Luigi Mangione

This actually makes an incredible amount of sense. Anyone who has played any of the Civs for long enough knows that taking out the right unit at the right time can change the entire face of the map. Imagine having that kind of tactical gameplay drilled into your head every day for 8-10 hours a day as a developer.

At some point, the lines between the game, the job, and real life must have become blurred. Civ is a virtual abstraction of real life. The healthcare industry is a bureaucratic one, twisted from being a service that cares for people to one that only keeps you alive as long as you can pay.

The goal in every video game is to kill the boss. The sad fallacy of this approach to political action is that there's always another boss waiting in line to take his place, and the machinery of evil barely blinks an eye at the average murderous vigilante. If Luigi hadn't have been caught, and just disappeared into the night, we wouldn't be talking about him now - the murder would have faded from our awareness with the news cycle's constant obsession over Trump.

Instead, the police did the worst thing they could have done.

They caught him.

And this meant that the faceless masked murderer became a cute rich Italian guy who had a fire in his eyes and the name of one of the most beloved video game characters of all time. By dragging him out in chains in a performative perp-walk, the cops were demonstrating their loyalty to the oligarchy who run the country (and the Healthcare chuds are a big part of that machine), and at the same time, managed to make him into a living martyr.

Because everyone, everywhere, who has ever played a Super Mario Brothers game in their life, has been Luigi at one time or another.

Now there's no chance at even a semblance of a fair trial, and they've guaranteed that the mere mention of his name will draw eyeballs and has the potential to start a riot, or inspire more gunmen.

All because of video games....

Guess they weren't a waste of time after all, Mom....