Chapter Eleven - How to Kill a Meme

CHAPTER ELEVEN

How to Kill a Meme

YOU’D THINK THROWING a man in a river would end the story.

But Rasputin wasn’t just a man anymore.
He had become a virus made of charisma, chaos, and rumor.
And viruses mutate.

After his death, the monarchy collapsed. The royals were executed. The empire bled out.
And Rasputin, dead and gone, kept growing.

He became a cartoon. A devil. A disco icon.
People who’d never read a Russian history book knew his name.
He lived on in jokes, headlines, weird internet corners, and that one song you can’t un-hear.

He became what every manipulator dreams of becoming:

Unkillable.

Because the only way to kill a meme is to starve it.
Ignore it.
Strip it of attention, fear, fascination.

But that’s hard when the meme in question infiltrated an empire, maybe supposedly seduced a queen, tanked a dynasty, and literally refused to die for three solid rounds of attempted murder.

The worst part?

He didn’t even plan it.

Rasputin wasn’t a mastermind.
He was a walking fever dream who said yes to chaos and kept going.
But that was enough.

That’s what makes him dangerous.
That’s what makes him eternal.

Because every generation gets its own Rasputin.
Not always in robes. Not always with beards.

But always loud. Always strange. Always worming their way into places they don’t belong.
They talk like prophets. Smell like rot.

And by the time you realize they’re real, it’s already too late.