New York / Intelligencer: Luigi Mangione's Full Story Isn't Online

[Dennis Donovan]

New York / Intelligencer - (archived: https://archive.ph/DDJMi ) Luigi Mangione’s Full Story Isn’t Online

By John Herrman
5:00 A.M.



When the identity of Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, was revealed on Monday, the online search — a reporting process that’s become a collective online ritual — began. It turns out he left a lot of information online: an active account on X, an Instagram, a Facebook, a Goodreads, a Reddit account, and maybe even a Tinder profile. The dossier came together fast.

Reporters and social-media users noted possible red flags, strange and eerie fragments of information, and small ironies. On Goodreads, he had posted a contrarian riff on Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. Was it evidence of violent tendencies? He also reviewed a couple of books about back pain. On X, he posted about AI superintelligence and followed some anti-woke pundits. Had he tumbled down a slippery slope? Was he blackpilled? Some sort of accelerationist? On Reddit, he posted about backpacks and spinal injuries. Had he been hiding in plain sight all along?

In isolation, with the hindsight that they were posted by someone who went on to allegedly assassinate a health-care CEO, these accounts, and some of these posts, assumed new meaning, which is reasonable and understandable: It’s a crazy story that people want to understand, and the way social media has been processing it more broadly is unprecedented in about six different ways. But what’s most striking about Mangione’s extensive online dossier is that, had it been studied before the shooting took place, it wouldn’t have raised much alarm. You can spend hours reading these posts, sifting through his follows, and looking for clues about what Type of Guy he is, but the supportable theories are pretty thin: Mangione had an online profile consonant with his identity and context. He shared and posted and followed like a 20-something striver with a foot in the tech industry, listened to Rogan, and considered himself a rationalist or at least unusually rational.

Link to tweet

His media consumption — wellness podcasts, a dash of “heterodox” punditry, tech personalities on X — might have placed him near some worrying ideological tendencies, but no more so than millions of other young men in his social milieu; on digital paper, he’s a bit like one of those young male swing voters that dominated post-election recriminations, albeit with an Ivy on his LinkedIn. If a dating profile led you to these accounts, you might wonder if he was going to talk at you about AI or if he might be sort of socially awkward. You might wonder if he’s a bit of a pod bro, or an RFK guy, but you’d also see a lot of stuff that looks — again, without future context — if not normal, then demographically typical. You wouldn’t have wondered if he was planning an assassination. You’d probably have assumed he was friendly! Now, everyone’s looking for the online trail that leads directly the sidewalk in front of the Midtown Hilton, but they haven’t quite found it. Nor, in 2024, should they expect to.

For years, the internet has been the place to look to find the story behind the story, where suddenly notorious figures stashed secrets and left clues about what they’d really been thinking and planning all along. The pre-social web was an opaque place full of pseudonymous people speaking freely, where people felt relatively invisible to the real world and even to other people online. In 1999, investigators found valuable information in paper diaries kept by the Columbine shooters; by 2009, it was MySpace posts about the Columbine shooters you were looking for. In the 2010s, the “online trail” was an expected feature of stories about people who had spectacularly killed or been killed. The guy who shot Gabby Giffords left behind worrying (if inscrutable) posts and videos. The man behind the 2011 Norway student massacre left behind a bunch of blog and social-media posts that fit the profile of a raging neo-Nazi with a desire to put his beliefs into action.

/snip

[ItsjustMe]

1. Luigi Mangione: Everything We Know About Accused CEO Killer

https://www.democraticunderground.com/132136782

[Passages]

2. This tragic murder pulled the last bandage off a tragic but predictable outcome of Citizens United.

That ruling infiltrates each party, and denying it will be much, much harder in the coming days and months.

Good luck to the deniers, an American tragedy is what he exposed.

As far as we can tell, that’s what he did. Mangione was caught with a 3D-printed gun, a signal-blocking bag, and a brief handwritten manifesto that, given our limited knowledge of his psychological state and general sanity, seems much more direct about what he did and why he did it than anything people managed to scrape from online feeds. “My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there,” he wrote, before saying something completely unlike the character he presented online for his entire adult life. “I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”


FDR
We believe in a way of living in which political democracy and free private enterprise for profit should serve and protect each other—to ensure a maximum of human liberty not for a few but for all.

It has been well said that "the freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless."
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies

[sop]

3. I struggle to think how young people of my generation ever got along without social media and the internet.

How did we keep abreast of current events, form our own opinions or even function in our day-to-day lives?

[Dennis Donovan]

4. TV, radio, newspapers & magazines. That's all we had. n/t

[ecstatic]

5. I think most of what we need to know can be inferred

Smart guy, suffered a terrible back injury and became radicalized. Rather than just quietly commit suicide, he channeled his depression and hatred into completing one last task before leaving Earth: killing Brian Thompson.

However, he didn't die that day and didn't really have a plan for how to proceed after successfully leaving the state. The energy and focus he used to carry out the assassination probably yanked him out of depression, but it will be back soon because he will be in jail without painkillers and a decent bed. The fan mail might keep him afloat for a while but I think he will kill himself as soon as he finds an opportunity.

As far as looking for clues for how to spot this going forward, I think it's been pretty clear for decades that depressed and suicidal men can become dangerous because there is a thin line between suicide and homicide. Once you're already suicidal, if you also harbor hatred or intense anger towards someone or something, it becomes much easier to rationalize murder and/or terrorism because there's no longer any fear of consequences. Anything goes.

[TexasBushwhacker]

6. I wonder if he's schizophrenic

Male schizophrenics usually have their first psychotic break in their late teens to early 20s.

On the other hand, if he was suffering from chronic pain, I know that can really mess with your head.

[Mosby]

7. That was my thought also

He could be in the midst of an emerging psychosis, specifically schizophrenia. His back pain might be the environmental trigger.

[TexasBushwhacker]

8. Ted Kaczynski started showing signs of mental illness

in his mid 20s. He resigned from Berkeley when he was 27 and was living in a shack in Montana with no running water or electricity by the time he was 29.

He carried out his first bombing when he was 36. When he was caught, he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic by court doctors, but refused the insanity defense and said there was nothing wrong with him.