Charlie Kirk Face-Swap Memes Are Taking Over the Internet

Charlie Kirk may have passed away weeks ago, but online, his face is experiencing a second, much weirder life. Across TikTok, X, and Instagram Kirk’s likeness keeps popping up in places no one asked for it to be like stitched onto rappers, plastered on album covers, and warped into reaction GIFs. This strange occurrence has become known as the Kirkification.

The trend kicked off in late September, shortly after the right-wing pundit’s death, when a X user posted Kirk’s face onto the “IShowSpeed Smiling Trying Not to Laugh” meme.

That post garnered almost 100,000 likes and set the stage for Kirkification to erupt across the internet. TikTok comment sections became overrun with deepfakes of Kirk’s face, often deployed with no context. Suddenly, he was everywhere: edited onto the body of NBA YoungBoy, appearing on a fake Drake cover, and slapped onto every Michael Jordan crying meme imaginable.

Some TikTok users are as bewildered as they are entertained.

“Charlie Kirk probably died in the worst generation to die in,” one user said. “I never seen anybody get memed like this. Every single comment section I go in I see a deepfake of his face. Imagine you live your whole life, pass away, and this is your legacy.”

“ I forgot who that man who or what he did,” someone else said in a TikTok. “I just see his face in comment sections now.”

Kirkification in a strange way reflects online culture works in 2025. For one, AI edits have become a universal shorthand and are popping up everywhere. A face can be detached from its original meaning and repurposed within seconds and that seems to be what’s happening here.

It also just might show how people are coping with the current political moment. Instead of engaging with pundits or arguing about ideology, let’s simply make them funny. For better or worse, this is where we're at now.