Luigi Mangione has been inescapable, hasn\u2019t he? His face is all over my social media feeds. Outlet after outlet \u2014 some mainstream, some otherwise \u2014\u00a0have published stories about the video games<\/a> he liked, his Reddit comments<\/a>, his Goodreads page<\/a>, his political ideology<\/a>, his back pain<\/a>. Mangione is not merely an accused murderer; he is a celebrity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As of this writing, there are more than 100 fanfics about the shooter on Archive of Our Own<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There was a time, fairly recently, when it was felt that the best practice in a high-profile shooting was to avoid publicizing the accused killer\u2019s identity and detailing the method by which it was accomplished. The idea, as articulated by Zeynep Tufekci in 2012<\/a>, was that highly publicized killings<\/a> functioned as a kind of social contagion; murder as a kind of advertisement for the shooter\u2019s manifesto<\/a>. Social media platforms generally scrubbed the profiles of people accused of high-profile killings; as recently as 2020, Facebook suppressed searches for \u201cKyle Rittenhouse<\/a>,\u201d after he was charged with murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The weekend after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson\u2019s murder, Tufekci wrote another op-ed<\/a>. In 2012, she had suggested there should be no reporting on the killer\u2019s words or actions. In her more recent story, she described a video of the killing and noted the messages found on the shell casings. She compared Thompson\u2019s murder to a wave of killings in Gilded Age America and noted America has now passed the Gilded Age in wealth inequality. \u201cIt\u2019s not hard to see how, during the Gilded Age, armed political resistance could find many eager recruits and even more numerous sympathetic observers,\u201d Tufekci wrote. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not hard to imagine how the United States could enter another such cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mangione\u2019s profile on X is still up.<\/a> Since he was named as a person of interest in the killing of Thompson, a blue checkmark has been added to the profile. It\u2019s not just X. Most social media platforms have stepped back from aggressive moderation<\/a> in general \u2014\u00a0leaving users\u2019 impulses unchecked. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n So the shooter was the subject of murder ballads and general sympathy<\/a>, even a look-alike contest<\/a>. As of this writing, there are more than 100 fanfics<\/a> about the shooter on Archive of Our Own, many of them written before Mangione was arrested. Breloom, the pok\u00e9mon in Mangione\u2019s header photo on X, has been selling out<\/a>. Mangione-themed merch is all over Etsy<\/a>; Amazon has been removing the merch<\/a> popping up on its platform. Ken Klippenstein, a Substack journalist, published a short statement from Mangione that is rather grandiosely being referred to as a \u201cmanifesto.\u201d<\/a> Users on r\/SkincareAddicts jokingly alibied<\/a> him, saying he was getting a facial with them on December 4th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A day after Mangione\u2019s statement was posted in its entirety, a Reddit moderator in r\/popculturechat<\/a> wrote, \u201cReddit has told us that we are not allowed to post Luigi Mangione\u2019s manifesto, even if it is reported neutrally.\u201d Users were not impressed. The top comment on the post was, \u201cIs this the same reddit where people routinely post videos of other people getting straight up murdered?\u201d Other users responded with gifs of the video game character Luigi from Nintendo\u2019s Mario <\/em>franchise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Murder as entertainment predates social media<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The manhunt for Mangione meant that images of his face were necessary for his capture \u2014\u00a0he was identified in a McDonald\u2019s in Altoona, Pennsylvania<\/a>, by people who recognized him from those photos. But after his arrest, the pictures kept coming. The police themselves released at least four<\/a>. One striking photo, taken for The New York Times<\/em>, showed Mangione as the sole bright spot<\/a> at the center of an otherwise dark photograph, haloed like a Renaissance portrait of a saint.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I suppose you could say the mood has shifted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Murder as entertainment predates social media. (As JonBen\u00e9t Ramsey\u2019s parents surely know.) Fandom for murder isn\u2019t new either \u2014\u00a0the Columbine shooters, who murdered 13 people, have an ardent following<\/a>. