Charlie Kirk, the American conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder, was shot during a campus event at Utah Valley University in September 2025, and clips from coverage and live reactions spread rapidly across social media. Short excerpts were quickly ripped to soundboards and reused out of context as a reaction meme, detached from the original news report. Its continued use comes less from the event itself than from the recognisable shock of the moment, which editors now apply to unrelated surprises and dramatic reveals.