard them before, the same as I had never seen or heard the generalized clips of him sounding like a perfectly nice loving man and father.

"Neither of us had a whole picture of this man. I mentioned he was a known white supremacist and she thought I was joking. She talked about him giving a speech about finding your purpose and doing good in the world and I thought she was joking.

"I saw why this friend was mourning the loss of a person she thought was a good person. My friend, bless her, saw why I feel the way I do about him. We understood each other better. In spite of a multi-billion dollar internet machine specifically focused on keeping us apart. Because we talked to each other with the desire to listen and to learn rather than the desire to change someone else's mind or to be 'right'.

"None of those motivational things he said change my opinion about him because they don't erase the negativity, the subtle calls for violence, the belittling and denigrating of other races religions genders etc. His negative and blaming comments about homeless people, the poor, and victims of domestic violence. His comments about rounding up people who didn't think like him and putting them in camps where their behavior could be corrected. That time he said empathy was a made-up word he didn't believe in. That other time he said the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. The time he said most people are afraid when they get on a plane and see that there's a black pilot. His anti-vaccination rhetoric and his active campaigning against people being allowed to wear masks for their own health. His open support of fascism and white supremacy. To me, all of those are fully unchristian sentiments. Those are undeniable and just one of them would be a deal-breaker for me. All of them together are a picture of a man who was polarizing, enraged a lot of people and rightly so, but even with all of that I would never wish upon him or especially his children the end that he got.

"Oh, and my friend had never heard, and God help me I don't know how she escaped the news, but she had never heard of the Minnesota legislators who were shot in June. The husband and wife and dog who were killed, one after throwing themselves over their child to protect the child. The other couple who somehow survived. Politically motivated attacks specifically because they were democrats. She learned about those shootings that happened months ago because I showed her Charlie Kirk's comments about them. The kidnapping plot against a female Midwestern Democratic governor. The assassination attempt against Pennsylvania's democratic governor. All things Charlie had plenty to say about while supporting the Second Amendment and bashing the Democratic party. She didn't know about any of it because we're all living in two different worlds and none of us have the whole story."

@msbellows

Centraliized media in a nutshell.

People do not learn if they only read restricted feeds.

@msbellows
I’d say the poster still had a clearer idea of who he was than her friend, because anyone who said the things he said can’t just wave it away with nice family friendly stuff. Now I understand a letter to the editor in our local paper though. She obviously didn’t look beyond his “engagement” speeches to see what he really was.
@pomegranate_stew @msbellows Yeah, that "none of us have the whole story" line made me feel even more hopeless. It had the same vibe as Larry David's satirical essay about dining with Hitler but leaving out the self-awareness and satire. It almost makes me feel that the post was written as propaganda to make people feel that it's ok to have a Nazi friend.

@sstrader

Not at all, IMHO. That's all about this half a billion dollar social network isolating people in their respective filter bubble.

@pomegranate_stew @msbellows

@msbellows
I can accept that maybe social media algorithms meant that some people only saw an extremely sanitized version of this Nazi. But, and I'm sure you'll agree, fuck the WSJ and NYT utterly.

@MaryAustinBooks And fuck Facebook even more!

@msbellows

@wonka @MaryAustinBooks TBF, I found this there. But otherwise, yes.

@msbellows I cannot really praise them for lessening one instance of damage they likely caused millions of.

@MaryAustinBooks

@msbellows One trait I’ve noticed in conservative Christians is a tendency to avoid sources of information that are not “approved” by their church for fear of being tricked by Satan or some other evil entity. Republicans have exploited this belief system masterfully by creating an information ecosystem that insulates people from any inconvenient truths. Getting through to them is really difficult once they’ve been indoctrinated.
@Robgbysea @msbellows Then they go round criticising young people for their social media "echo chambers"
@freequaybuoy @Robgbysea @msbellows Criticizing them for being in the wrong echo chambers...
@arclight @Robgbysea @msbellows Sure, but I meant specifically how "echo chamber" itself has been used to denigrate social media, which is laughable really when you consider we've only ever had echo chambers (family, friends, work, a bar, one newspaper) and while we do indeed cultivate echo chambers on social media, they tend to expose us (anyone) to a far broader set of views and opinions (including opposing views shared in shock/horror/amusement/outrage) than we've ever been used to.
@arclight @Robgbysea @msbellows The largest of all or should I say narrowest literally being the church.

