The internet has turned us all into witches

Two days before Charlie Kirk was murdered, Claire Guinan, a writer for the US women’s website Jezebel , paid witches online to hex him.

When I first read Guinan’s article, my thought was that it was quintessential Jezebel : clickbait that might have interested 19-year-olds in 2011, back when witchcraft still had a frisson of feminist rebellion. She bought curses on the online marketplace Etsy from sellers like ‘Priestess Lilin’. She imagined Kirk’s socks sliding down, his blazers shrinking, his thumb growing too big to tweet. The piece was meant to be funny, a way to channel political rage into something absurd, petty and hopefully entertaining.

Forty-eight hours later, Kirk was dead.

Jezebel first added an editorial note condemning political violence, then removed the piece enti