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Within hours of Luigi Mangione being charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Monday, online stores were flooded with T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise praising the alleged shooter and featuring phrases like: “In this house, Luigi Mangione is a hero. End of story.”
On Etsy, WIRED found almost 100 different listings featuring products with Mangione’s name or image. These include a tote bag featuring pictures of the alleged shooter alongside the phrase “Mama, I’m in love with a criminal” and PDF copies of a mocked-up cover of Time magazine featuring Mangione as Person of the Year and the tagline “Healthcare revolutionary, leading the charge to transform global health.”
These sellers are trying to cash in on the internet’s peculiar fascination with Mangione, whose good looks and privileged background have garnered him fans despite him being accused of a high-profile murder in broad daylight. The fascination with Mangione is a worrying trend, researchers claim, which shows behavior that used to be confined to the fringes of the internet becoming mainstream.
Much of the merchandise is being sold by print-on-demand websites, which allow anyone to design and sell a range of products. On one such site, called My Porch Prints, one seller is offering a mug featuring a heart-shaped image of a topless Mangione alongside the words “I love my boyfriend.” A number of print-on-demand merchants are selling a stylized version of Luigi from Nintendo's Mario video games holding a gun and wearing a green hoodie. Another hoodie available on multiple online stores, including one called Chill Guy, features an image of Mangione surrounded by love hearts.
There are also multiple different T-shirts and hoodies being sold on sites like Nobele T-Shirt, featuring designs with the phrase “Free Luigi” on them, while many others use the phrase “Deny, Defend, Depose,” the words Mangione allegedly inscribed on some ammunition.
Finally, a T-shirt featuring the McDonald’s logo with the word Mangione superimposed on it is also being sold online by custom gift shop ModParty, referring to the fact Mangione was captured after staff at the fast food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania identified him and called the police.
Etsy, My Porch Prints, Chill Guy, Noble T-Shirts, and ModParty did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This unusual situation meant that as internet sleuths worked to discover as much information about him as possible, platforms such as YouTube and Instagram were working to shut down his accounts. X initially shut down Maglione’s account, but after CEO Elon Musk said he was "looking into it" the account was restored
Google was also forced to remove reviews of the McDonald’s where Mangione was identified on Monday, after Mangione supporters review-bombed it with negative comments and one-star reviews.
Before his identity was revealed on Monday, his online supporters, primarily on TikTok, Bluesky, and X, had created an entire fictionalized version of the shooter as a left-wing revolutionary hero who was standing up for the millions of Americans whose lives have been impacted negatively by interactions with the healthcare system.
Videos glorifying the killer flooded TikTok, while one person decided to get a tattoo of the alleged shooter’s face. In Washington Square Park in New York City, a lookalike competition was held on Saturday.
Indeed, “Deny, Defend, Depose,” which is widely viewed as a pointed critique of the health insurance industry in America, has become a rallying cry online in recent days as the focus moved away from the shooting itself and onto the shooter and his motives.
However, the fictionalized version of the shooter that was created online does not match reality. Mangione, who allegedly had a handwritten manifesto admitting to the killing in his possession when arrested, is a software engineer from a privileged background. He also follows popular right-wing influencers, such as Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Peterson—though he has also criticized some of the arguments put forward by these figures.
During a brief court appearance on Monday night, the police did not outline a motive for the shooting, but based on Mangione’s online posts and reading lists, it appears that the pain from an injury suffered while surfing could have played a significant part in his motivation.
Despite Mangione not fitting the idealized hero that many online created in the time between the shooting and his arrest, the alleged shooter’s fans have continued to post fan fiction about him.
On Archive of Our Own, a repository of fan fiction, half a dozen pieces of prose about Mangione were posted in the hours after he was identified. In one piece entitled “McGuire Road Designated Dispersed Campsite,” an author with the username basedIdiot imagines Mangione and another man on a road trip trying to escape from New York. “‘Oh, am I not your beloved?’ Luigi Mangione mockingly fainted into the other man’s arms,” the author wrote.
In another, an anonymous author imagines Mangione in Texas where he is planning to assassinate Tesla, SpaceX, and X CEO Elon Musk, inscribing the bullets he was going to use to kill the billionaire. “For Musk, he’s kept it simple. X. X. And lastly, X. Mocking goodbye kisses,” the author wrote. “But also a reference to one spoilt, psychotic rich brat’s latest 44-billion-dollar toy to break.”
Another imagines the suspect as the author’s lover while at the University of Pennsylvania, where Mangione studied engineering. “Luigi Mangione turns to you,” writes an author with the username Princesscockdestroyer, who claims she’s writing this fan fiction during her final exams. “He mouths ‘I love you’ then takes off down the street. As you watch him disappear from you, from your life, from any promise of a future together, you can’t help but finally realize that you love him too.”
One of the posts imagines Mangione hooking up with a K-pop star in a motel in Ohio while on the run.
On TikTok, videos with images of Mangione’s smiling face, featuring the Britney Spears song “Criminal,” are also racking up tens of thousands of views, while hundreds of videos with the hashtag TeamLuigi have also been posted on TikTok in the hours after Mangione was arrested.
A report published this week by the Network Contagion Research Institute called the phenomenon of online accounts glorifying the shooter as a “cause for concern,” pointing out that it mimics the type of response typically seen on fringe platforms like 4chan and 8chan in the wake of mass shootings.
“While this phenomenon was once largely conned to niche online subcultures, we are now witnessing similar dynamics emerging on mainstream platforms, amplifying the risk of further escalation,” the report’s authors wrote.