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Death is Not the End, It’s a Promotion: Charlie Kirk AI Tributes Are the Height of Christian Conservative Kitsch

Emily Colucci

Heaven apparently isn’t a kingdom in the sky with gigantic pearly gates, but a warm, golden-hued sky with pluffy clouds and a perpetual, dramatic, hair-fluttering wafting breeze. And what do lucky VIPs do once they hit paradise? Apparently, take a whole lot of selfies with others who perished in similarly violent ways. At least that’s what Charlie Kirk does, farting around with his hereafter cellphone (do they get 5G up there?) like he’s at Disney World. The only indication of heavenly transformation is the replacement of Kirk’s frequently mocked gummy grin with perfect veneers. And he uses them liberally in several grinning group photos with romance novel cover Jesus and JFK, who saunter behind Kirk, before letting Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. take their turn. The two trios smile and vamp into Kirk’s phantom lens with slowed movements. JFK, who can’t get enough of the spotlight, returns for a last cheesy snapshot with Kirk, an unlikely political twosome. Maybe they bonded in the beyond over suspicious assassinations allegedly by a lone gunman that have more questions than answers. This surreal selfie scene is set to afterlife muzak, Zebulon Raphel’s cover of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” a popular tune for AI heaven, considering another video I found of Ozzy Osbourne shaking hands with Hulk Hogan, hanging on a ghostly beach with Paul Walker, racing bikes with Elvis, and drinking wine in “Ozzy’s Wine Paradise.” Hey, wait?! How come Ozzy and Elvis get to have all the fun while Charlie’s stuck playing fanboy with his fellow political assass-ees?!

Concerns about being stuck making content in heaven aside, this AI tribute video is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen, only rivaled by the many, many, many other AI Kirk memorials plastered all over the Internet since his assassination. This golden hour selfie sesh with famous American leaders and Jesus is batshit, disturbing, uncomfortable, nightmarish, particularly with the uncannily painterly but also not aesthetic of AI slop, and above all, hilarious. I can’t stop thinking about it—and the American impulse to memorialize through the tackiest means possible. These Kirk tributes are not only the first time I’ve really ever considered AI art worth treating with the kind of unserious seriousness we provide on Filthy Dreams, but they also mark a new height (low?) of Christian conservative kitsch.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Emily, what the fuck are you doing? Why would you write anything about Kirk? Do you want the gaiter-masked MAGA Gestapo to raid your apartment to make sure you have a properly reverent portrait of Kirk hanging on your walls like Kim Jong Un (I call this portrait)? Do you want the Kirk committee to confirm you have shed the allotted amount of tears? Do you want to be put in the Turning Point USA re-education camp that Jimmy Kimmel just left?! Maybe. Maybe I’m writing this article to make a point about free speech. But my preoccupation with Kirk kitsch has less to do with Kirk himself or his assassination, other than a curiosity about why Kirk is inspiring this overwrought AI overflow. While I watch a lot of conservative media, Kirk never really did it for me. I viewed a smattering of clips from this summer’s Turning Point USA conference, namely Tucker Carlson’s rant about Epstein and Dave Smith’s debate with Josh Hammer on Israel. Yet, Kirk himself always seemed so straight-laced, so boring, so evangelical for my tastes. He’s not taking swigs of Tito’s and dry-heaving while declaring he’s ready for nuclear war on The Tim Dillon Show like Alex Jones or spinning a tale about pillow-based redemption like Mike Lindell. Other than recently watching Kirk’s July appearance on Tucker, in which he correctly diagnosed Gen Z’s dire economic straights before veering into the eyeroll-worthy “feminization” of the workforce, I haven’t digested hours upon hours of his opinions, and frankly, I’ve heard enough that I’m not about to. Let other people dig those up and fight about his views and legacy; that’s not my concern.

