WAt first glance, I live under the absolute control of celebrity. The former and future US president spent more than a decade as a reality TV star. Taylor Swift just completed the largest and most profitable pop music tour in the history of the world. Mass entertainment vehicles remain star-driven. Just ask the people flocking to see Wicked (Ariana Grande) and Gladiator II (Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington) this holiday season. And that goes without saying, the petty dramas of glamorous and famous people still keep us all buzzing.
So it may be strange to make the completely counterintuitive claim that we are moving away from the era of traditional mass celebrity. And we’re not just leaving that era, we’re drifting into a new era of uncertainty, with new hostility toward people who even a few years ago would have been subjected to blind worship, etc. It’s the era.
Much of that comes from the youngest adult generation, the so-called Generation Z, and Millennials, those under 40. Gen Z may be the most misunderstood generation, as they were the first to come of age during the old monoculture era. It collapses. Many of them cite the dominance of cable television, the heyday of A-list movie stars like Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, and even the rapturous accolades that tech moguls like Steve Jobs once enjoyed. I’m too young to even remember.
Over the past five years, mainstream media has provided contradictory reports about Gen Z. They were either too liberal, too “woke,” liberal enough to vote Democratic to save democracy, or terminally Internet-poisoned right-wingers. Hooked on the podcast, they voted for Donald Trump en masse.
The reality is even more complex, as every generation is complex. Not all baby boomers were dropping acid and hanging out in Golden Gate Park. But Gen Z and young Millennials are especially difficult to generalize about because they live in an era of cultural collapse. Tens of millions of Americans no longer flock to a single TV show that airs at a specific time on weeknights, as they once did on Seinfeld and Friends. They no longer take hipster political cues from late-night TV shows like The Daily Show. Linear television is collapsing, and networks like MSNBC and CNN have been hemorrhaging viewers since the end of the presidential election. Hollywood, on the other hand, no longer enjoys a cultural capital.
This is partly due to the absence of a center or a greatly weakened center. Even celebrities who have found fame through new platforms like TikTok are facing backlash. A recent viral trend calls on TikTok users to actively ignore various celebrities and influencers in order to prove how much power they have over the celebrities in question. . Their first target was JoJo Siwa, a singer and dancer with a huge following on social media. She noticed a sudden increase in the number of likes on certain videos. Siwa is too wealthy to be affected, but the trend itself is noteworthy and would have been unthinkable five years ago. People like her need to be careful.
Author Moe Diggs calls this “character depletion.” This is the idea that average people, especially on the internet, are fed up with the rich and famous. Politically, people are suspicious of leaders and anyone who seems to be telling them exactly what to do. They remain as beloved as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, but despite their enthusiastic support, neither was able to sway young voters into Kamala Harris’ camp. Left-leaning Gen Z voters were particularly furious with celebrities who did not take a candid stance on Israel’s actions in Gaza. This distrust of elites continues to this day.
Into this vacuum steps the ultimate anti-influencer, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, enjoys an online fandom unlike any seen in recent history. The alleged murder of a healthcare executive who made $10.2 million in 2023 was entirely political, but it crossed partisan lines.
When right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh condemned the murder, their comment sections were filled with outrage against the medical industry and support for the murder, even before Mangione was identified as a suspect. there was.
Things weren’t much better for liberals who had condemned Thompson’s murder. While the media and political circles are generally unanimous in their disgust at the idolization of Mangione, with her traditional good looks and Ivy League pedigree, the online public feels quite differently. Products featuring the video game character Luigi are top sellers on Amazon, and some people bought votive candles with Mangione’s face on them.
The message is clear enough. If a new idol emerges, a parasocial bonding partner, it won’t be another singer, dancer, or neo-Kardashian. At least that’s how young people feel. As anger against the system continues to grow, we can’t let them tell us to stop being Luigi Memes. Even Trump, the great destroyer, will not be immune to this dynamic when he becomes president again.
Over the next decade, major conflicts are likely not between left and right, but between inside and outside, between those who openly express disdain for the existing system and those who seek a new order. Mangione worship is not about Mangione himself, but rather an indication of where we are going. The grudge won’t go away.
