Almost immediately after Mr. Thompson was shot, the Internet began to lionize his suspected killer. On TikTok, people posted a video of a “CEO killer” walking tour of New York. Playlists dedicated to the suspect began appearing on Spotify.
After Mr. Mangione was arrested, those fans came to his defense.
The start of his legal battles prompted anonymous donors to pour thousands of dollars into his defense through various online fundraisers.
Etsy was flooded with pro-Mangione clothing, while Amazon pulled similar products from its site.
The McDonald’s worker who allegedly handed it in became the target of online hate, while the fast food franchise itself was showered with bad reviews.
The Altoona, Pennsylvania, police department that arrested him even received death threats.
Much of this online backlash focused on his appearance, with the internet calling him a “hot killer.”
Indeed, Mr. Mangione’s appearance, which he displayed in shirtless social media posts, is now clearly part of the appeal, said cultural critic Blakely Thornton.
According to him, Americans are actually “programmed” to trust and empathize with men who look like Mr. Mangione.
“That’s why they’re the main characters in our movies, books and stories.”
Public worship of handsome men Accusation of crimes is nothing new – from Ted Bundy to Jeremy Meeks, violent men have created a cult following.
But Professor Tanya Harek, an expert on digital culture and true crime at Ruskin University of England, says social media has made these sentiments widely visible and helped them spread.
The internet has led to a “blurring of the lines between celebrity and crime”, she told the BBC, adding that when people see a good-looking person appear on their feed, their first thought is lust, not moral criticism.
“The mood around Luigi Mangione is ‘thirst,'” she said.
Appearance aside, a large part of Mr. Mangione’s online appeal clearly lies in his apparent anger against the private health care industry and corporate elites in general. US media reported that Mr Mangione was arrested with a handwritten document saying “these parasites wanted”.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a nonprofit research group on extremism based in New Jersey, said the hashtag #EatTheRich went viral after the shooting.
Since Mr. Mangione’s arrest, variations of “#FreeLuigi” have been posted on X more than 50,000 times, likely receiving tens of millions of impressions. And by some measures, the NCRI said, engagement with messages about Mr. Thompson’s assassination on platforms such as X, Reddit and others surpassed the assassination of Donald Trump in July.
