From the moment Luigi Mangione was revealed as the person arrested in connection with last week’s murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, stories started spinning out about him on social media. Alibis posted by users who have manipulated photos of Mangione to suggest he was in different places at the time of the crime are breaking the Internet. He’s also become somewhat of an online sex symbol, with users claiming he’s “too hot to convict” and a “mug shot hottie.” And after his arrest, he gained about 1,000 followers a minute on X, as people poured through his past posts.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Because shell casings at the scene of the shooting contained the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose”, it was deduced, long before Mangione’s arrest, that Thompson’s murder was an act of revenge for a denied insurance claim. (The phrase is interpreted to refer to tactics insurance companies use to avoid paying claims. It is also similar to the title of a book by legal professor Jay Feinman, which was critical of the health insurance industry.)
In the aftermath of the killing, some thought that this act, while extreme, would awaken a new wave of class consciousness, as people flooded social apps with their own grievances against insurance companies. “Prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers,” read one viral post.
But the truth is far from it. Most notably because social media doesn’t have time to wait for answers on how a seemingly privileged, apparently not-quite-conservative-not-quite-liberal tech bro could have allegedly come to murder a top executive. In a world where we’re constantly vying for likes, clicks, and reposts, public opinion often comes swiftly and ruthlessly—even when the reality is far more complex than our preconceived stereotypes will have us believe.
Read More: What We Know About Luigi Mangione, Arrested in Connection with UHC CEO Killing
Mangione doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a cold-blooded killer. He comes from a prominent, wealthy family. He was valedictorian at his elite prep school. He earned undergrad and grad degrees from an Ivy league university. He has no criminal record. Two of his fraternity brothers at the University of Pennsylvania said he never said anything concerning or extreme. A former classmate told CNN he is a “totally normal guy.” A former roommate described him as “clearly a thoughtful guy.”
Among years of Mangione’s Reddit posts, the only mention of an insurance company said an insurer other than Thompson’s—Blue Cross Blue Shield—had actually covered his tests for irritable bowel syndrome, according to the New York Times. He also apparently wrote a 4-star Goodreads review of “Industrial Society and Its Future,” a manifesto by Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, while also loving The Lorax by Dr. Suess. All of these disjoined facts make Mangione hard to characterize. Is he a nice guy or an extremist? Are his political views on the right or left? We just can’t tell.
Perhaps it doesn’t even matter. On many parts of the internet, people have already hand-picked these facts to render a verdict—and Mangione is either a superhero or a villain. The problem is that none of this mythmaking will get us any closer to the truth of what happened or, in fact, what Mangione himself seems to be after: changing our country’s appalling health system.
The Internet has always had a voracious appetite for spin. Social media apps are forums where people post hot takes on what’s trending, rather than waiting for all the facts to emerge and considering all sides before arriving at careful conclusions. Everyone’s in competition to come up with the most clever, witty, and even extreme post to stand out among everyone else creating content about the same person—about whom, despite his digital imprint, we understand so very little.
This is how the narratives we create on social media often become far from the reality of the situation, especially complex and confounding ones like this. Yet the more people see something repeated, the more they believe it, whether or not it’s true. In psychology, this is known as the “illusory truth effect.” As a result, our society’s popular understanding of events can become significantly detached from and even at odds with the facts that eventually emerge.
These posts are also unlikely to solve any of the problems with our health care system. As we continue to watch this case unfold, the public has yet to have serious discussions about exactly what we can do to make sure everyone in America who needs healthcare can access it affordably and that their claims aren’t unreasonably denied. Or how to solve the crippling medical debt held by 14 million Americans that forces many of them to cut spending on food, according to KFF polling.
True, social media is a place where Americans can lodge our complaints, shout our compliments loudly, and even create community—but in the case of Luigi Mangione, it’s also highly predictable. The Internet has made snap assumptions about what’s happening, oftentimes before we have real answers.
We usually also fall short on solutions. Instead of reckoning with why so many Americans don’t have access to the healthcare they need, we make content. But instead of making a meme out of Mangione, it would be a better idea to simply wait and learn.
