I'd only heard of him in the sense of him being one of a flock of fascist wastes of oxygen who grifted around the country spewing hate and violence and making people's lives worse and more dangerous. He was a name on a list of scum who we'd be better off with them never having been born.

All I've learned about him since is that I was fucking right. Having him not exist anymore is a net gain in the long term but he's still pissing me off for now by the fact that I'm wasting my fucking time and my fucking attention and my fucking blood pressure on his fucking bullshit even more than I was.

He can fucking rot with Rush Limbaugh and Joseph Goebbels and the rest of their fucking detestable cabal of fucking filth. If I never hear his fucking name again it'll be too fucking soon and the universe still owes me my fucking time back from every moment I've wasted having to fucking be exposed to this shit.

I knew barely, just some of stuff he said. He was a nazi cunt. And member of the paedophile cult (christian).

I knew him because of the memes that distorted his face to look like “Butthead” from the cartoon and the “change my mind” meme. I didn’t know how ingrained his shitty answer-as-accusation or racist dogwhistle was in right wing circles.

I'd heard of him but didn't think about him often.

I was just perma'd from reddit for commenting on him "getting slimed." It was a fucking JOKE.

Look, if people are celebrating your death, no amount of revisionism is going to change a god damn thing -- you're a terrible human being. All this censorship and chilling effects? Not going to make people shut up forever. You're going to embolden them.

I was vaguely aware that he was one of those ghouls who uses the aestethics of "debate" as a shield to spews hatred and turn the knife in culture war wounds, a person who used their platform to foment selfishness and evil in the heart of millions while saying "it's just free speech bro" as if that made him innocent.

And of course, that it exactly WHY he was doing all this, this duplicitous abuser of free speech true goal is the destruction of free speech, by saying things so heinous as to provoke the condition in which free speech could be abolished so that his vampiric masters can finally silence the discordant mobs forever.

I probably heard of him and saw pictures of him but all the alt right folks look alike and say the same things, so he particularly never registered for me. Whoever he was.

Same. No clue who he was..

I knew of him, because of my right wing friend.

I knew he was "that guy". Though there are several people sharing the same "that guy" bubble in my head and I don't know which stories involved which actual guy. I do know one of them said something about having to scratch their ass frequently, so when the news broke out I told my wife: "someone shot the itchy ass guy".

I had no clue who he was until he was shot. They always target the nobodies.

I wish I could say I didn't, but I knew who he was and what sorts of things he said.

You probably saw images of Kirk and assumed they were bad photoshops of Shapiro. They basically were two cheeks of the same ass spewing hateful shit for far right to gobble up.

Kirk was often mocked for having a round head and relatively small face, where Shapiro was generally mocked for his numerous bad takes and awful admissions. Both of them had almost identical debate styles of just doubling down on false narratives and denying anything contrary to their agenda even in when presented with proof.

I watch leftists who occasionally covered him. He was extremely popular on TikTok with children to college-age people. He was also close to Trump, and I think Trump sent him to Greenland a while back with the VP on that "diplomacy" trip.

Never knew him before his death because I'm not 'murican

I heard about him once before when he said that Finland shouldn’t join NATO because they are too ”russian”. Well you can’t expect knowledge from an uneducated nazi.

Meh there was nothing important about him and no reason for anyone to care. On the other hand, there was another school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado, at nearly the same time, and THAT is what everyone should be focusing on. Of course the cantaloupe in charge still hasn't said a word about THAT because he couldn't make that tragedy about himself.

I pretty much only knew the name and that he was a right wing propagandist like a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson or the like.

The vast majority of people I don't think really loved or hated him as actively as they are doing right now. This is just a moment for both sides to radicalize over what they see as either proof the conservative haters are all violent and need to be dealt with in kind, or for those that do want anti-conservative violence to call it "a good start."

I feel he met an end that isn't really much of a surprise, as he encouraged "his people" to oppress others and/or yo provide extreme reactions from his opposition. He encouraged violence, but it backfired on him.

Never paid him much mind before and not planning to start now. I am worried about what unrelated people are going to suffer the vengeance for one random person's actions.

My feelings on the public's general reaction is it's a more extreme version of what happens when a celebrity dies that most people probably already thought died years ago. People talk like they were the greatest thing ever when they either never watched the movies before or hadn't seen them or thought about them in ages. They're just fired up as an excuse for attention or to push an agenda.

But as I said, never listened to the guy, so I may be a little off, but he was filed under radical conservative in my mind and that was good enough for me.

I did not. I mean I saw articles about things he said and maybe clips to because he was such an asshat but it just is part of the deluge of the bs stuff churned out there. I don't need to know who the lapdog du jour, is for each hateful comment.

I knew about him vaguely just from staying in the loop with politics casually since 2016 or so. But I haven't heard of him in a long time.

I also did not know of him at all. I did know who Ben Shapiro is. This week has been an educational one: I have learned about Nick Fuentes and 'groypers', Candace Owens, and that the change my mind meme guy is called Steven Crowder (I first thought it was this guy when I saw the video of Kirk).

The US political commentator that I do watch some times is Hasan, but not too often. The US lore goes too deep and moves too quickly, hard to keep up.

I knew who he was from the meme, and I knew he was some sort of alt-right influencer, but other than that I couldn't have told you much about him. Honestly still can't. I don't care for politicians or anyone in that circle of influence.

I have friends and colleagues all over the political spectrum. Guess which ones really don't like it when I say "can't we all agree that they all suck and just get along?" Yeah, it's the conservative/authoritarians. I mean yeah, the liberal/progressives who fight for us are more aligned with our — that is to say, those of us on Lemmy who lean left — views might be better, but they still exist in a grey area, they still do what they need to to get ahead. We accept that those things are necessary but I don't think any of them are saints. But on the other side? They believe their leaders can do no wrong, and that is worrying. But they love when Trump does bad things to dark-skinned people or the LGBTQ+. They love him for the things we despise him for, from the child predator shit, to the attack on the country almost six years ago, the felony convictions, and all the piss poor decisions he's made in office.

I only ever knew him from his JDV-adjacent tiny face memes, and never by name.

For a split second the first time I heard about him I thought Kirk Cameron had been assassinated

You're lucky. I normally would disagree with ignorance being bliss, but as someone who's seen his stuff and probably gotten angry enough to kill my own brain cells, be glad.

Never heard about the guy before his death, but to my credit, i live in Europe. Paradoxically, his death looks like a benediction for the reps, they have now a new pretext to cancel or condemn the dems, they just have to look a bit too happy about his assassination.

I was aware of his existence. Saw him say some racist shit once. Wrote him off as a chud mouthpiece. Maybe a Podcaster or something.

I had no idea, but I watched one of the early South Market episodes this season. And Cartman was pretending to be him.

As soon as I watched some of the footage of the deed, I knew exactly who he was based on the South Park. But prior to that, no, absolutely not.