As Luigi Mangione quickly becomes a household name, the Super Mario jokes have already gotten out of control

How very postmodern of 2024 to save its most palpable and gonzo saga for the very end of the year. Following Luigi Mangione‘s alleged slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson back on Dec. 4, the suspect was detained and charged with — among other offenses — second-degree murder just yesterday, in spite of the manifesto he was holding in his hands at the time of his arrest.

Mangione has been candid about a certain this-is-just-the-beginning vibe, and while it’s hard to say where things could go from here, the internet is doing everything it can to keep Mangione relevant in the public sphere. Of course, their modus operandi involves a never-ending influx of Super Mario memes, and… well, have a look for yourself.

For starters, this seems an acceptable — if tear-jerking — use of AI.

What will your family think, Luigi?

Every day, we relate to Truman Burbank more and more.

If Mangione gets Mario Kart banned in the United States, so help me God…

Now, I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t be finding great humor in these memes. The way that all of these nuances have lined up — from Mangione’s alleged act of murder, to his obsession with the number 286, to the fact that he shares a name with gaming’s most popular deuteragonist — is the sort of life-is-stranger-than-fiction fiasco that no author in the world could have dreamed up, and sometimes all you can do in the moment is laugh amid the madness.

But with that ostensibly perverted levity, it’s worth sparing just as many sober thoughts about the world that this saga is taking place in. Mangione’s manifesto reportedly criticized UnitedHealthcare — and insurance companies in general — for prioritizing wealth over making sure that patients got the care they needed.

This is the system’s prime directive — building up its assets and continuously moving forward while human life and death is regarded as utterly trivial. It’s a trap whose bait is apathy, and given how apathy has characterized public reaction to Thompson’s death, it’s scary to think how far we might fall into it as individuals.

But there’s nothing productive about trying to out-intellectualize each other about the morality of Mangione’s alleged murder of Thompson; “violence is never the answer” will be countered with, for example, anecdotes from Stonewall archives until the end of time. Systemic violence begets physical violence against the system and its perpetrators.

We must forsake the apathetic, one-up culture fostered by oppressive political and economic systems, and learn to love each other, especially if we don’t particularly like each other. Because eventually, the rich are going to run out of the scapegoats and culture war talking points that pit us against one another. But until we turn our attention towards changing a system of manufactured deprivation, more CEOs will profit from that deprivation-leading-to-death, and more acts of violence towards them will erupt as a result. So get your fill of Nintendo gags, but don’t forget to smarten up.