Web Stories Thursday, December 26

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Luigi Mangione worked for TrueCar until 2023, according to a spokesperson for the car retail site.

A fellow software engineer at TrueCar said Mangione helped him write particularly difficult code. “There has to be a mistake. The Luigi I know is a super kind guy,” said the former colleague, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid attention on social media. “All I remember is a very sweet guy. Always ready to help people. Very smart.”

ONLINE PRESENCE

A Facebook profile for a Luigi Mangione identifies him as being from Towson, Maryland, near Baltimore. Local media said his family owned a country club and radio station in the Baltimore area and his cousin was Maryland House of Delegates member Nino Mangione. The legislator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Instagram, where his following has skyrocketed from hundreds to tens of thousands, Mangione shared snapshots of his travels in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. He also posted shirtless photos flaunting a six-pack and appeared in celebratory posts with fellow members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

A banner on a Mangione’s X page, which says he lives in Honolulu, includes an X-ray image of what appears to be screws and plates inserted into someone’s lower back.

X posts from two years ago include critiques of artificial intelligence, reposts of commentaries against diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, and remarks on how smartphones harm children and the damage caused by commercial agriculture.

A 2022 post discusses his senior high school speech on topics ranging from AI to human immortality. The posts seem to question some of the technology Mangione appeared in awe of in high school.

On Goodreads, a Luigi Mangione praises Ted Kaczynski’s book, Industrial Society and Its Future, as “prescient” about modern society.

Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, carried out a string of bombings in the United States from 1978 to 1995, a campaign he said was aimed at halting the advance of modern society and technology.

Mangione called Kaczynski  an “extreme political revolutionary” that was “rightfully imprisoned”, while also saying “‘violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.” He also quoted another online commentator’s observation of the Unabomber that “when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive”.

The post also criticised fossil fuel companies, saying “violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defence”.

According to CNN, handwritten documents recovered when Mangione was arrested included the phrase “these parasites had it coming”.

Mangione has also linked approvingly to posts criticising secularism as a harmful consequence of Christianity’s decline.

In April, he wrote, “Horror vacui (nature abhors a vacuum).” The following month, he posted an essay he wrote in high school titled How Christianity Prospered by Appealing to the Lower Classes of Ancient Rome.

In another post from April, he speculated that Japan’s low birthrate stems from societal disconnection, adding that “fleshlights” and other vaginal-replica sex toys should be banned.

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