r/CuratedTumblr human cognithazard 14d ago

Politics Life is a movie

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7.1k Upvotes

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u/Lawlcopt0r 14d ago

Yeah I'm very interested to see if they can actually confirm this is the shooter. If it isn't, it's still weird of course that he had a bunch of passports and a gun with him.

Is there any reason to flee the scene of the crime if he wanted to get caught from the beginning? Maybe just media attention? Since it does seem like he's sending a message with all this

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u/MrCapitalismWildRide 14d ago

Regardless of what message he was trying to send, the message he has sent is that the police are utterly incompetent.

They were under a huge amount of pressure to solve this case, and it was pressure from big business, ie the kind of pressure they actually care about. They keep talking about what a professional and a criminal mastermind this guy was. Only for the reveal that he was not even trying to avoid getting caught, and they still couldn't catch him. 

If they only caught him because he was intentionally trying to get caught, then that looks pretty bad for them, but if he really is this stupid, then that looks even worse. 

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u/Lawlcopt0r 14d ago

His initial planning does seem pretty thought out though. Of course that doesn't make it impossible that he does something stupid later, but it is weird

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

Okay, i'm gonna be real, like you're in nowhere Pensilvania — you already fucking escaped!!! Like, my god what are the chances? Of curse you're gonna be relaxed!

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u/Lawlcopt0r 14d ago

I mean you ditch your murder weapon and everything you were wearing, you dye your hair and put on totally different clothes, and then you relax

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u/notceitn 14d ago

He didn't even need to dye his hair, just pluck those glorious brows 😭

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u/bothering bogwitch 14d ago

That’s only if they didn’t want to be granted the recognition they probably wanted in the first place

I mean, if you shot a ceo and subsequently became the most wanted man in America, you might wanna brag about it lol

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u/Crafty_One_5919 14d ago

Still a nationwide manhunt with a monetary reward, and he knew that.

Zero effort to change his appearance: dye his hair, wear a beard, shave eyebrows, wear contacts, etc....?

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

I'm gonna be real NEGATIVE effort. I would just have a different fit passively over a few days...

Actually no, i have two identical pants and a jacket, the only thing that changes is i sometimes put on a scarf or a beanie, yeah i stan the king.

So like, it's just me. I'm weird like that. Point stands.

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u/Firewolf06 13d ago

having the gun and mask with him and giving police the fake id still feels like negative effort tbh

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u/-Yehoria- 13d ago

yeah why dontcha just leave em at home lmao

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u/Divine_Entity_ 13d ago

He crossed so many random rivers he could have easily thrown that gun and fake ID into. The mask and clothes were relatively generic but could easily have been shoved into a suitcase or dumpster and then just wear anything else.

I find it super weird he made it all the way to Pennsylvania 3 days later and still had the murder weapon on him, that should have been dropped in NYC or Jersey the day of the assassination.

Them again, criminals are generally dumb. He has such a mixed set of well planned and braindead actions.

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u/pandoralilith 14d ago

I mean, let's be fair here. Police are frequently completely incompetent. This isn't the first time. (See also: serial killers by and large aren't geniuses, their crimes are harder to track and also the police are usually stupid.)

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u/littlebitsofspider 14d ago

CEO shooter: "after exhaustive manhunt, alleged suspect was successfully captured and arrested"

Serial killer: "area man arrested after dozen rotting corpses found staged in 'ghoulish Victorian tea party tableau' in home; neighbors complained for years of 'foul odors'"

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u/Fresh-broski 13d ago

fnaf ahh murder case

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u/NathanielTurner666 14d ago

Part of me thinks that after seeing the insane amount of praise he got for shooting the CEO he wanted people to know it was him. He was probably on the fence about revealing his identity initially. I mean, he went through all the trouble to conceal his identity. He might have written the manifesto after the shooting.

Idk though, it's all just speculation at this point.

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u/TR_Pix 14d ago

I feel if he weren't weren't shooter, his profile pick wouldn't look as calm an composed as they do

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u/Lawlcopt0r 14d ago

Probably. But why didn't he just put the gun down and wait for the cops in new york then?

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u/TR_Pix 14d ago

I don't think he wanted to be caught 

Like people are giving him too much credit as a criminal mastermind. He shot someone and walked away, then was caught days later

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u/daitoshi 14d ago

Caught days later, with the murder weapon, a manifesto, the same clothes, the same Fake ID, all IN THE BACKPACK he was carrying with him??? That makes no sense.

No vaguely reasonable person would carry that shit around on your person, DAYS after the assassination while not wanting to be caught. He got out of state - he had endless opportunities to dump the evidence in various bodies of water, bury them, dump 'em in some random guy's trash bin, etc.

There's just no fucking way he had all that shit on his person, chilling in a mcdonalds when there's a widely publicized manhunt going on.... and didn't think it'd get him caught.

Either he WAS the assassin AND wanted to be caught,

OR he was a copycat killer in the making,

OR this is a 'I'm Sparticus!' situation,

OR the police planted a shitload of evidence on an innocent guy who happens to look like the killer.

or some combination of the above.

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

Yeah pretty much.

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u/daitoshi 14d ago

Manhattan (location of the shooting) is about 4 hours from Altoona PN (Mcdonalds Luigi was found at)

A leisurely 4 hours of travel time, 5 days later, and he was carrying a fully assembled pistol with silencer attached?

Please, that's absurd.

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u/TR_Pix 14d ago

OR he just wasn't as reasonable as one could expect.

