Charlie Kirk

For a long time, I had a simple rule: I wouldn't watch someone being murdered. Regardless of the justification people used for watching it, the reality was that it was entertainment. I didn't want to dishonour the dead by doing that.

With Charlie, the morbid curiosity overcame me. I told myself it would be taken down soon anyway. That the whole world was watching. That I needed to see the depravity some people will go to in order to silence someone's voice. But it wasn't that at all. I was the depraved one - and I hit repeat.

We laugh at a time when minor curse words and girls in bikinis caught the eye of over-zealous censors. But it's hard to argue that didn't insulate the young of that generation from horrors they didn't need to see.

Let me end with an anecdote. As a kid I watched the infamous Nick Berg video. It was eerily similar in how it was presented to me - not the video I thought I was getting, but not one I clicked off even when I knew what it was. It was horrifying. Unlike seeing something in a theatre of battle, I was watching it on a laptop, with no connection to the man. I still think about it from time to time.

This kind of content affected me when it was rare. I deeply worry about how it's affecting a new generation now that it's everywhere.