‘Straight up GILF – Guy I’d Like to Free… and F***.’
This comment taken from Reddit’s r/popculture, boasting a wealth of upvotes and a wealth of replies in similar vein, leaves no doubt about the overwhelming online and public opinion of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old ex-Penn student who was accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year. Mangione- with his ‘dark and handsome’ good looks, and purported intellectual prowess and capabilities- has been assimilated into popular culture as an icon of sexuality, rather than an icon of political and social revolution, as the anti-capitalist connotations of the crime suggest; and through this a mass parasocial relationship was born, denigrating the revolutionary overtones of the assassination and instead following in the footsteps of the ‘killer fangirl’ trope that has haunted social culture through the last century.
Mangione’s name, though his crime is alleged, has been separated from the message of social change and progress as his intention may have been, and is now the muse of something adjacent to a mass schoolgirl crush: though rather than doodling his name and playing ‘love me, love me not’ with a buttercup, it has coalesced into Instagram fan accounts and TikTok edits of tediously unearthed family pictures of this man. His privacy, his past, his interests, his digital footprint, all usurped in the conquest of sexual gratification, to be part of a communal infatuation: and the politics of anti-capitalism, and the risk to Mangione’s life and freedom, discarded in turn.
The origins of the case were hardly different to the seemingly continuous news stream of crimes and current affairs: initially brief, the setup of the event sparked a conversation that only really was thrust into the global psyche upon the identification of the suspect: Mangione, 26. Immediately, discourse around the murder of Thompson- a beneficiary of the US healthcare system that has continually antagonised the American people with increasingly extortionate medical bills- became less concerned with the potential uprising the crime could encourage against the hazardous limitations of American healthcare, and instead an online competition of lust. Hundreds of fan pages sprung up across social media, largely not to rally for Mangione’s cause and protest his premature guilty label and judicial treatment, but to collate the most obscure of Mangione’s childhood and teenage pictures for the pleasure of themselves and their obsessive mutuals. Baby pictures, Mangione’s handwritten notes, the subreddits he followed for advice about a recent spinal injury that he had sustained: every aspect of this man’s life has been uncovered, scrutinised and plastered in public view, with few seeming to stop and consider the impact this would have on both himself and his loved ones- instead, it has more so become a competition within these circles to gather as much intel on Mangione as possible, as if to prove the authenticity and extent of their ‘fandom’, of their ‘adoration’. This has all perhaps been brought to its climax (no pun intended) by the allegations in the last few days that 20 ‘high quality’, supposedly explicit self-made tapes of Mangione’s have been leaked, evoking part smear campaign, part fiendish increase in lust over the suspect. All of this culminates in a notion that arguably epitomises the Internet-centred ‘politics’ of Generation Z.
Although the generation of current teenagers and early twenty-somethings are not the only ones salivating over Mangione, they comprise a large proportion of it, being that they are the primary demographic for social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram where an explosion of Luigi fan content has taken place. There is a certain irony in this treatment that borders on the inconceivable: in a generation wherein sexual rights and the movement of feminism has become such a predominant ideal, and one that has garnered more support than the last few generations in which it took shape, why is the borderline sexual harassment and complete publication of this man’s life deemed not only acceptable, but popular? It speaks to the historic phenomenon of the killer fangirl, which in itself is almost an anti-feminist label to adopt: figures such as Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, even more recent criminals such as the shooter Elliott Rogers (who committed the 2014 Isla Vista killings as part of his vengeance against women within the ‘incel’ movement) have garnered swathes of female fangirls lobbying for their attractiveness and the fantasy that they could ‘fix’ these men.
Even this comparison undermines Mangione’s alleged political cause: the motives for the killing of Thompson appear not as blind prejudice or hatred, but an act of political opposition taken to an extreme. Though this may be part of Mangione’s appeal- the ‘Robin Hood’ element to the crime- it is undeniable that the community of his fans harbour a degree of fantasy specific to his newfound criminality. Here, therefore, the oddity of this situation is encapsulated in two elements: the erasure of attempted political revolution, and the phenomenon of the parasocial relationship. Mangione’s status as poorly treated prisoner, as a private individual stripped of his right to said privacy through the expurgation of his personal and potentially even explicit photographs and records, flies under the radar, all because of his good looks: legal updates and aid for his case are quashed by the insatiable online fantasising for him, and, in turn, the media appears to up its smear campaign against his reputation to combat this craze. In the midst of this chaos, it is important to consider that at its centre is a real man, objectified and exploited, removed from his family and all familiarity. So, please, don’t tweet about your desire to see the so-called ‘tapes’, or send him a raunchy Polaroid photo via the Brooklyn prison’s letter service- that market is saturated already.
Image: Fox News, https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/01/931/523/luigi-mangione-nyc-court-arraignment-pool_02.jpg?ve=1&tl=1#