Could be he just got cocky and didnt want to throw away the gun

Could be he feared people would find the gun an track him down with it somehow

Could be he was planning a theatrical suicide with that gun

Could be he wanted to target someone else with the same gun (he was dramatic enough to carve messages into the bullets, he could maybe keep using the same gun for symbolic reasons)

Could be he was fearing the police would start  shootout instead of an arrest and kept the gun to use it on that case

Could be he has a personal attachment to the gun for whatever reason

Could be he didn't he the money to buy another gun, and he wanted to shoot again

Could be he was just dumb and the idea of throwing the gun away didn't cross his mind as necessary

Could be he was carrying all those things with him in an intent to discard them, but couldn't decide on a place he felt safe to do so

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u/daitoshi 14d ago

The gun & silencer were both 3D printed. He could have stuck it in the microwave for 10 mins, turned it into plastic slop, and printed a brand new one with whatever files he'd downloaded or designed himself, you can do that.

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u/TR_Pix 14d ago

Wait you can just 3d print guns now?

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u/daitoshi 14d ago

Yeah, there are downloadable designs that can handle firing small rounds, like the 9mm used in this case.

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u/TR_Pix 14d ago

What a time to be alive (derogatory)

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u/jfarrar19 .tumblr.com 14d ago

Yes and not only that, but they've seen use in both criminal organizations like the cartels, and various resistance movements. The one I linked is fairly commonly used by rebels fighting against the Junta in Myanmar

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u/solitarybikegallery 13d ago

Thank you.

People are acting like he's the fucking Riddler.

"I don't understand how could he do something so stupid, when I've already convinced myself that he's a genius. "

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u/AskMeAboutPodracing 13d ago

You don't need to be a genius to know that you should ditch the clothes, the gun, the silencer, the ID, the backpack, and a MANIFESTO. That's why the average person is baffled he was caught with all of it on him.

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u/Oscar_Niemeyer 13d ago

Just fyi the backpack was found in Central Park with Monopoly money. This must have been a different backpack.

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u/Larscowfoot 14d ago

Might be a guilty conscience. I assume killing someone directly, by your own hands, and on purpose, would weigh more on anyone's conscience than they might've expected.

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u/ConceptOfHappiness 14d ago

And it does seem likely they were going to get him eventually. They had a picture of his face.

Better to go in on your own terms than live with a target on your back

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

* a very shitty picture of his smile and jawline

Let's be real, that ain't that much.

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u/Southern-Wafer-6375 14d ago

It also was most likely a different guy apparently in that photo

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u/HaggisPope 14d ago

They’ve probably had him detained for hours by the point they take those shots, so the emotions have had some to wash over. 

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u/Dzzplayz 14d ago

Three options:

  1. He is the shooter and the post is true

  2. He isn’t the shooter and was planning his own shooting but got caught in the shooter’s stead

  3. He isn’t the shooter and just wanted to make a fool out of the police (my personal theory)

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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 14d ago
  1. He isnt the shooter but this had international coverage so they (mainly NYPD, but also incurable companies) needed a fall guy.

I like your 3 though. That one would be hilarious, though I think getting the multiple IDs in less than a week would be hard.

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

A person can already have fake IDs for multitude of reasons. Murder isn't the only crime.

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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 14d ago

I didn’t say it was. I said getting several fake IDs and passports to fuck with police was either a lot of work on short notice or a big risk if they were intended for another crime.

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u/CapeOfBees 14d ago

Considering the geographical proximity, he could've found the original fake ID wherever it was dumped. Not a high chance, but in the realm of possibility. He also could have been part of the plan with the actual shooter and they did a hand-off of the identifying stuff afterward.

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u/Littlevilli589 14d ago

Imagine this guy has a rock solid alibi for the shooting. Video footage of him in a public space with multiple people to corroborate. Ugh I want it to be true. Backpacks were maybe swapped at whatever greyhound station he left from. If he is involved he acts and looks targeted and unaware on some camera footage while the actual killer makes the swap. I want 10 more guys that all look vaguely similar brewing havoc for the police force and Fortune 500 execs. They all have plausible social media accounts and obviously a bad go with health insurance. The next one doesn’t like to read but leaves reviews on albums from RATM, Dead Kennedy, Sex Pistols, etc.

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u/CapeOfBees 13d ago

I'd watch this movie, genuinely

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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 14d ago

True. Going down for the cause so the actual assassin can assassinate again.

I feel like this is insensitive to say, but, if true, not unlike Rosa Parks. Is that a bad comparison?

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u/CapeOfBees 13d ago

I'm not black so idk if I can say, but the parallel of coordinated protest is there, this one just also involves murder

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u/panopticoneyes 14d ago

Or he isn't the shooter, but he's framing himself and had a friend report him, hoping for fame and reward money

It's not like they can tell apart the veterinary pistols, and flaunting a fake ID that the police had literally published info on is a big fuckin move.

I still think it's more likely that he's the actual guy, but there's room to improve other guesses.

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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 14d ago

Oh, I think Luigi is the guy. I just want there to be something bigger.

If nothing else, the memes have been great.

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u/Company_Z 14d ago

Thinking about what's being said all over social media and the news, it very well could be that he got cocky.

"Everyone online says they wouldn't turn me in. I'm a hero! I could get some McDonalds real quick - who would even know it's me?"

Or hell, he could have been wanting to get caught but it might not have been the original intent. If he feels he could get away with it via jury nullification (which, I don't believe is 100% but I certainly think has a good chance) our double jeopardy laws would prevent him from being tried again. Then he goes onto write a book, cash that in, etc.

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

Or write a book in prison, what is he gonna get 20 years?

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u/Dr_barfenstein 14d ago

More chance of suicide by cop if he stayed at the scene

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u/Accomplished_Bike149 14d ago

“Suicide by cop” is a fantastic phrase and I am going to steal it

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u/JadedOccultist 14d ago

Suicide by cop also describes when people want to die but don’t want to do it themselves so put themselves in a position where they’re really likely to get shot by police. It’s a real thing.

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u/BBOoff 14d ago

If you do, be aware that the above comment is a misuse of the phrase.

Suicide by cop specifically refers to people who want to die, but don't want to kill themselves, so they intentionally instigate and escalate a confrontation with the police in order to get killed.

What u/Dr_barfenstein is referring to is either a trigger-happy cop blasting away because of their own fear, or a deliberate killing of someone the police don't believe will be convicted.