@Robgbysea @msbellows Authoritarian personalities want authority figures to provide them with authorized content.

Doesn't take indoctrination so much as an inclination to yield to authority without question. This can emerge under shock and stress, like 9/11's effect on individuals.

@raynetoday @Robgbysea @msbellows shock and stress is also what James Dobson for decades encouraged parents to trigger in their kids.

@Robgbysea @msbellows

i know a couple of fundie homeschool families

once the kids go to college they see clearly all the lies their parents told them and all the hate their were fed

for one family, none of their kids speak to their parents anymore, at all

@samiamsam @Robgbysea @msbellows that's why they hate higher education and discourage kids to pursue it.
@aris @samiamsam @Robgbysea @msbellows they really think college education brainwash their kids, because otherwise, how could the carefully instilled "good" vision of the world they had be shattered so easily in a few months or years of simple exposure to different points of view?
@aris @Robgbysea @msbellows @tshirtman @samiamsam not being able to defend your position reasonably should open you to at least examine your position (honestly?).

@tshirtman @aris @Robgbysea @msbellows

one kid on a phone call with his parents was finally fed up and yelled 'THERE IS NO GAY AGENDA' hung up and cut off contact

@Robgbysea @msbellows I was told in no uncertain terms by religious types that I should avoid interacting with "sinful" people as it might weaken my faith. My response was always "but Jesus did!"
@msbellows This is true but these "two different worlds" are not symmetric. One is missing the irrelevant propaganda information and the other is missing the key relevant information.
@msbellows The information one world is missing is the facts to understand reality. The information the other is missing is useless except for understanding how people in the former have been deceived.

@dalias @msbellows Yes, and this post isn’t complete until 1) the friend reevaluates her new view of Kirk and 2) she has a serious come to Jesus moment with regards to her media and information sources and how she could have been, or may in the future, support and further the reach of people who are actively causing harm to people because she thought them blameless.

People are ignorant and they mess up. But they cannot be both morally good and stagnant at once.

@msbellows

The part where her friend changed her mind is missing.

@jztusk Huh. I'm shocked.

@msbellows

I mean, it is possible that she did, but I've stopped holding out hope.

@msbellows ...this may be one of the most disturbing things I've read....not surprising, but the clarity of the disconnect is stunning....

@msbellows I'm sorry, but this little Christian bimbo's ignorance is exactly what has my hackles up. You get on a search engine that doesn't require a login on a browser that doesn't keep your cookies, at least, and you search for people before you swear your allegiance to them.

I bet she doesn't have a clue what her husband's doing what she thinks is both their money, either.

@janisf Or with what she thinks is her penis, either.

@msbellows this is the biggest problem with social media, everyone is being isolated into their own bubbles and echo chambers, giving much less opportunity to discuss, compare and reconcile

We need more conversations, not promotions and propaganda

@msbellows They knew all about what he said. She was gaslighting you. These assholes LOVE gaslighting us. Seriously… she’s fucking lying to you.

Also very possible that this is entirely a fabrication to evoke sympathy for these unclefucking shitheads. They don’t deserve any. None of them.