And sure, there are a lot of bizarre details swirling around the assassination itself that I could spend a whole lot of time hyperfixating on here: the Eddington-like Internet-poisoned bullet casing inscriptions; Kash Patel’s one-act play between the alleged shooter and his furry(?) roommate/partner, peppered with law enforcement lingo that no civilian would ever use (“swept the scene?”), which demands a dramatic reading; Bibi’s odd repeated insistence that Israel didn’t murder Kirk; Bill Ackman’s fun-in-the-sun intervention in the Hamptons; Candace Owens’s unearthing of a photo of Tyler Robinson getting Dairy Queen after committing (alleged) homicide (What’s with these high-profile killers and fast food?!); Kirk’s Turning Point colleague’s description of Charlie’s “man of steel” bones; Tyler Robinson’s furry fandom, including following an artist who “creates furry content as well as images of incredibly obese women being fed”; and Robinson’s supposed favorite furry video game “Furry Shades of Gay.” Ok, where do I find that last one?! Besides wanting to try my hand at Furry Shades of Gay, spiraling out on assassination theories is, again, for other people to articulate publicly, as is hand-wringing about what nefarious ways the Trump administration is going to use his death to further attack trans people and leftist causes. Other than anticipating that the latter might be bad if Donnie isn’t distracted by his Overlook Hotel ballroom again, I don’t fucking know.

What I do know is bad taste, trash religiosity, and kitsch. And boy, these Kirk AI memorials fit right into my wheelhouse. So did the IRL stadium memorial by the way, from Erika Kirk’s transformation into a Tammy Faye-like conservative camp icon, dabbing her raccoon smoky eyes with her giant gold football-ringed hands after professing to forgive Robinson, to Trump miming “America the Beautiful” like Ronald McDonald next to a grieving widow (somber!) to the New Testament according to Tucker Carlson to this loon carrying a gigantic cross on wheels. If only Jesus had it that easy! Yet, the meatspace memorial is a more predictable American form of overblown grief, a combination of the Super Bowl of mourning, Billy Graham’s crusades, Wrestlemania, and a MAGA rally. The AI memorials do something different. They seem to deny the finality of death itself in favor of some kind of hallucinatory, delusional alternate cyberspace existence in which Charlie shreds the guitar alongside his new bandmates, Freddie Mercury, Brian May (who is still alive), and Jesus, who plays the lyre like Sting:

Though Jesus plays backup in this new heavenly band, he fronts most of the AI tributes. His appearance varies in these videos thanks to AI’s cannibalization of the entire Internet and much of human creation. Though there are outliers, like the irradiated Jesus that embraces Kirk moodily sitting on a bench in a park, the most consistent Christ aesthetic here is the contemplative, robed hunk staring out at the garden…I mean, the suburban lawns hosting yard sales across America. In the most cinematic of the bunch, set to Stephen McWinter’s saccharine, “Come Jesus Come,” Christ lays his hands on Kirk’s American flag T-shirted chest, lying prone in what appears to be the concrete-strewn, bombed-out rubble of Gaza. Christ sheds a crocodile tear. He gathers Kirk up like a child, whose T-shirt has now extended into an elegant American flag dress. Looks like Kirk succumbed to gender ideology! Suddenly, perhaps due to Christ’s satorial intervention, Charlie finds a second wind, running through the gates of heaven to gaze down on Earth. The video, then, spirals out of control into an evangelical USA USA USA meltdown in which Christ waves his arms in front of an American flag hanging from nowhere, an unhinged combo of Christian and patriotic imagery that belongs painted on black velvet next to a semi-truck.

Other Kirk memorials take on the tone of a Jesus buddy movie, especially the trio of tributes that come from the same series, or at least the same AI hivemind. In these, Jesus skips around the cotton ball clouds with Kirk, who sports a red hat emblazoned with drivel-y AI gobbledygook, reminiscent of the blather-strewn police tape on Nicki Minaj’s “Bigfoot” alternate cover. Where do I get one? I’d much rather have nonsense than that same old, tired, Make America Great Again slogan. Though it’s easy to get distracted zooming in to try to read Kirk’s cap, the focus here is less on the imagery than the hospitable message. “Welcome, my son. Your work here is done. Come rest!” Christ offers in one video, while in another, he assures a “tired” Charlie, “You’ve done well.” And in yet another, it’s Charlie who turns to the audience to announce, “Always put Jesus first, guys, I gotta go!” Ok, see ya!