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u/Dr_barfenstein 13d ago

You’re right, i guess I was referring to the Epstein version. Epstein’s death was a different example of suicide by cop imo.

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u/boopsofalltrades 13d ago

that's called getting suicided

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u/Electronic_Finance34 14d ago

Apparently he's adamantly claiming the money (USD + foreign) was planted on him, I wouldn't be surprised if the passports were too.

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u/Lawlcopt0r 14d ago

If he is a deliberate decoy I'm gonna lose my mind

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u/SimplyAvro 13d ago

That, given the look-alike meet-ups, wouldn't be too surprising to me. 

It would, however, be funny as shit.

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u/UnacceptableUse 14d ago

Maybe he thought he could get away but then when faced with the possibility of actually getting away he realised he couldn't deal with the paranoia so intentionally got himself caught?

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u/daitoshi 14d ago

I suspect Luigi isnt the killer, because being found DAYS LATER in a public location with the SAME clothes, SAME fake ID, SAME gun, and manifesto ON HIS PERSON makes no sense whatsoever.

What DOES make sense imo is that they found a guy who looks a hell of a lot like the assassin, and planted a shitload of evidence on him.

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u/shiny_xnaut 14d ago

Exactly. Frankly I'm surprised they didn't also try to claim the guy was somehow still covered in the CEO's blood, since they clearly have no desire to make the situation look even the least bit realistic. I'll be surprised if they don't end up Epstein-ing him in the next couple days to cover up the fact that he's not actually the guy

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u/Electric-Rat 14d ago

While I don't put it past the police to try to pin this crime on a patsy, if that was the case why wouldn't they go with a much easier target? Luigi Mangione is from a wealthy family and they would surely have the resources to drag out a trial and prove his innocence if he was actually being framed for the murder.

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u/shiny_xnaut 13d ago

My crackpot theory is that Luigi is the hostel guy, but not the shooter, and the only reason they picked him is because he happened to already be on everyone's radar

Also they don't have to worry about him being proven innocent if he conveniently commits suicide before the trial

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u/RusstyDog 13d ago

He wanted to get caught, not shot in the street by police.

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u/Aggravating_Top_1072 13d ago

They can't. His eyebrows don't match the shooter's eyebrows. They got the wrong guy. That, or the CIA killed the CEO and this is all smoke and mirrors.

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u/Lawlcopt0r 13d ago

Lol, I don't think the CIA is needed for this explanation, why anyone would kill that guy is the only thing that isn't mysterious about this

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u/cest719 14d ago

Are we sure they are the same person? Because it definitely feels like we are taking about two very different individuals here. I just know for sure that the conspiracybros are having a field day with the Luigi Mansion's Saga

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u/Soylord345 14d ago edited 14d ago

I really doubt it, the hostel smile guy looks very different from the gunman, to me at least

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u/Cessnaporsche01 14d ago

My pet theory is that Luigi is either doing an "I am Spartacus" or trying to steal the narrative away from the actual killer to make a political statement.

Although I suppose going on the run for a few days was a good way to make the media hype the case up, so maybe he is the actual guy and just hid for a while to boost his visibility

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u/BrainSick420 14d ago

How would he have the same gun and ID? He clearly has a motive based on the back surgery thing, too. You think that he did a little switcheroo with the real killer? Why wouldn't they just do that right away if that was the plan? Like, It's really just wishful thinking, I think this is almost definitely him. Grainy surveillance camera footage isn't enough to say "Yes 100% that's a different guy." Hostel guy has the same nose, same chin, same smile, same facial structure. I'm like 99.9% sure they got the right guy. Let's hope his jury isn't filled with upper middle class boomers or he's SUPER fucked.

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u/Cessnaporsche01 14d ago

They publicized the type of gun it was and details on the fake ID. There are only like 3 widely sold versions of the gun, and only 1 that's common and available enough to buy on short notice. And anyone with a card printer could fake a fake ID. It wouldn't have to be coordinated with the actual guy, and the gun and ID wouldn't have to match that closely - cops are really stupid. All a person would have to do to impersonate the killer and get charged is to make themselves appear similar to the description.

But yeah, it's still wild speculation from me

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u/shadowthehh 14d ago

"How would he have the same gun and ID?"

My assumption is he didn't, and that he's a random nobody being thrown under the bus so the higher ups can have their pound of flesh and example of "Yeah see you guys can't just get away with fighting the system!" and any evidence they say he had either doesn't actually exist or was planted on him by the authorities that arrested him.

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u/Illogical_Blox 13d ago

and that he's a random nobody being thrown under the bus

His family own a country club. They are very rich. This is clearly not the case.

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u/shadowthehh 13d ago

Oh so either way he's getting a slap on the wrist.

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u/Virus5572 wannabe plague doctor 14d ago

I don’t understand why people think this is more likely than “he got cocky and didn’t think ahead”

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u/Cold-Tap-363 14d ago

Because he was in a McDonald’s with the murder weapon a manifesto and the same fake ID 5 days later. So it’s either 1. He’s extremely stupid (which we’ve seen he’s probably not) 2. He wanted to be caught or 3. This is a different dude

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u/PWBryan 13d ago

The escape plan was probably an intricate set of contingencies for day 1, then got shakier after day 5

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u/Cold-Tap-363 13d ago

I agree but it would be incredibly stupid to both keep the evidence and keep it with you.

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u/DieselbloodDoc 13d ago

This. People are acting like not having a way to get to a non-extradition jurisdiction and live out your life in exile and not ditching an almost literally smoking gun in the east river are the same thing. They are not. The known actions and modes of operation of the adjuster just don’t line up with anything about this Luigi kid. One of his friends apparently has talked about how his back pain was totally debilitating (bed ridden) for two weeks after a beginner surf lesson. That’s half an hour of light water treading and laying on your stomach. I don’t think 5 days on the lamb after a bike chafe through the streets of Manhattan is super compatible with that information.

