Luigi Mangione has been charged with the first-degree murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson. The shooting occurred on the 4th of December in New York. Mangione was named the prime suspect and was arrested in a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania after an employee called 9-1-1.
Since the news, the internet’s reaction has been unusual for what can be expected when suspected murderers are charged. A wave of support for Mangione has been seen across the online world including TikTok edits, memes posted on X, google reviews, and tattoos.
Firstly, the McDonald’s restaurant within which Mangione was arrested received an influx of one-star reviews which tanked the online rating. People were not happy that the employee called the authorities. Google deactivated the ability to review this particular McDonald’s restaurant.
The reaction has been vast and viral. Social media outlets have been swarmed with Mangione’s pictures since his arrest. Some posts have highlighted the attractiveness of Mangione. One meme posted on X by user @xiu_shoegaze reads, “brat summer is over get ready for Italian winter,” with an image of Mangione pride of place, the meme is shown below.
After searching Mangione’s name on X, this second post presented itself, at the time of writing it currently has 4.8 million views and 162 thousand likes. It references the Soprano’s, a popular Television show.
The reason for this viral reaction has been hotly debated, with one line of thinking arguing the reaction is due to Mangione’s attractiveness. The other opinion has portrayed this murder as a statement on class consciousness in the United States and furthermore the issue of expensive healthcare and healthcare insurance.
Written on the shell casings found at the scene were the words “deny”, “defend”, “depose”, words alleged to be the tactics of healthcare insurance providers in the United States in the hope of paying out as little as possible to their clients. With this phrase having trended on X in the days after the killing, it is clear the internet’s response has not only been due to the ‘hotness’ of the alleged killer.
Mangione is now set to face federal charges in New York, with one of these charges being able to call upon the death penalty. The internet has since reacted with much disdain, one X user, @emkenobi wrote, “Very few school shooters have gotten the death penalty, Yet the U.S. is trying to charge Luigi Mangione so he gets the death penalty for killing one man. You can kill dozens of kids and get a lesser sentence because their lives don’t matter as much as a CEO’s. That’s America.” This post, within 1 day, received 5.5 million views. Similar posts continue to rack up millions of views and begin to beg the question, why are people supporting a man who killed another? These posts confirm that the support comes due to what the supporters claim the represents, a stand against the rich.
Psychologist Dr. Dan Florell told ABC 36 News Now, “Robin Hood, what was he? He was a thief, but he took from the rich and […] gave to the poor.” Dr. Florell implied it was not surprising to see this support for Mangione as he represented a cause many people could relate to and represented a rebellion to the wealthy. He also went on to suggest that people tend to resonate more with conventionally attractive individuals. Dr. Florell argued a mixture of factors have led to this strong support online; a strong cause people will relate to, a romanticism for Robin Hood like characters, a conventionally attractive killer, and the intense media coverage creating a familiarity with the killer.
The question remains about the ethics of promoting a murderer, has the reaction been fuelled by a Robin Hood romanticism or are young Americans just voicing their frustration with the U.S. healthcare and insurance system?