At least Christ gives Charlie a break in those. The videos I’ve seen shared the most feature Charlie being forced to do a good, hard, sweaty cardio workout before reaching heaven. Set at the time of the shooting itself, Kirk answers his final question. Rather than the carnage we’ve all had the misfortune of witnessing, this video switches up the brutality for two angels dropping by. Kirk bows his head and puts down his microphone, bolting up a white staircase. At the top of the stairs? Kris Kristofferson. Or, ok, maybe it’s Jesus, but he looks like he’s about to sing “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” In another version, posted by Derrick Evans, who describes himself in his bio as “former January 6 political prisoner,” Charlie runs toward a frightening, faceless, ripped Marvel hero.

Beyond all the Jesus AI tributes, another genre of Kirk memorial places the Turning Point USA founder at the center of other hot topics and geopolitical propaganda. The most macabre has to be the creepy combo of Kirk and the other murder of the month, Ukrainian Iryna Zarutaska, who was killed on the Charlotte light rail by Decarlos Brown Jr. Her fatal stabbing, particularly after the gruesome video footage was released, caused an explosion of debate on the Internet, as right wingers used the event as an impetus to rail about Democratic cities’ criminal justice policies and also as an excuse just to be racist online. In Kirk/Zarutska AI vids, Kirk typically comforts Zarutska, holding her on the light rail seats, a murder victim mash-up constructed to strike the right rage-bait chords, made all the more ghoulish because Zarutska was not, unlike Kirk, a public figure. Yet, even that is not as twisted as the extended cut that ties together Kirk with the United States’ endless support of Israel, both of which angel-winged Kirk declares are “based on faith, on freedom, on family.” This hasbara fever dream mixes imagery of Charlie giving awards to soldiers in front of Israeli flags, evil anti-war protesters, Hamas in Covid masks, eagles, IDF soldiers, and the growling antagonist, Greta Thunberg, minus her adorable froggy flotilla hat. “I’m in a better place now,” angel Kirk proclaims, “but America and Israel will never be the same.” Fucking yikes. And his dual declaration “America needs you. Israel needs you” is even eerier in the context of Kirk’s reported wavering on his views on Israel, particularly in the context of a war with Iran, in the months before his death. I guess you can make the AI dead say anything you want!

Since I have, clearly, spent a lot of time—too much time—culling the Internet for this slop, I can say with absolute certainty that my favorite of the lot is the utterly wackadoodle video, reminiscent of NFL team introductions, in which Kirk drags along his new friends: a gaggle of martyred saints who try to outdo one another with brags about their heinously brutal demises. “My name is Paul,” says a man with a weathered face, “and I was beheaded for the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Really cool, Paul! “My name is Stephen,” says a younger, darker-haired man, “and I was stoned for proclaiming Christ as Lord.” Jesus Christ, Stephen! And if you think these AI memorials are not getting an impassioned response from Christian conservative social media users, just flick through the replies. “This is exactly the kind of courage we need,” says one, while another exclaims, “Epic! AI used for good.” “Now I’m crying again,” sobs yet another, “I wish the Catholic Church would canonize him and declare him a martyr.” Of course, when perusing the entirely verified users on X, a question nags: are these even real people enthusiastically praising this slop, or are they bots?

A valid question, but I can confirm this fervent and overzealous response to AI Kirk has transitioned into our world. Gaze upon the tearful standing ovation that AI Charlie earned at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, after their pastor, Jack Graham, pressed play on a (again, I feel I have to emphasize) made-up speech from the late conservative activist:

I’ll give ghost Kirk credit, “Death is not the end, it’s just a promotion” is a great line—and pretty true when it comes to death in the age of AI. Death isn’t the end; you get promoted to a starring role in an endless parade of ghostly recycled images that kind of look like you and kind of sound like you, but remain off in unspeakably uncanny ways. This promotion also includes ceaseless communication using artificial intelligence as a digital Ouiji board, a berserk spiritualism for the 21st century! And it’s not just Kirk and other public figures reanimated and ventriloquized from beyond the grave. The first time I witnessed AI used in this manner was in a road rage murder trial in Arizona. The victim’s sister, according to NPR, “used artificial intelligence to generate a video of how her late brother, Christopher Pelkey, would address the courtroom and specifically the man who fatally shot him.” The resulting AI victim impact statement was as skin-crawling as you imagine, as Pelkey not only forgave his murderer, offering the sappy premonition, “In another life, we probably could have been friends” (he shot him!), but signed off with the truly bizarre, “Well, I’m gonna go fishing now. Love you all. See you on the other side.” Instead of reacting with a knee-jerk, “What the fuck?” like any rational-minded person and throwing it out completely, the judge, Todd Lang, seemed not only moved by this fake testimony but unable to comprehend that this was not, in fact, an actual Zoom call from the afterlife. “Thank you for that,” Lang gushed, taking the undead speech as gospel.