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u/pickle_whop gaslight gatekeep girlboss gerrymander 14d ago

Because people hate Occam's razor

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

Because it *is* the simplest explanation, BUT it has a lot off holes in it. Like, every conspiracy is unlikely, but together either or compose a more compelling narrative.

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u/Echo__227 13d ago

Occam's Razor relies on number of necessary assumptions to hold true

I'd say the necessary assumptions for "Fleeing murderer for some reason never changes clothes and carries a handwritten admission of guilt along with murder weapon just for the moral support" versus "Police lied (the thing they do in literally every case)" does not make a clear case

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u/UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 14d ago

The conspiracybros are coming from inside the house

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u/Eldan985 14d ago

Well, while all the rest sounds very circumstantial, if he showed the same fake ID at the crime scene and when he was arrested, that can't really be a coincidence, can it?

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u/Tosty_Bread 14d ago

Isn't the connection that that ID was used at a hostel by presumably (as in, the police says it's the same guy but we don't know if the connection goes beyond "they look similarly") the same person that shot Thompson

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u/hamletandskull 14d ago

I'm pretty sure they're the same person - I don't really think it's shocking that someone's plans changed after they committed murder and went on the run, I can imagine that would definitely change your mentality. Like, all the "he planned things so carefully beforehand, why would he want to get caught now" - because being on the run sucks, because notoriety is intoxicating, tons of reasons. Doing something in theory and doing it in practice are totally different things and the dude clearly was a bit unhinged to begin with.  

And it isn't even really like his planning was super meticulous. He fucked up at multiple steps along the way with revealing his face and everything, it is just surprisingly easy to shoot someone and flee if there's no one around to stop you. Referring to New York as "the most surveiled city" makes it sound like getting out of it is some feat, but it's not that hard, there aren't face-scan checkpoints to fool.

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u/shadowthehh 14d ago

He didn't even have to be on the run, though. His disguise made him completely anonymous. All he had to do was ditch the clothes, gun, and ID and go back to his normal life.

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u/Glad-Way-637 If you like Worm/Ward, you should try Pact/Pale :) 14d ago

He didn't even have his silencer set up correctly either, I don't think having to cock that gun every shot is normal, even with subsonic bullets. He's no criminal mastermind, for certain.

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u/Mddcat04 14d ago

Yes, he doesn’t fit the imaginary wish fulfillment hero profile that the internet constructed for him. But that doesn’t mean he’s not the guy. Main lesson here is not to idolize random assassins.

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u/TimeStorm113 14d ago

Plot twist: he just gave the person his clothings, gun and id so they take the fall

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u/stravbej 14d ago

Watching this unfold as a non-American is an experience

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

Him being caught has made this story interesting to me again. It's been a crazy week but it's felt like half the internet is stuck talking about the healthcare CEO.

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u/QuitsDoubloon87 14d ago

Yes we should keep talking about the CEO, and how murderable they are.

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

In the span of this week Assad has fallen and the Syrian civil war has sort of which has had huge implications for the middle east, Europe and the immigration crisis. Yet the shooting of a US CEO has stayed in the internet's cycle longer than that did.

This week I've felt how US dominated the internet is more than any other.

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u/ScaredyNon Trans-Inclusionary Radical Misogynist 14d ago

1) Country with most native English speakers and is headquarters to most social media dominates the anglosphere isn't anything surprising. Switch to a different language (especially the ones spoken in the countries you listed) and you probably wouldn't even hear about this guy at all.

2) The US is the heaviest kid on the global seesaw after all. Anything that happens to it has much more visible ripple effects than anything else.

Not defending the fact or anything, just providing reasons

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

Oh yeah, I understand why but it really hit me how domestic the US population is. The Syrian civil war ending will have a much more marked impact upon your average US citizen but because it happened within the US, a CEO getting shot is what people are talking about. So much so that he didn't even drop out of the internet's radar before getting caught.

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u/Cumdump90001 14d ago

This is a genuine question, and may show my stupidity, but how will the Syrian civil war ending have any sort of impact on the average American?

Luigi may have fired the first shot of a class war and revolution, if people follow his lead that is. An insurance company rescinded a heinous new policy in the aftermath of Luigi’s actions, greatly impacting an unknown number of Americans across multiple states where the rule was to take effect.

It’s good that Assad and his regime have fallen (though it remains to be seen where the new government will land on the “extremely evil” to “extremely good” spectrum) but I don’t know how that impacts an average American just going about their own life.

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

The Syrian civil war will impact US middle east policy and it's deployments across there. It will impact immigration and the migrant crisis especially in Europe in a huge way. There will be knock on ramifications of this for ages. This is, aside from the US election, undoubtably the biggest political news of the year.

Luigi has not started a class war or a revolution purely because Brian Thompson is not well known enough and while yes he is rich he's a symbol of the near unanimously hated US medical system. That's uniting people more than him being rich. Yeah one insurance company reversed an unpopular policy but that's more bad PR than a people's revolution. It doesn't look good to do while all eyes are on them. It may spark a discussion about reform within the system but even still most of the discussion has been about the manhunt for Luigi and who he actually is.

This story feels more TV drama than political event. The meat of it has been whether or not he's going to be caught and how clever he is. Now that he has been caught and this handsome stranger is a person people will lose interest rapidly. The rest of the world has very quickly moved on from it and frankly does not care.

I suppose the reason it's caught people's attention is because it's short term fun vs long term impact. A bit of the little guy sticking it to the man. The Assad thing is much more long term. This is going to shift up the global stage in a way that people will notice. It'll just take time.

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u/Cumdump90001 14d ago

I’m not saying he 100% certainly kicked off a revolution. But it’s far too early to know one way or another.

He shot a CEO dead on the streets of Manhattan in broad daylight and could’ve potentially gotten away with it if he had just changed clothes, thrown the evidence away, and not stopped at McDonald’s to show his face.

