Man Held in C.E.O. Killing Showed Interest in Pop Science and Self-Improvement on Social Media

New York Times

09-12-2024

The social media accounts that appear to belong to Luigi Mangione, the man the police have identified as a 'strong person of interest' in the killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, seemed to show interest in self-improvement, clean eating and critiques of contemporary technology.
In the months leading up to the attack, Mr. Mangione, 26, who was arrested in a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa., on Monday, appeared to maintain accounts on platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram and Goodreads, where he shared quotations, reviewed books he had read and reflected on algorithms, self-help texts and guides to touring Hawaii.
His LinkedIn profile lists two degrees, a master's and a bachelor's in computer science completed in four years, from the University of Pennsylvania. An interview with Mr. Mangione on a page on the university's website that is now unavailable described him as having started a video game research and development club after reaching out to classmates via a Facebook group for students in the class of 2020. From there, according to his LinkedIn profile, he went on to work as a data engineer.
Mr. Mangione's X account doesn't include much that would mark him out from any other young man working in tech. He frequently reposted content from a handful of well-known figures, many of whom focus on self-improvement or the negative health consequences of modern consumption.
They include Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist who hosts a popular health and science podcast; Tim Urban, a writer and illustrator with a wide readership in Silicon Valley; Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur known for his book 'The 4-Hour Workweek'; Michael Pollan, who writes about the hazards of processed foods; and Jonathan Haidt, a sociologist at New York University who has written about the dangers of smartphone use by young people.
On the book review website Goodreads, Mr. Mangione appeared to track his reading habits. His selections include science fiction ('Ender's Game'), airport bookstore standbys ('Freakonomics,' 'Outliers') and young adult classics like the 'Harry Potter' and 'Hunger Games' series.
In some of his reviews, Mr. Mangione linked to Google Docs where he kept more detailed notes. In one scanned handwritten document, he shared his thoughts on the popular science book 'Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance' by Angela Duckworth.
Earlier this year, he left a four-star review for 'Industrial Society and Its Future,' better known as the Unabomber manifesto, by Ted Kaczynski, whom Mr. Mangione described as a 'mathematics prodigy' in his review of the work.
'It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,' Mr. Mangione wrote. 'But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.'
He added: 'He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.'
Mr. Mangione highlighted a quotation from the children's book 'The Lorax' by Dr. Seuss, which he also shared this year. (He gave the book five out of five stars.)
The selected quotation read: 'Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.'
On his 'wants to read' list, Mr. Mangione included a forthcoming title, 'Life & the Lindy Effect' by Paul Skallas, who is known for arguing that the longer a phenomenon has been around, the better its chance of lasting far into the future.