Inside the world of Discord and the far-left-coded games radicalizing young boys

On the computer screen, a campy-looking pirate jiggles his left leg impatiently, swigging occasionally from a tumbler of rum. In front of him, dark skies pour rain above a swirling sea. The pirate jumps into a boat and heads into the waves — getting ready to attack and board a rival ship.

The soundtrack to this digital drama is a constant, giggling commentary by a young goateed man —  talking into a microphone and wearing a pair of headphones over a baseball cap.

HitboTC (“Gamer, family man and full-time nerd,” according to his social media bio) is simultaneously playing pirates with his friends — on the wildly popular “Sea of Thieves,” which has reportedly sold 1.8 million copies on PlayStation alone since it launched last year — all while communicating with the other players via his headset. He’s also livestreaming the whole thing on the online platform Twitch — where he has 194,000 followers on the platform.

And after he finishes his session, HitboTC will log onto the messaging platform Discord, where he’ll discuss his moves. 

“Sea of Thieves” — a game in which the player assumes the role of a pirate adventuring the high seas, plundering and pillaging, and conducting daring raids — has around 12.4 million players worldwide, logging in for an average of 20 hours per week.

Before reportedly confessing to shooting conservative speaker and activist Charlie Kirk in a Discord chat channel in September, Tyler Robinson was one of those players.