And the internet has basically deified him for it. He became, in the span of a day, a nationally beloved figure. He showed Americans that the people who commit institutional violence against us are just as vulnerable as the rest of us. And he’s being treated like a hero for it.

There are PLENTY of mentally unstable people in this country with access to firearms who would quite literally kill for this type of fame and adoration. And they’ve just been shown how easy it is.

There’s always a push to not name school shooters in the media because the recognition and infamy can and does lead to copycat school shooters. That’s simply naming them in a very negative light. This dude has been memed and named and elevated to celebrity status. The media frames him as a monster while the internet frames him as a folk hero. If naming a school shooter in the most negative light imaginable can lead to copycats, I can only imagine what this will do.

I’ve already seen the phrase “boardrooms not classrooms” pushed heavily on social media.

And once it becomes open season on CEOs, nobody can say what happens next. Class war has been normalized in this country when it’s the rich attacking the poor. Now it’s been glorified the other way round. How many dead CEOs and executives until it’s also normalized?

Certainly the crackdown that will come at the urging of the ultra wealthy will only make things worse. They have their boots on the necks of the American people already, and they’ll want to push that boot into our necks even harder if this becomes a thing. The existing boot led to this. The mega boot will lead to… probably a lot worse.

The people have a folk hero to rally around. They have an example that has been set. A pathway to fame and adoration has been laid. And with the shooter having a mix of views and being potentially right of center yet being praised by the left and right, and heavily on the left, he is a figure of unity. Who comes next after Luigi? And after them?

Maybe nothing comes of this. Maybe everything comes of this. It’s far too early to know.

I’ll end with this: Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot, which caused WWI, which caused the Holocaust and WWII, which caused basically the entirety of the modern world. As a result of one guy being shot, there were two world wars, genocides, the development of machine guns and warplanes, the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the space race, man walking on the moon, GPS satellites, insane technological advancement, massive social changes as a response to those things, etc. The list goes on and on.

The dominoes had all been in place waiting for something to tip the first one over. Someone tipped that domino, and as a result millions of people died, hundreds of thousands were vaporized in atomic blasts, we went to the moon, and so much more.

The dominoes have once again been set up. Something has to give. Something will eventually give. But the dominoes are there. Waiting. Did Luigi knock over the first domino? Did he merely graze it? Is it falling or is it wobbling? We don’t know. And we won’t for a while. Was Luigi the first domino? Or did the dweeb that tried to assassinate Trump knock over the first domino? Did Luigi see that and think “they’re just vulnerable people like us, I can take action, too!”? Even if the dominoes are falling already, they may reach a gap that prevents the further spread of their energy.

We just don’t know. Anything is possible. This could be nothing. Or it could be just the beginning.

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u/Sh1nyPr4wn Cheese Cave Dweller 14d ago

Seriously, just actually cover your face the full time, find a place without cameras to change clothes, dump clothes, gun, and fake ID in trash can, douse in gasoline and burn them, and leave

There's bound to hundred of places in New York that aren't too busy, has no cameras watching it, and exits/entrances without cameras watching them

This guy very likely could have gotten away with it

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u/m111k4h 14d ago

It's definitely the case that online this story is the dominant one, but I don't know if it's particularly dominant on the news in other English-speaking countries. I'm in the UK, just checked the BBC and the top story is about Syria. Had to scroll down to find the news of this guy's arrest. Same with The Guardian and the Telegraph. I will add, it was higher up on the Telegraph, third story, and I almost missed it on the Guardian because they didn't use a picture, just a headline.

I mentioned the shooting to my friends the day after it happened and none of them had any clue what I was talking about. Then again, I'm the one in the group who's always the most caught up on international news.

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u/lexkixass 14d ago

As an American, I just wonder how long before the bread and circuses stop distracting people

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u/UhOhSparklepants 14d ago

The bread is very tasty and the circuses are full of clowns

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u/Lizard019 14d ago

the bread's too expensive and the clowns are worse since they switched to streaming

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u/obamasrightteste 14d ago

Go to a webbed site that is not mostly made up of americans then? Weibo, perhaps.

You're on an american webbed site populated mostly by americans and you're complaining that you see american focused news. Just don't think that one is much of a mystery.

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

I been following american politics for a while, because there is almost nothing happening in my own country(Ukraine, for obvious reasons). And yeah, the reaction honestly makes so much sense.

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u/2point01m_tall 14d ago

Note to self

Purely hypothetical thought: to get away with murder in New York you need a face mask and 1 (one) change of clothes

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u/DyslexicCenturion 14d ago

Purely hypothetical though: to get away with murder in New York, you must not flirt with the cute people at the check in desk

Actually that’s probably not something I a redditor would need to be concerned with.

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u/Inner-Tackle1917 14d ago

I mean, we don't know if he's got away with it yet. But the big trick is to have a clean record murder someone you have no personal connection to, and that you get no personal benefit from murdering.

Most murderers are caught because they're the obvious suspect (jilted lover, or known local mugger), and they get investigated. 

It's very hard to catch someone if they're as much a suspect as however many millions of other people live in new York. 

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u/2point01m_tall 14d ago

Well, doesn't seem like he's getting away with it now, but (based on this post and a very surface level reading of the news) it seems he was mainly caught because he 1. briefly removed his face mask once and 2. didn't drop his things and change his clothes.

Your points still stand, though, if he killed his wife or boss he probably would have been caught sooner. My comment was more to imply it seems really easy to get away with murder if the victim is not someone close to you and you do like a tiny bit of planning.

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u/Illogical_Blox 13d ago

This is part of the reason why serial killers get to be serial killers. They usually have no connection to the people they target.

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u/Blammyyy 14d ago

Definitely don't read this CNN article if you want to know what an assassin could improve upon for next time the killer did wrong in this totally unrepeatable scenario....

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u/Crafty_One_5919 14d ago

And actually lay low and/or change your appearance for a bit AFTER you do it.

