‘All night, all day, from the dining table to the bedroom.’
‘The only criminal thing is his bone structure.’
‘He looks FINE in that pic I need him bad!’
Just a selection of posts on X in the past 24 hours, but they’re not about a new scene-stealing Hollywood starlet, or breakthrough sports prodigy.
Instead, they are examples of the collective internet thirsting over Luigi Mangione, the man arrested and charged for allegedly murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by shooting him in New York City last week.
While some of the comments and memes have elicited mirth, the fevered commentary has left me feeling distinctly uneasy.
Instead of really examining why a violent crime took place, or observing the circumstances which may have motivated the killing, all people can talk about is how hot the alleged perpetrator is.
Mere minutes after Mangione was named and pictured by authorities as the alleged assassin, internet detectives unearthed a trove of knowledge about the 26-year-old, who had left a vast digital footprint to spool through, and that left me a little uncomfortable.
I feel like I shouldn’t know what his favourite Pokemon is (Breloom, if you’re wondering) or what his Spotify activity was apparently like.
I, and pretty much everyone online, now know the last book he reviewed on Goodreads is The Lorax.
What we don’t know is what motivated an Ivy League graduate to allegedly shoot someone in cold blood. His potential motivations for the murder, while being speculated on, are still widely being drowned out by individuals lusting after his looks.
People are so taken by Mangione’s apparent sex appeal, that a parody X account was set up; titled @LuigiCrave (riffing off media company Pop Crave), where new pictures and titbits are being shared regularly to over 40,000 followers.
Perhaps I’m being po-faced, but at this point it feels like snarky internet humour going a step too far.
Before Mangione was even arrested and named, he had started to amass a following, based solely on CCTV footage showing his mostly masked face.
Of course, X (which, granted, is hardly the place for nuance or thoughtful and reasoned debate, particularly after Elon Musk took over), has always boasted an irreverent sense of humour, and at first I admit to being mildly amused by the jokes and memes.
But the explosion following Mangione’s arrest has frankly left me feeling a bit sick.
This is a man who allegedly shot and killed someone in the street. Should we exalt, celebrate and lust over him because he’s good looking?
Granted, desiring problematic figures is not a new phenomenon, nor one unique to this crime.
From ‘hot felon’ Jeremy Meeks, who went viral after his mug shot was posted on social media in 2014, to fangirls who create TikToks celebrating and cheering on Ted Bundy, people have always been keen to post online about being attracted to those they shouldn’t be.
Research has suggested that we instinctively trust people we consider attractive – so it’s not surprising we’re beguiled by Mangione (particularly as there’s so much we can uncover and piece together about him online).
But this crime has had a wider impact which also risks being missed – highlighting the dire state of US healthcare and private insurance, with people from all sides of the usually polarised political spectrum unsympathetic to Thompson’s death.
Many have shared their own painful experiences of themselves, or loved ones, fighting companies to pay for adequate healthcare.
For those, it seems any empathy or concern for a person having been gunned down on the street having been overridden by the very human emotion of rage at a system which costs them time, health, and money.
Thompson’s killing has opened the doors for this vital and worthwhile debate about healthcare – but this conversation has been cheapened by the discourse surrounding Mangione.
It has also left me wondering whether there would be such interest or furore around the incident if the suspect in this killing was unmasked to be old, overweight and balding.
I worry how the internet may have very well poisoned our minds, whether we are now simplistic enough to assume looks dictate morality, and whether we really are willing to forgive the very worst things because the perpetrator is classically handsome.
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Social media has always been, and likely always will be, a deeply unserious place – but it has now become an environment that offers no place for nuance, empathy or even basic decency.
Instead of frenzied, breathless discussion of Mangione’s looks, there should be more focus on the human side of this entire incident, and the wider context.
Instead of checking whether Mangione had a brat summer, we should be interrogating what radicalised such a young man with the world at his feet to have allegedly committed murder.
Constant discussion of how good looking the supposed perpetrator may be is obscuring the real question – why has the death of a healthcare insurance CEO led to celebration?
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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