‘OWO WHAT’S THIS?’

What Symbols Charlie Kirk’s Killer Scratched on Bullets Mean

Explaining the memes and messages on the bullet casings.

The engravings on the bullets used to kill Charlie Kirk could be a clue to understanding 22-year-old suspect Tyler Robinson’s motives.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that police said the bullets were engraved with “transgender and antifascist ideology.” That was complicated by a later New York Times report, which said the markings had “not been verified by ATF analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.”

NEW CLUES

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In a Friday press conference, Utah Governor Spencer Cox revealed the messages that were actually engraved on the bullet casings. There are five messages in total:

While some of the meanings behind these messages appear to be straightforward, several are inside jokes and memes that require additional context to understand.

*NOTICES BULGE* OWO WHAT’S THIS!?

According to Cox’s report, the casing on the fired bullet from the rifle suspected of being the murder weapon read, “*Notices Bulge* OWO What’s This!?”

The phrase is a meme that originated around 2015 poking fun at the online furry community. The first version of the meme shows two older men engaging in furry-based sexual role-play. Furries are an online community of humans who pretend to be anthropomorphic animals.

In the past decade, the phrase has been used in numerous memes in jokes intended to make people cringe. It is also popular across the political spectrum, and social media users can see it used in both left and right online spaces. It does not inherently signal the alleged shooter’s politics or ideology.

“There is nothing inherently political about it,” Phillip Hamilton, an editor at Know Your Meme, told the Daily Beast.

“The meme was embraced by furries and other chronically online people because of how obviously cringe it is,” he added.

Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell added he believes that, “[The shooter] knew it would be discovered by investigators and thought it would be a funny gag.”

HEY FASCIST! CATCH!

This phrase on the first of four unfired bullet casings phrase appears to be self-explanatory. It seems to be the shooter’s way of saying that his target, in this case Kirk, is a fascist.

UP ARROW, RIGHT ARROW, THREE DOWN ARROWS

This is most likely a reference to the popular video game Helldivers 2, a community shooter video game in which players work together to fight creatures on large maps in various outer space biomes. The arrows are a code to call in an airstrike in the game. The code is popularly used as a meme in the Helldivers 2 online community.

Helldivers 2 is a satire of military conflict and fascism and takes heavy inspiration from the 1997 film Starship Troopers. The game’s fandom does not lean politically one way or another.

“O Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao”

The message on the third unfired bullet is particularly interesting. The song “Bella Ciao” is an Italian anti-Nazi and anti-fascist folk song from the 1940s.

‘HEY FASCIST! CATCH!’

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However, it’s also a popular song among “Groypers,” a group of far-right extremists aligned most popularly with 27-year-old white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes. This group has historically criticized Kirk from the right, and in what they called “Groyper Wars,” Fuentes would criticize Kirk and instruct his followers on how to troll Kirk’s events.

On Friday afternoon, a screenshot of a “Bella Ciao” remix appearing on a “Groyper Wars” playlist gained more than 2,400 retweets on X.

Others have pointed out that it prominently appears in the video game Far Cry 6, which would connect to the shooter’s known affinity for playing video games.

Though the song “Bella Ciao” has anti-fascist origins, it is difficult to parse what the shooter meant by etching it into one of the bullet casings without additional context.

IF YOU READ THIS U R GAY LMAO

As with the *notices bulge* bullet, this appears to merely be an attempt by the shooter to troll investigators. It is impossible to tell if the word “gay” is being used in a homophobic context here, as “gay” has been used online as a generic insult for decades. Given the shooter’s literacy in memes and online jokes, it is possible that this message is simply a gag.

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As of the time of writing, commenters can only speculate about Robinson’s political affiliations and motives. Right-wing politicians and pundits have spent the days following Kirk’s assassination spewing aggressive rhetoric against the left on the assumption the shooter was left-wing, despite no evidence pointing to their political affiliation or motivation. For example, Fox News host Jesse Watters vowed “vengeance” on the left following Kirk’s death.

Robinson is registered as an unaffiliated voter and has not voted in the past two general elections. His grandmother says he comes from a family of Republicans.

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Adam DownerBreaking News Reporter

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