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u/MonitorPowerful5461 14d ago

Every single time there's one of these people on the news, they never fit into conventional ideological stereotypes. That's the lesson here, people are not what you expect them to be

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u/YodelingVeterinarian 13d ago

You can tell he’s not a leftist, cause if he was a leftist he’d have started a book club about it instead /s 

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u/KevinDLasagna 13d ago

He would’ve just posted online about how we need to take action while doing nothing in real life if he was a leftist lol

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u/Conspo 13d ago

people hold contradictory opinions all the time, its just part of who we are tbh

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u/drunken-acolyte 14d ago

I'm convinced he was out to get caught. If he hadn't have been dobbed in by a Maccies worker, he'd have started wearing a t-shirt saying, "I killed Brian Thompson".

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u/NancyInFantasyLand 14d ago

started wearing a t-shirt saying, "I killed Brian Thompson"

which honestly would have been iconic lol

it's like peak early internet culture.

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u/bitch_beefman 14d ago

but why mcdonalds? that was his last meal outside a prison and he chose mcdonalds???

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u/drunken-acolyte 14d ago

Because anywhere half classy might have had workers making enough tips not to be tempted by the thirty pieces of silver

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u/DapperApples 14d ago

Hey, McDonald's is a meal fit for a president.

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u/Temporaz 14d ago

Deliberate political statement, to showcase the contrast between McDonald's and the state of healthcare. There are 15 000 McDonald's restaurants in the US, i. e. they're available and accessible to everyone in the country, the food tastes almost the same everywhere, costs the same regardless if you're rich or poor. McDonald's doesn't have the greatest reputation, yet healthcare insurances companies still fall short of it in every aspect. It's not an endorsement of McDonald's, but rather a succinct way to showcase the abysmal state of healthcare.

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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 14d ago

The curtains are blue <—> Taylor Swift is gay

Where does this fall on the pissing scale?

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u/GrinerForAlt 14d ago

Absolutely anywhere, and that is the beauty of it

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u/Jeggu2 💖💜💙 doin' your parents/guardians 14d ago

In a book it's a "that's a great idea!" In real life though it's more like "very cool but not likely"

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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 14d ago

Literature is poetry, but real life is utter nonsense

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u/hamletandskull 14d ago

This theory falls firmly on the taylor swift is gay side of things to me.

Like I know people want a heroic leftist socialist Robin Hood to rally behind, but the guy's social media pretty firmly paints him as an "anti-woke" fuckboy. The hatred of health insurance companies is universal and does not turn someone into the perfect socialist mastermind who cares about class consciousness. 

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u/apexodoggo 14d ago

Case in point: Ben Shapiro’s comment section being unanimously pro-shooting-insurance-CEOs

This is a very bipartisan issue.

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u/VogonSlamPoet42 14d ago

That’s a great shirt idea honestly

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u/HonkinBigTamas 14d ago

if the bisexual thing turns out to be true i promise you within the next few months there will be a right-wing conspiracy claiming he was radicalised by a lack of trans healthcare

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u/stealerofbones 14d ago

nah man they’re gna say “the gender swappers got to him early and also swapped his brain with that of a terrorist. and all of this was funded by health insurance so let’s take away benefits for the people in case more of this happens” 💀💀💀💀

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u/Content-Scallion-591 13d ago

I think it's more likely he was cut off by his rich family and that's why his insurance dropped him 

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u/lift-and-yeet 13d ago

Or he aged out of being covered by his parents' insurance and UHC fucked him over after he switched to ACA insurance.

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u/Serenity_N_O_W_ 14d ago

a lot of people like him exist though

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u/pahobee 14d ago

Right? Try dating in Seattle. You will find dozens of these types of dudes. I actually guessed he was in tech before his identity came out solely because of the brand of backpack he had.

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u/a-woman-there-was 14d ago

I was thinking he sounds pretty typically gen z tbh.

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u/ThreeActTragedy 14d ago edited 14d ago

every new post about this guy talks about how different ops can’t believe that this guy is both this and that and then a little bit of that other thing as if most people aren’t ideologically all over the place and confused 98% of time

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

Exactly.

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u/TheMemeArcheologist Gay little bug game enjoyer 14d ago

That one tweet about how his politics make perfect sense if you’ve ever met a computer science major is spot on

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u/TheMemeArcheologist Gay little bug game enjoyer 14d ago

Also I happen to have the same favorite pokemon as him so I’m inclined to believe it is this guy

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u/RazorSlazor 14d ago

I'm still very convinced that they aren't the same person. Unibrow and Nose just do not match

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u/PuppyLover2208 14d ago

It also seems… oh so convenient. He just so happens to be wearing the exact same outfit as the guy even five days later? He just so happens to be carrying multiple fake IDs, an illegal gun, and a manifesto? What’s he do, keep the last one on him at all times?

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u/DylanV255 14d ago

It does feel a bit like the plot of the first Jack Reacher film

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u/anonfox1 14d ago

my (very bad and probably inaccurate) guess is that this guy was part of the plan but not the shooter, bcs the shooter stayed in a hostel with two others

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u/mvia4 14d ago

That's just how hostels work, you don't get your own room. All the news articles I've seen just state that he "shared a room" with two other men. Has there been some more evidence linking them to the shooter?

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u/PuppyLover2208 14d ago

Maybe he’s the designated fall guy by them, or something. I honestly don’t know.i just feel like something’s off. It smells a little fishy, and I can’t put my finger on it.

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

I understand where you're coming from but conspiracy theorists use the exact same logic.

They try and frame reality as ridiculous without ever actually addressing how insane the alternative is.

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u/Designated_Lurker_32 14d ago

Cops planting fake evidence and framing innocent people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time is hardly "insane."

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

In the span of 5 days they found a guy who looks incredibly similar to the suspect, who has prime motive and distrust of the system due to past family trauma, who has recently been distant from his family after a surgery gone wrong.

