The Gay Media and Luigi Mancione

No smile and there will be none. Bulet casing just match his gun. Questions persist. It seems this was well thought out but why show his face but more important, why keep the gun? Was he going to turn himself in or commit suicide. Only he can tell us when he is ready but it won't be in the near future.

 

As soon as the press got ahold of the name and identity of Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, those on our side of the internet (the gay side) were immediately inundated with Mangione’s personal information and online activity, as well as unverified theories about his sexuality and an abundance of thirsty memes. It would be an understatement to say the details that have been firehosing from the internet since have been difficult to sort through.

On Dec. 9, police arrested 26-year-old Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania after an employee notified authorities that Mangione was in the restaurant. According to ABC 7 New York, he remains in custody in Pennsylvania after being charged with second-degree murder, in addition to three gun charges and a charge of possession of a forged instrument.

The internet already had a voracious appetite for information on the shooter in the aftermath of what many are calling an assassination, which occurred five days prior in Midtown Manhattan early on the morning of December 4. Immediately following the killing, in contrast to those condemning the murder, many on social media aired frustration and anger toward UnitedHealthcare and the private healthcare industry in general. Though the alleged killer wore a mask and used what was, at the time, an unidentifiable weapon, the New York Police Department distributed surveillance images of the suspect — including one photo of him with his mask fully off and another of him in the back of a cab — leading to Mangione’s arrest. And just a low-quality, obscured image was enough to spark adoration for his flirty smile and severe eyebrow shape, with many celebrating the suspected killer as something of a dashing, Robin Hood-like folk hero.

 

So you can imagine that when the internet found what appears to be Mangione’s full social media history, complete with a GoodReads account, Twitter, LinkedIn, family history, and of course, shirtless photos, absolute chaos ensued in what may have been one of the most memorable days on the internet this year. Almost immediately, “Free Luigi” began trending on X and fancams started to roll in.

But the instant memeification of Mangione means that plenty of misinformation, conflicting analysis, and deceptive dupes have circulated as well. We’re here to help cut through the noise in our area of expertise: gay people online stating claims as fact. Below, find a distillation of the information and claims about Mangione and more on how the gay internet has been reacting to his arrest.

What do we actually know about Luigi Mangione?

Per the New York Times, Mangione was the valedictorian at his all-boys private high school, the Gilman School in Baltimore. A spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, majoring in computer science with a minor in math. 

According to CBS News, Mangione’s last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii, which lines up with his X bio that lists his location as such. He reportedly lived in a co-living community called Surfbreak, but left in April 2022. A friend of Mangione’s told CBS that Mangione had had a back injury that was worsened by surfing and hiking there.

According to The New York Times, when authorities took Mangione into custody, they found a three-page handwritten manifesto on his person. In it, Mangione claimed responsibility for the shooting and condemned companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.” Mangione reportedly dealt with chronic back problems that affected his quality of life, for which, he said on Reddit, he had spinal fusion surgery in July 2023.

People online have connected Mangione’s reported medical history to his disdain for the insurance industry, as well as the screenshots of what appear to be an X-ray of his spine on his Twitter banner. NBC New York reports that the manifesto also reads “frankly these parasites had it coming,” in reference to the healthcare industry and UnitedHealthcare specifically, as well as, “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done.”

What are Luigi Mangione’s beliefs?

Mangione’s beliefs as an individual are not entirely clear. A look at the X profile that appears to belong to Mangione reveals recent reposts of figures like right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, as well as warnings against caffeine addiction and critiques of Western capitalism. He also shared research about the future of agriculture and global food systems, appeared to be a fan of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and retweeted sentiment that seemed to decry, or at least nuance, “wokeness” as well as atheism. (In a 2021 post to X, Mangione seemed to identify as agnostic.)

 

Before a Goodreads account that reportedly belonged to Mangione went private, screenshots from his account were circulated online, most notably his review of Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto. Newsweek posted a screenshot of the review in full, which reads, “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless to write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.” He also called Kaczynski, who spent years bombing random people and killing three in the name of stopping technological advancement, “an extreme political revolutionary.”

Mangione also reviewed tons of books ranging from Harry Potter, to Dr. Seuss, to Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The last quote he liked on GoodReads was from The Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Mangione does not seem to identify with any particular political party, and in the manifesto he had on his person at the time of arrest, he claims that he was acting alone.

What are gay people saying about Luigi Mangione online?

For the most part, they’re saying he’s hot, with particular attention to his attractiveness and almost comically defined washboard abs. And that was probably the tamest sentiment out there, certainly tamer than uh… this one person with a vivid imagination. In response to the gay thirst tweets, an X user joked that Mangione’s “trial cannot be held within travel distance of Hell’s Kitchen.”

Published first on "Them"