Hot Assassin: The Week We All Were Horny for Luigi Mangione

I came to the realization this morning that I may be more familiar with the face of Luigi Mangione, the “hot assassin,” than I am my own.

Part of that is because, after being offline for about three hours on Monday, I resurfaced to 79 texts from various group chats with memes about how Mangione, who has been arrested for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, is a total babe.

Part of that is because this young man seems to have gone to prison in a JCPenney portrait studio—how many mugshots do we need?

Maybe it’s because of the fact that, even on my walk from my office to the subway, I can’t escape him contributed to this; they’re now selling t-shirts with his chiseled, shirtless torso on it at the local market.

And maybe it’s because we’ve all willfully and almost giddily espoused former ethical and safety boundaries that kept us—the royal “we” of my media colleagues and me, and also me and my fellow private citizens—from spreading information and photos about an accused murderer, for fear of glorifying and encouraging the crime.

It’s been an onslaught: a barrage of news, which is to be expected, and a battering of memes—which, I suppose, is also to be expected. There has also been a proliferation of thirst.

As a Very Online person, I could have predicted that too, but even so, I was not prepared for the positively feral nature of what I’ve seen in the last week: the filthiest, horniest, foaming-at-the-mouth (and, occasionally, hilarious) posts about this man. It turns out that something about a guy who (allegedly) unapologetically kills and also has eight abs just unlocks something carnal about people, or at least people with access to an X account.

This phenomenon…I don’t know what to make of it. It’s been fun? I guess? In recent years, it has been rare for there to be a monoculture moment for us all to bond over—though even that has been happening more and more recently. Think Barbie, Travis and Taylor, or Challengers.

We’re not even starved for meme bonding. It was just days ago we were all still joking about holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.” How did we so quickly go from that to feeling power in that bodacious, CEO-killing bod? I have seen far more than a couple of posts. And as you know, I’m in queer media, so…

It’s been a strange thing to witness and to take part of, both as a person laughing at, liking, and sending those memes back and forth with friends and as a journalist at a publication trying to figure out the best and also most responsible way to report on what’s become an unfamiliar news figure: a folk hero who committed murder that a loud majority of people are not just joking about, but applauding.

The unequivocal worst movie I saw this year was Joker: Folie à Deux. Somehow, it’s become the most relevant. (If you’re lucky enough to have missed that movie and don’t know the plot, basically we’re all the Lady Gaga character now.)

I’ve been trying to understand and synthesize this particular cultural moment, which, I am fully aware, sounds insufferable. But fully awareness actually is what I think is making this news story so remarkable.

Everyone who is goofily making humor and pearl-clutching lewd comments about Mangione seems to be doing so with a knowingness that is simultaneously cheeky and macabre. Not since we’ve all become OK with seeing a photo of the cartoon fox version of Robin Hood in the Disney movie and admitting “well, I would…” has there been a blanket forgiveness for an objectively problematic crush.

There’s a tinge of righteousness to it—obviously, many people are passionate about problems with the healthcare system. But the hyperbole behind the speed and extremity with which Mangione became a, for lack of a better word, “star” undercuts an argument that there is an issue-based morality behind it. The “fun” of it, weird as that is to say, has overridden any mission-oriented push to his virality.

I wondered if we’ve just become so desensitized about the news and violent nature of the world that we can now pivot this quickly to frivolity in the wake of an event like this assassination. There’s a metaphorical shrug with which we live our lives now. With friends last week, the vibe was of course there’s an assassin on the lam in New York City and we’re just having a beer like it’s not happening right now. This week, the vibe has been gossiping about him like he’s our friend Jessica’s hot, but questionable new boyfriend.

More often than “how are you,” the question I’ve been asked the most this week was “who is going to play the hot shooter in the Ryan Murphy series?” There is no Ryan Murphy series. But we’ve been conditioned to just fast-forward to that cynical inevitability. (The answer: Timothée Chalamet would never; Dave Franco is too old; and Isaac Cole Powell is the right choice, just Google him.)

It’s counterintuitive: a numbness to news trauma has enlivened our sense of fun. Is it dastardly? Is it maybe healthy? I don’t know. I think we’ve all become experts at compartmentalization and, for now, the best we can do is: “Sexy assassin, let’s just enjoy that.”