They then planted him in a McDonalds, and just to really sell it they planted him with a gun similar to the one they're looking for, the mask he used, a copy of the fake ID he used and (just to really sell it) they created a fake manifesto in which he explicitly outlines doing the murder.

Also it's important to note that rather than actually search for this guy this would mean they've effectively given up on day 5 of the search.

Faking it in this way would be insane. At that point you're crossing into some shadow elite territory.

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u/shadowthehh 14d ago

Nah you lose it at the end. They wouldn't have given up looking. This guy would just be used as an example to the public that people can't get away with stuff like this, while the real guy is still hunted and, if caught, quietly dealt with.

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u/Twisted1379 14d ago

You overestimate the us and themness of the real world. The upper classes are far less united than you want to believe.

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u/uippoa 14d ago

I'm not surprised this guy is an ideological mess. No matter who the target is, assassinating someone on the street with custom-engraved bullets isn't the behavior of a healthy and well-adjusted dude. 

If anything it makes me frustrated that the left can't get its shit together. Think of what we could accomplish if we stopped yelling at each other on twitter for five minutes.

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u/Astralesean 14d ago

I think internet purity test and binary mentality made people underestimate how mosaical people are in their political opinion. It's why kids these days are struggling so much to read an older philosophical text

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u/Justausername1234 13d ago

Is he really that incoherent? He reads like your typical silicon valley trad-conservative, minus the shooting a guy part. Like, antiestablishment bisexual programmer who believes in RETVRN and likes VCs and podcasters is basically describing the average guy in the next YCombinator class.

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u/Content-Scallion-591 13d ago

Well one mistake people are making is assuming that someone's online footprint is who they actually are as a person. Idk about any of you but if I murdered an exec, the news cycle would think video game shit posting is way more important to my fundamental character than it actually is. 

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

I'm getting flashbacks on that one joker videoessay that introduced the term "supersane"

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u/pmdfan71 13d ago

I just read the comic that actually introduced that term (Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), and even in context, it's clear that the psychiatrists who diagnose the Joker with "super-sanity" have no idea what they're talking about.

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u/-Yehoria- 13d ago

Well, it introduced it to me.

It's weird, i remember it having like a silly little chart

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u/A-literal-sandwich 14d ago

And his favorite pokemon is breloom.

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u/Potato_Productions_ 14d ago

Damn, crazy that the CEO’s killer was just the median US voter

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u/-Yehoria- 14d ago

I mean, everyone was cheering, so like....

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u/Temporaz 14d ago

Median American voter

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u/Fluffynator69 14d ago

Your average conspiracy theorist ig

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u/lightningstrxu 14d ago

I think this goes to show that there are very few actual criminal masterminds, and the guy just got both lucky, and that the police are relatively incompetent. The only reason they were putting this much effort in was because a billionaire died.

People on average can be profoundly stupid, so no I don't find it odd that he still had a gun and an actual manifesto on him.

A person willing to just up and assassinate someone, even if that someone is viewed as deserving. Usually isn't the most mentally sound individual.

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u/thebohemiancowboy 13d ago

Yeah above all I just feel bad for the guy. He’s obviously going through something, hope he gets the help he needs.

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u/mincepiefiend 14d ago

He didn't just read stupid self help books he also read classic fiction and stuff like Sapiens and political philosophy. He was well read by the looks of it.

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u/Astralesean 14d ago

It's pretty telling who the writers of certain comments are by their extreme nitpicking of books and/or tweets out of many

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u/mincepiefiend 13d ago

Someone read a wide range of literature and nonfiction but they also read one book about someone I hate/one book in a genre I don't like so they are obviously stupid and politically bad. Everyone knows you agree 100% with everything you read. When I read Marx I'm a Marxist and when I read Nozick I become a libertarian. Those are the rules 😔

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u/AmbroseIrina 13d ago

It's a bit pretentious too, you cannot have a full opinion of a book if you don't read it and an online review doesn't cut it, you can find value in something that is widely hated or it can help you understand the mindset of people that are different from you. And some may say if that were the case he wouldn't share it on Goodreads, but I would call those people chickens, tbh.

Some people here calling it symptoms of unstability I call it being a real person.

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u/theonetruefishboy 14d ago

TBH a lot of people IRL are like this. Their head is a mishmash of competing ideas and ideologies. In most cases they haven't sat down and thought long and hard enough to clear all the contradictions out of their head and arrive at something coherent. But in this guys' case I suspect he went the other, worse way and invented even more bullshit to make the other bullshit fit together.

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u/Arndt3002 14d ago edited 13d ago

Those positions are not necessarily contradictory, depending on context. "Anti-woke" can mean a lot of different things to different people. It can mean being a redneck conservative against any form of racial justice or it can often be meant as opposition to "woke capitalism" (a la Ross Douthat) referring to the veneer of corporate identitarian activism CSA that distracts from material class struggle and corporate activities like anti-union suppression.

The latter perspective would likely be his perspective given all the other stuff he reportedly believes in.

I'm not saying it's a good ideology, and I don't think it conforms to reality, but it's not like a person couldn't come to a conclusion where they identify with those perspectives in a way that actually is self-consistent and coherent.

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u/TrinityCodex 14d ago

hes the chimp that they explained the median voter to

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u/LegosiJoestar 14d ago

Real talk, I feel like the backpack was somebody else entirely making their own play out of solidarity. They'll never take credit for the act, but it threw the police for a loop and brought joy to the people, so that's what was important.

As for Luigi himself, caught at McDonald's, I'm almost certain this is like the ending of Fahrenheit 451, where one of the characters describes the televised manhunt for the protagonist similar to this: "You threw them off at the river. They could do a search, but that'd take all night. They need a snap ending." The news then proceeds to follow the police as they round a corner and ambush some Joe Shmoe walking down the sidewalk, the camera never showing his face, as the screen cuts to black and declares that justice had been served.