This psychotic reaction to zombie AI gels with other AI-related crack-ups, from individuals using Chat GPT like an oracle providing them with the mystical answers of the universe, leading them to spiral out into an esoteric fugue state, yell at their spouses, and get AI-generated woo-woo tattoos, to couples wielding large language models as therapy-speak parroting, Magic 8 Balls to accuse their significant other of abuse and manipulation when they try not to fight in front of the kids in the car. Charlie Kirk tributes—and the effusive reactions to them—fit within this same human nervous breakdown in the face of growing artificial intelligence sentience. Because…who is making these AI tribs anyway? Are there humans behind a keyboard in Turning Point USA merch typing in prompts like “Charlie Kirk, selfie, Martin Luther King Jr.”? Or is AI producing this itself for an audience of bots and a smattering of gullible Americans, aesthetically primed and susceptible to this kind of sappy memorial kitsch?

I believe it’s the latter. Dead internet is here, and it’s even darker and more depraved than we could ever imagine. My proof rests on the strikingly similar themes in the Kirk memorial videos and others produced for Ozzy and Hulk Hogan. For instance, most of the deceased are stuck in a posthumous loop of taking selfies with other famous dead people, like Ozzy and Bowie playing with a selfie stick. Even freakier, Queen and specifically Freddie Mercury appear frequently in these memorials, as seen in this tacky one posted by actress Béatrice Dalle. While it is a tad more appropriate with Osbourne, a supergroup of Charlie Kirk and Freddie Mercury makes me feel like I’m having a stroke. Why is Freddie Mercury so prominent in these AI memorials?! Is sentient AI a huge fan of “Fat Bottomed Girls”?

Whether a live person created these Kirk memorials or not, it’s worth taking note that the way Americans deal with public brutal death is by mainlining utter schlock after watching a gore video one too many times. And AI memorials are schlock. If you can put aside the erratic visual errors of too many fingers or jumbled lettering, AI art has the painterly quality of celebrity portraits sold in outlet mall kiosks. Its lack of a perceptible hand also recalls mass-produced gewgaws, such as Precious Moments figurines. Rather than collectible tchotchkes, though, which collect dust in proudly displayed cabinets of tack, AI art is imagery constructed for the lowest common denominator of taste, churned out as quickly as possible to be consumed, shared, liked, and likely instantly forgotten. The Kirk memorials, specifically, add a dash of Christian conservative flair that reminds me of crap I’d consider buying at cathedral gift shops or an angel figurine found in the spiderwebbed corner of the one remaining Hallmark store. They’re made to pull on the heartstrings in a syrupy flood of emotions and egg on an us vs. them holy war with Kirk’s unnamed “enemy,” who reportedly wants “chaos, fear, and retaliation.” “Dry your tears, pick up your cross, and get back in the fight,” says resurrected Kirk in his megachurch AI speech. And yet, isn’t there something semi-sacrilegious about all of this, despite the AI videos’ overt, over-the-top piousness? I’m certainly not an evangelical expert, but forcing Jesus and the dead to do your bidding weirds even me out.

Beyond the churchy, the proliferation of these tributes and their apparent popularity with humans and bots alike has to say something about the deteriorating state of the American grasp on reality. Perhaps it’s that Americans cannot handle death, particularly traumatic, violent death, without turning toward the immortality-granting qualities of kitsch, a phenomenon I previously observed at the 9/11 Museum’s gift shop. And hey, Kirk AI tributes cost a whole lot less to produce than that boondoggle of a museum. They only suck up a smidgen more environmental resources for those hot and steamy data centers. A dribbling flow from a rural faucet and sky-high electric bills are small prices to pay for everlasting life.

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