The dark fandom behind healthcare CEO murder suspect

They came in hoodies, they came in masks, shuffling their feet and laughing nervously while waiting for a winner to be announced.

Just a few days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on a New York City sidewalk, these young men had lined up in Washington Square Park to compete in a lookalike contest for the man wanted for his murder.

It was sparsely attended and seen as a joke by those who did turn up, said Talia Jane, a journalist who was there.

But it underlined an obsession with a murder suspect that has gripped social media since the killing on 4 December, fuelled by latent anger directed at America's private health insurers.

"There was a lot of tinder already there, a lot of discontent, a lot of frustration already there, and [this] sort of threw a match on it," Ms Jane said.

And it has only grown since the suspect was named as Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League-educated member of a prominent Baltimore family.

In TikTok videos, memes and group chats, a young man accused of shooting a father-of-two in the back on a New York City sidewalk has been fawned over and praised as a kind of folk hero.

This fetishisation was remarkably widespread, not limited to radical corners of the internet or any political affiliation, troubling many observers.

"We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint," said Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, where Mr Mangione was arrested at a McDonald's.

"In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice."

An analysis of a sample of comments carried out by market research firm OneCliq found the vast majority - four-fifths - contained criticism of the healthcare system.

Mr Mangione's X account has gained more than 400,000 followers since the shooting.

The shooting also seemed to inspire others to take action against healthcare insurers - "wanted" posters of other CEOs appeared around New York City, and a woman in Florida was arrested after telling an insurance agent on the phone "Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next," alluding to the words inscribed on bullet casings found at the murder scene.

Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at the NCRI, called the online reaction a "turning point" and "a catalyst for the normalisation of political violence that was once confined to extremists on the fringes".

He compared the wave of comments to the online activity following racist mass murders, designed to defend the killers and signal-boost their beliefs - only more widespread, and happening across mainstream social media networks.

"The dynamic we are observing is eerily similar to the activity on platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Discord, and in other dark corners of the internet, where mass shootings are often met with glee," he said.

Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence, said evidence suggests that the groundswell was authentic - not powered by bots or government influence operations.

"People are pissed off at the healthcare industry and they are using social media to express their frustrations," he said. "They're expressing those frustrations by supporting this suspect."

Recent research by Commonwealth Fund, a health policy institute, found 45% of insured working-age adults were charged for something they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, and 17% of respondents said their insurer denied coverage for care that was recommended by their doctor.

There are indications that the shooting has prompted some introspection on the part of healthcare companies.

"I think all of us are taking a step back and trying to understand what's happening with patients and their experiences," Pfizer's chief sustainability officer Caroline Roan told a conference in New York on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Some of the people who have been protesting against health insurance companies for years, before online criticism about UHC took off, understand some of the darker sentiments, even if they don't endorse them.

"It's a horrific act of violence, and I absolutely condemn it no matter the motivation," Jenn Coffey, who has been fighting to get UHC to cover her medical bills, said of Mr Thompson's killing. "But I'm not shocked by the reaction."