A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.

Four days after a gunman assassinated a top health insurance executive in Midtown Manhattan and vanished, the unidentified suspect has, in some quarters, been venerated as something approaching a folk hero.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    18 days ago

    I’m just talking about the heartthrob part. Don’t fall in love with someone you know next to nothing about.

    • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      18 days ago

      Ah but we’ll never know for certain who he is! If they can’t find the real guy, they’ll likely pin it on some nobody with a problematic past. So we can’t fall in love with the real guy, but only a hero archetype instead. And that’s perfectly fine.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        18 days ago

        That makes no sense. If they don’t catch the real guy, he’ll be free to do it again. If he does it again, it will be clear that the nobody they pinned it on was the wrong person.

        • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          18 days ago

          We do not trust the oligarchs and their police to actually catch the real guy. There’s a good chance that, whoever they kill and claim to have “got him!” the public will not accept that they really did. We already think they’re going to just murder someone in order to close the case. Maybe they’ll get him for real. Maybe they won’t. We will never know and the conspiracy theory machine will just keep churning out maybes.

          If another CEO bites the dust, it will probably be a copycat. This guy is getting away, if not in actual truth, at least in folklore. He’d be a fool to strike again.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            18 days ago

            Again, that makes no sense. We know what he looks like and surveillance cameras are everywhere. Are you suggesting the copycat would somehow do some sort of Face/Off thing with the killer?

            • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              18 days ago

              We have no idea what he looks like. The pictures are of a guy with a different jacket. They’re the ones who claim that’s the guy, and handsome white dudes are a dime a dozen in the city. There’s still no reason to trust they showed us the right guy.

                • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  18 days ago

                  Dude. I’m not saying one way or the other. I’m just saying that the conspiracy machine is gonna churn up reasons why they might have lied, no matter who they pin it on.

                  You think they’ve finally let the jet fuel steel beams go after all these years? There’s no reason why the conspiracy machine is ever gonna accept that they got the right guy. Your insistence that it makes no sense is utterly irrelevant to conspiracy theorists.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    18 days ago

                    Yes, people come up with stupid conspiracy theories all the time, but you were saying it was a conspiracy. I’m not sure why you’re claiming you didn’t:

                    Ah but we’ll never know for certain who he is! If they can’t find the real guy, they’ll likely pin it on some nobody with a problematic past. So we can’t fall in love with the real guy, but only a hero archetype instead. And that’s perfectly fine.

                    We do not trust the oligarchs and their police to actually catch the real guy. There’s a good chance that, whoever they kill and claim to have “got him!” the public will not accept that they really did. We already think they’re going to just murder someone in order to close the case. Maybe they’ll get him for real. Maybe they won’t. We will never know and the conspiracy theory machine will just keep churning out maybes.

                    If another CEO bites the dust, it will probably be a copycat. This guy is getting away, if not in actual truth, at least in folklore. He’d be a fool to strike again.

                    We have no idea what he looks like. The pictures are of a guy with a different jacket. They’re the ones who claim that’s the guy, and handsome white dudes are a dime a dozen in the city. There’s still no reason to trust they showed us the right guy.

                    That’s not what the “conspiracy machine” churned up. That’s what you churned up. You even said “we” multiple times. You are the one doing the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” here.