@msbellows In summer 2020 talking to a coworker about a blm event at red rocks amphitheater I saw that she had no idea events were happening weekly all over the country without incident. She had 4 kids one with autism, her news time was limited. And we were both stressed about Covid esp how much her son with autism lost w/remote learning.
I think a lot of people want easy to consume news & take the first thing offered to them. Fast food style news. For most local news is all they consume.
@msbellows it wouldn't be too presomptuous for her to say that she got gloser to the through than her friend though

@msbellows This is very important, a plot twist that George Orwell did not have in his (otherwise sadly accurate) 1984. Personalised, and probably intentional, agitation rather than propaganda over the whole population. Good reminder on that we do not know whether we are talking about the same incident or person because of targeted bubbles.

I guess that the populism algorithm still apllies. Keep asking questions! However, consider as the first question, are we talking about the same incident, what do you know about ---? What I have heard is that ---, are you aware of that?

@msbellows

Hitler was highly motivational. He was a brilliant orator. So was Mussolini.

So was Robert Menzies, the rich prick who single handedly set Australia's chances back a couple of hundred years.

#fuckcharliekirk

@msbellows Almost nobody in #uk had any idea who #charliekirk was until America started flooding our media with it after he was killed... Some guy got shot in America, a land where gun ownership and violence is always at a high.

The real news story should be WHY has this been amplified to such an extent and highly orchestrated narratives pushed on every media platform throughout UK and the Western world?

@Rastal
It's even worse with respect to Germany. Nobody knew about him and we don't consume US news directly due to the language barrier (which is quite low but still exists), but for some reason our journalists decided that his murder was a big news topic and made it one. I guess they are all on Twitter and see the world through that lens.

@msbellows

@msbellows
I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for willful ignorance.
Thank you for this highly accurate analysis. I saw numerous very decent family-members from a christian country other than the US, posting broken hearts on social media. Upon asking why, they explained: "it's because I'm pro-life too and am against abortion." They didn't know him other than from the shorts and reels that appeared in their feeds and thought it was so sad. Partial and incomplete information (intentionally or not) pushed by social media is a real issue and needs our attention.
@msbellows
People are directed into echo chambers, where only one point of view is usually seen and heard.
@msbellows This same phenomenon applies to Jordan Petersson. I met an elderly lady who *adored* him - she was only acquainted with some motivational videos she found *by accident* on Youtube, didn't know about any of the rest.

@msbellows In 1997, someone wrote an essay saying something like: We can never have a functional civilization and democracy as long as non-free software exists.

Could it be that you somehow missed that?

How are you (still) on Facebook?

@janneke @msbellows

People are on Facebook because that's where their acquaintances, family, friends, companies, and job connections are.

There's nothing with that kind of scope in the "free" world.

@janneke

I think FB is evil, but I also think your comment isn't helping.

One person getting off FB isn't going to solve the systemic issues.

One person rebuking another person for _not_ getting off FB isn't going to solve the systemic issues either.

@unchartedworlds
"One person <doing a great and brave thing that most possibly has network effects> isn't going to solve..."

That's a logical fallacy called: Appeal to futility.

It's beyond me how people stayed on FB, esp. after Brexit and Cambridge Analytica.

Leave FB now, and others in your network will follow.

@janneke

Instead of saying "it's beyond me how...", maybe try to understand the dynamics at play?

FB is very well suited to
- private discussions
- for non-techie people
- who only have smartphones.

That means it's the home for (probably) thousands of niche support groups which people rely on, as well as connections for extended family.

To get a network to move, you need a system that's comparably accessible for the people in it: including the ones who find it difficult to cope with any kind of software, and have just about got their heads around FB.

"Leave FB now, and others in your network will follow."

This sounds to me like wishful thinking. Not saying it could never happen!

In my case, there are several contexts where, due to my dislike of FB/Insta/WhatsApp, I've accepted that I'm not going to know what's going on, and I've decided that's a cost I can afford to pay. I'm not dependent on a niche support group there, and I've accepted that I'll miss some of the family news unless I make the effort to get it another way.

I ensure that anything _I'm_ running is visible outside of the FB walled garden.

But the idea that I've caused anyone _else_ to leave FB by not being there is, as far as I can see, false.

@msbellows Good grief!!! That's truly frightening.