Slow news week, huh? Just kidding! Early Wednesday morning, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot outside the Manhattan hotel where the insurance company was hosting a conference for its investors. As if the shock shooting on its own didn’t warrant enough frenzied coverage, the hooded, masked gunman successfully fled. According to early reports, the United assassin bicycled off into the sunset on a Citibike; those reports have since been redacted, but I refuse to let go of the slapstick-comedy-esque image in my head of a faceless killer making an eco-friendly getaway.
In any case, the unidentified man remains at large, and the scant surveillance photos that supposedly depict him at the scene of the crime, grabbing Starbucks beforehand, and reportedly flirting with a female employee at a nearby hostel, have since sent the entire internet into a tizzy.
As Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee and journalist Taylor Lorenz reported this week, the cultural reaction to this particular shooting in our society afflicted by endemic gun violence has been very different from reactions to other shootings. I just hope that... in a country where people have to call Ubers to the emergency room because their insurers won’t cover the ambulance ride, it's self-explanatory why that might be.
The widespread memes about the assassin only grew more feral on Thursday, when the NYPD released additional surveillance photos supposedly depicting a person of interest in the shooting. There’s some dispute over whether the person in the new photos and the person in the surveillance video of the shooting are even the same — they appear to be wearing different jackets and backpacks. And, in weather like this, identifying a 5’10-ish white man in a winter jacket with his hood up is akin to finding a needle in the haystack.
Now, as the killer looms free, either camped out in Central Park or stowing away on a boat to the non-extradition nation of Moldova, social media users have spent the last 24 hours swooning over the grainy surveillance photos. And… I can’t say I don’t understand. As an attendee of the recent Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest, the alleged killer bears an uncanny resemblance to some of the attendees, if not the Dune actor himself. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by social media users. The New York Post itself reported on the aesthetic similarities between the few inches of his face we’ve seen and the likes of Chalamet and Jake Gyllenhaal. Ah, two famously average-looking men who inspire no reaction whatsoever from women!
NYPD has released photos of the alleged gunman who killed the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. pic.twitter.com/YoYXtjbgfQ
— Pop Base (@PopBase) December 5, 2024
“look detective, we’re ALL looking for a hot 5’ 10” guy with athletic build and strong follow through instincts,” one user tweeted. Others speculated that a United Assassin lookalike contest in the city is imminent. “Every woman I know is down catastrophic for the United Healthcare CEO assassin so if you’re a lonely, unstable, disaffected young man yearning for love and connection I can confidently tell you that there’s (1) thing you can do to get that special girl’s attention…” another user wrote.
— Midwest People's History (@MPHProject) December 5, 2024
CNN reported Thursday night that the most widely circulated photo, which shows the alleged suspect smiling flirtatiously, was actually taken while he was flirting with a female hostel employee at some point after the shooting. “This is my Sleepless in Seattle,” one Twitter user said.
this is my sleepless in seattle https://t.co/T8GUQ7sr1K
— sarah hagi (@KindaHagi) December 6, 2024
Even before we knew what the assassin maybe looked like, netizens fueled by understandable, pent-up rage at this country’s barbaric for-profit health system were firing off some interesting jokes. For context, Thompson’s death comes after a slew of recent reports about United’s shady coverage practices. Private insurers reject about one in seven claims from individuals seeking coverage — United stands out, rejecting a third of claims. Stat News reported in November 2023 that the company recently started using a dehumanizing AI model to determine which sick people to deny coverage to, and continued to use this model even when it turned out to have a 90% inaccuracy rate. Long before Thompson’s death, comment sections underneath his posts on LinkedIn were rife with heartbreaking stories and pleas from people with family members battling cancer or other life-threatening conditions who were being denied coverage. People lose loved ones every day to the health insurance industry.
Consequently, there hasn’t been a whole lot of sympathy extended to Thompson or his company, to say the least. A Facebook post United made about Thompson’s death drew well over 40,000 laugh reactions within the first 24 hours, compared to a couple of thousand sad reactions; by Friday morning, United made the number of reactions to the post private. Before the company disabled comments, some users commented, “My empathy is out of network for this one,” or “Pre-authorization for our condolences required ????,” or “Thoughts and prior authorizations.” One Twitter user wrote, “you’re laughing? a wealthy CEO who profited off of the health concerns and often worst moments of millions of peoples lives got shot point blank in broad daylight and they can’t find the suspect bc too many people wanted him dead to narrow it down and you’re laughing?”
Over the last 48 hours, there's been a variety of similar posts:
All-time great ratio. They pulled the post down when it got to about 21,000 laughing emojis. pic.twitter.com/EeJRjqDjBT
— Yehya Brown (@yehyabrown) December 5, 2024
Oh my god lol pic.twitter.com/P23bAwdbzK
— Read Abolish Rent (@JPHilllllll) December 6, 2024
Europeans watching Americans fix their healthcare system with gun violence https://t.co/SSB3H21ZsG pic.twitter.com/G4FUgdR0yL
— GL (@gldivittorio) December 5, 2024
Kill one person and you’re a murderer, kill 100,000 and you’re “increasing shareholder value”
— barbarism critic ????↔️????????✨ (@SxarletRed) December 4, 2024
Bernie hasn’t tweeted since the assassination pic.twitter.com/fkyc048NX2
— bfa agonistes (@superloafcat) December 5, 2024
— AutonomousZonedOut (@420mercymain69) December 6, 2024
Imagine that dude watching all the "clearly a professional hitman" commentary like ????????
— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) December 5, 2024
meanwhile, just a few blocks away, Samantha had her sights set on a rich CEO as well
All of this has me wondering what it was like to live through assassinations in, say, the 19th century, when there was no Twitter to partake in collective thirst-posting over wanted posters, and no Facebook to troll billion-dollar companies in the comment sections. Each passing day feels more and more like we’re all just living through a crumbling empire on the verge of collapse, wherein all we can really do is post through it — and this week felt more like that than usual! I guess that’s one takeaway — that, and Americans really, really hate our health care system.
