The Meaning Industrial Complex, from Luigi Mangione to Manifestation Girls
The desperation to make Luigi Mangione mean something – anything – is the same impulse that has half of America zonked out on opioids.
On a cold, foggy winter morning in 2024, a 26-year-old stud named Luigi Mangione walked down midtown Manhattan and shot the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Within hours, he'd become a living Rorschach test for an entire terminally online generation. Some made him into a proletarian folk hero, others a demonic warning about "the current thing," and the most debased among us started writing erotic fan fiction about him. Very normal behavior in a very normal society.
The desperation to make Mangione mean something – anything – is the same impulse that has half of America zonked out on opioids and the other half convinced that downloading a
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