Luigi Mangione memes
Via @cookedairforce1

IN THE HOURS after Luigi Mangione was arrested for the killing of America’s UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the 26-year-old’s Instagram following surged from 1,379 followers to 74,000. After having his account on X (formerly Twitter) suspended on Monday – a move that Elon Musk wrote “happened without his knowledge,” adding that he was “looking into it” – not only was Mangione’s account back up by Wednesday, he’d also been given a blue tick normally reserved for ‘verified’ users with an active subscription to X Premium. The account is still live; it currently has 409.4K followers. 

It didn’t take internet sleuths long to find Mangione’s Goodreads account, either; his eight paragraph review of Theodore John Kaczynski’s The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future was a piece of information that went very viral very quickly. On the bullet casings found at the scene of Thompson’s killing, the words ‘Deny’, ‘Defend’ and ‘Depose’ were written. Not only are these terms that are commonly used to describe the tactics employed by American health care insurers to avoid paying claims, they are also similar to the title of a book by American lawyer Jay M. Feinman, Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It. On Tuesday, CNN reported the book had reached No. 2 on an Amazon bestselling list. 

In terms of the internet’s truly wild reaction to Brian Thompson’s death and Luigi Mangione’s arrest, these examples are only the tip of the iceberg. Before he was even identified in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 370 kilometres west of New York City, a CCTV image of Mangione sparked search interest in the hooded khaki jacket he was wearing, with fashion people adept at ID-ing even the most niche of garments quickly noting the jacket was Levi’s, and still available to buy at department store Macy’s. According to TMZ, shortly after being identified, the jacket sold over 700 units in 48 hours. As of Tuesday, the website lists the jacket as ‘currently unavailable’, which is ecommerce shorthand for ‘sold out’.

The jacket wasn’t the only thing about that CCTV photo that sent the internet into overdrive; photographed smiling at a waitress while ordering Starbucks in New York before the shooting, people quickly pointed out that Mangione appeared . . . handsome. Within minutes, we’d changed our interpretation of the scene. Mangione wasn’t smiling. No, he was flirting. 

And what follows when someone emerges from obscurity into a ‘folk hero’, as Mangione has since been called? Memes. Babygirl memes. Mario Kart memes. Lookalike competition memes (‘where: my bedroom’). Niche menswear memes. Fitness bro memes. Movie casting memes (Sydney Sweeney is to play “the unknowing but smitten Starbucks waitress, while Aussie hunk Jacob Elordi is tipped to play the shooter,” reads a Betoota Advocate post). And then? The merch. In the days following his arrest, a cottage industry of Etsy makers and Amazon sellers began proffering hats, sweaters, mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with the words that were written on the bullets. On most regulated platforms, such items have since been taken down.

Right now, Luigi Mangione is the internet’s favourite main character. He might even be social media’s leading man. The support he’s received even spreads to Google reviews of the McDonalds he was arrested in, which, following him being “ratted out” by a customer and employee, received reviews so bad, the tech giant has been forced to pull them.

But what’s most mind-blowing to me, is the way we’ve been able to watch his famousness generate in real time, right before our eyes. Thanks to the internet – and Mangione’s sizeable digital footprint, which has made digging up details about him relatively easy – he’s become a cult figure faster than any celebrity living before social media metastasised into its current state could have dreamed of. Unsettling? Yes. Entertaining? Clearly. 

Now that it’s a few days after his Monday arrest, the discourse around Mangione, the shooting and the internet’s reaction to the whole thing has shifted to address more existential questions like, what does this say about us as a society, and the state of the world? “A man was murdered in cold blood, and you’re laughing?’ went the headline to a piece in the New Yorker by Jia Tolentino, who finished the essay by noting that at a comedy show she attended in New York shortly after the murder, the crowd “erupted in cheers” after a comedian cracked a joke about the killer (Mangione hadn’t yet been identified).

Meanwhile, The Cut pointed out that influencers desperate for clout were tagging Mangione in their posts, so that said posts would appear in the tagged section of his Instagram, and ideally be seen by his 70k+ new followers, which would ideally increase in upping their engagement. On a scale of one to 10, how is your faith in humanity?

I’d argue that online, the sentiment is more pro-Mangione than not, or at least pro-fuck the system/eat the rich than ‘we sympathise with companies who deny customers their insurance’ (one of my colleagues noted the energy of the world’s reaction contained a whiff of the French Revolution, comparing the use of “Delay, Deny, Defend”to that of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”). Another colleague, in a mini-essay sent to me via Slack, made another especially astute observation: “The response has generally been one of detached apathy – everyone immediately distances themselves from the situation to find humour in it.” He added that “I also think what the reaction shows is how unlikely it is that a French-style revolution will ever come . . . Mangione was driven to something this extreme by his personal circumstances, he probably thought he had nothing left to lose. But it’s clear that most people are nowhere near that point. It will take a lot to convince people that they have more to gain from joining a revolution than from simply staying the course and maintaining the status quo.”

What has also been fascinating is that in a very polarised America, the response feels eerily partisan, united. Save for health care C-suiters, some of whom are reportedly employing private security, the majority of the US seem to acknowledge that the situation is a symptom of a fractured health system that’s fallen short of its people.

In the last few days, however, the sentiment has shifted again. As more and more information about Mangione has become available, it’s clear he’s probably not the progressive avenger we jumped to dress him up as. He’s a radicalised American man, someone who, despite being described as intelligent and friendly by old friends, cut himself off from loved ones to hatch and carry out this plan (his ‘manifesto’, which has since been published online but not yet verified by authorities, appears to make his planning and motivations clear. In one section, it reads: “Frankly, these parasites had it coming.”)

Now, Mangione is set to face trial for murder, which will require him to be extradited from Pennsylvania to New York, a step which he has indicated he will challenge in the Pennsylvania courts. As more information about him, and his political and ethical motivations emerges, will the public’s view of him take an unfavourable turn? It won’t take long for us to find out. And if it does, the very online will watch his popularity plummet as fast as it grew, in real time, right before our eyes. 

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