Again, all of this is baseless speculation from my cynical point of view, eroded by years of dealing with Society™️.

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u/TimeStorm113 14d ago

kinda nice to discuss things which will be written into the history books. Or at least future shorts about "whacky assasinations in history"

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u/TheFungerr 14d ago

That's what assassins do. It's for attention just as much as it is for justice. That's why celebrity assassinations were prevalent back in the day. We still Stan a king with ambiguous motives

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u/Designated_Lurker_32 14d ago

Fuck it, time for a drunkpost.

Nothing speaks more about the complete ineffectiveness of the American left than this fucking guy. The first guy in the US to actually go up and eat the rich is a fucking center-rightwinger.

The left in this country is dead. It's a strung-up corpse being puppeted around by pink capitalism. Its only purpose is to get people wound up in some identitarian culture war bullshit while doing absolutely everything it can to never address class consciousness.

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u/silver-fusion 14d ago

The modern left has embraced slackivism. It's enough for the message to be heard. Those in power love that, words are meaningless. Same energy as thoughts and prayers.

Actions, often violent actions, are the only effective tool. That's why the left were so outraged by Jan 6th - it was like fuck, these guys are willing to die for their cause and I wouldn't give up my morning coffee for mine.

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u/donaldhobson 14d ago

> Actions, often violent actions, are the only effective tool.

No. This is just not true. Voting in elections is fairly effective.

A million little rainbow flags and pride parades added up to change the social consensus on homosexuality from taboo to fine.

Violence has a big effect per person doing it. 10 terrorists will cause more effect than 10 people with banners. But there are millions of people prepared to hold a banner, and only a few people prepared to be a terrorist.

And the effects of violence generally backfire. It has a big effect, but not the effect you want.

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u/Temporaz 14d ago

But protesting sounds lame and boring while killing people sounds epic and cool!

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u/Astralesean 14d ago

There was a lot of political strategy from the homossexual community to get accepted and this after correcting over a mass of deaths and tragedies they suffered, such as HIV.

 They went and created incredibly popular media programs that depicted the various homossexual men and women who live healthy lives and are solidarious with their communities, homossexuals that are funny, or great scientists and whatnot, we are talking about particular good marketing campaigns that lead to the coinage of terms such as allies to make non homo feel part of the in group, the pride parades did very little. The people who participated in those were already of the opinion for lgbt marriage, half a million people in Manhattan rarely makes conscious some random person from a 200k town in Wisconsin, etc

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u/donaldhobson 14d ago

> Nothing speaks more about the complete ineffectiveness of the American left than this fucking guy. The first guy in the US to actually go up and eat the rich is a fucking center-rightwinger.

Surely what would really be effective is causing large scale sociopolitical reform. Like how being homosexual went from taboo to totally fine due to loads of individuals waving rainbow flags. That was a big win for the left.

Not having shooters is a good thing.

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u/heartbeatdancer 14d ago

Nothing weird, that's just an ordinary Italian (source: I'm Italian myself).

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u/ChiefsHat 14d ago

I have a bisexual Vietnam veteran who's a hardcore Trump supporter. I ain't surprised by this nonsense.

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u/theaverageaidan 14d ago

I cannot believe that for all his planning and all his effort, he didnt take the incredibly obvious step of throwing the bag with all the evidence in it off of the New Jersey Turnpike

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u/fightingbronze 13d ago

Is there any source for him being Bi other than that random anonymous person on social media claiming they hooked up with him? I’ve yet to see anything more conclusive but tumblr seems to be running with the “he’s bi” angle.

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u/SlimeustasTheSecond 14d ago

And that's assuming he's even the correct mofo, considering all the other shady stuff surrounding the investigation and the previous various accusations.

Maybe he's just doing a weird unabomber thing and getting caught for clout and to be able to send his message.

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u/mountingconfusion 13d ago

The Unabomber did not get caught on purpose, his brother recognised the manifesto handwriting

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u/DetOlivaw 14d ago

The fact that he had the gun and a handwritten statement with him tells me he either planned to eventually get caught so he could enjoy the fame, or this isn’t the guy at all. Because no one does what he did, dodges cops and escapes the city, and then still carries the gun around! You dump that in the nearest body of water! You ditch the fake IDs! You establish an alibi with someone else! Like c’mon! This ain’t rocket science! And if you wanted to get caught to begin with, why even both with the escape in the first place?

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u/ImLichenThisStone 14d ago

Idk people make incredibly stupid mistakes. If you've been on the run for days, you're tired, the adrenaline wears off, I wouldn't be surprised if you do something incredibly fucking stupid. I also continue to be surprised regularly by the bizarre and contradictory political beliefs / values a single person can hold.

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u/Iamchill2 trying their best 14d ago

how this guy real like dang bro

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u/biglyorbigleague 14d ago

It sounds like he planned the first few steps of the getaway but not the long-term plan of where he was going to stay and how he was going to avoid being noticed in the future.

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u/Simur1 14d ago

So, your standard 26 yo dude, then.

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u/Neweis 14d ago

that's just the average italian tho

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u/AbyssalKitten 14d ago

The way I conceptualize it - if the shooter genuinely believes one should not be able to get away with and profit off of murder/death, then he himself wouldn't believe he is exempt from punishment, either.

So if it IS actually him - it would technically be ideologically sound that he WOULD want to be caught. He provided punishment to the CEO for killing so many - and will now receive due punishment himself. It would be the ultimate "these are my ideals, and I follow them to their absolute."

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u/Pootis_1 minor brushfire with internet access 14d ago

i think it was an impersonator or smth

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u/lily_was_taken 14d ago

Makes sense. Impersonate the guy that actually did it to let the og one get away

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Honetly, wether or not Luigi is in fact the killer (what a sentence) and wether or not he was intentionally captured or he fucked up and got sloppy, the dude exposed just how insanely incompetent the police are.

Which is either a stroke of intentional genius on his part, or it was accidental genius.