"Reddit's dark knight": moral inversion, digital populism, and the aesthetic of resistance.

Résumé

INTRODUCTION: In December 2024, Luigi Mangione was arrested in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Rather than condemning the accused, large numbers of Reddit users celebrated him as a folk hero. This study examines how that construction emerged and what it reveals about public attitudes towards institutional trust and retributive justice online.METHODS: A total of 6,466 comments across 38 threads from 14 subreddits, including r/politics, r/antiwork, r/WorkReform, and r/Fauxmoi, were collected between December 2024 and April 2025. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.RESULTS: Five themes emerged: folk hero glorification and moral inversion; distrust in institutions and folk justice; systemic injustice, moral outrage, and catharsis; digital protest and anti-corporate activism; and the spectacle and aesthetic of resistance.DISCUSSION: These themes show how digital communities construct alternative moral orders that invert formal notions of justice and elevate grassroots counter-narratives. Drawing on digital populism, moral disengagement theory, and spectacle culture, the study explains how Reddit's affordances, including anonymity, algorithmic amplification, and weak content moderation, intersect with healthcare injustice, class resentment, and institutional distrust. The findings are relevant for researchers, policymakers, and platform designers seeking to understand how retributive discourse circulates under conditions of eroded institutional trust.