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people, has a fan base<\/a>. Before those two, of course, there was Charles Manson, who had his own set of groupies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This feels different, perhaps because the lionization of an accused murderer isn\u2019t limited to the weirder corners of the internet. Immediately after Thompson was shot, the reaction was anger \u2014\u00a0at UnitedHealthcare<\/a>. A Facebook post by UnitedHealthcare\u2019s parent company received 57,000 laughing emoji as reactions, according to CNN<\/a>. r\/nursing effectively<\/a> threw<\/a> a party<\/a>. People all over social media posted their experiences with claims denials<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The job of a CEO is, in part, to serve as the symbolic representation of a company. Killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare doesn\u2019t kill UnitedHealthcare. It does, however, make a statement. Certainly the shooter was aware of the symbolic nature of his act \u2014 why else the \u201cdeny, delay, depose<\/a>\u201d bullet casings?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Brian Thompson, a literal human being, has been blotted out by his symbolic role as the head of UnitedHealthcare<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I can\u2019t speak to the veracity of the individual claims denial stories,\u00a0but the broad outlines are supported by fact. UnitedHealthcare, which made $16 billion in operating earnings<\/a> last year on $281 billion in revenue, has been accused of intentionally denying claims in order to juice profits<\/a> by a Senate subcommittee. A lawsuit accuses the company<\/a> of \u201cillegal deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) in place of real medical professionals to wrongfully deny elderly patients care owed to them under Medicare Advantage Plan.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For most people, an invisible system decides whether they receive the treatment their doctor prescribed. There is no insight into the system, particularly if it is algorithmic, even when \u2014 perhaps especially when \u2014 it is wrong. This, along with the expense of healthcare and insurance itself, may explain the explosion of fury following Thompson\u2019s death. Brian Thompson, a literal human being, has been blotted out by his symbolic role as the head of UnitedHealthcare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sorting through Mangione\u2019s internet detritus to make sense of the killing was somewhat unnecessary, though people did it anyway<\/a>. He was arrested with a ghost gun, a silencer, and what amounted to a written confession. That confession confirmed what most of us had already figured out from the assassination itself: this was a political act.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A New York Police Department internal report said Mangione \u201clikely views himself as a hero of sorts,\u201d according to The New York Times<\/em><\/a>. That report suggested other people may decide he\u2019s a \u201cmartyr and an example to follow.\u201d After Mangione\u2019s arrest, users left reviews on McDonald\u2019s restaurants<\/a> in Altoona saying they were full of \u201crats.\u201d Altoona police say they are receiving threats<\/a> as a result of the arrest. If Mangione views himself as \u201ca hero of sorts,\u201d he isn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If Mangione views himself as \u201ca hero of sorts,\u201d he isn\u2019t alone<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There is one more significant event that occurred two days after Thompson\u2019s murder, Insurer Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reversed itself<\/a>: it would not follow through on a plan to stop reimbursing anesthesia beyond a certain time limit. The specifics of this policy<\/a> were complicated, but the overwhelming anger and swift reversal were notable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There have already been some consequences that do not involve the healthcare industry changing its approach to patients. Several companies have removed photos of their executives<\/a> from their websites. One insurer temporarily closed<\/a> its headquarters. Another insurer switched its investor day<\/a> from in person to online.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So far, it appears Thompson\u2019s assassination was ruthlessly effective: Mangione\u2019s image and ideas were widely disseminated, to broad approval. This is a total failure of the best practices once suggested to make killing for publicity less attractive. The New York Times<\/em> realized this<\/a>, according to Ken Klippenstein \u2014\u00a0arguably about a week too late for it to matter. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The possibility of contagion<\/a> \u2014\u00a0as referenced in the NYPD report \u2014 is still theoretical. (Other attacks have been going on as usual, though they rarely get national attention now; the same day as Thompson was killed, two kindergartners were shot at school<\/a> in California.) The public celebration of Mangione and the timing of the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announcement may suggest to some that violence will make corporate executives likelier to agree to regulation and smaller profits, because they prefer that to credible murder threats. But the reaction to violence is rarely that orderly. The response to Mangione suggests something else to me: political murder in America feels so inevitable now that we\u2019ve simply accepted it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n