Featured Image Credit: @gachelraede/TikTok/XNY/Star Max/GC Images
Topics: Health, Social Media, TikTok, Viral
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Health, Social Media, TikTok, Viral
A TikToker has opened up about why 'Gen Z will be especially numb' to the shooting of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.
Thompson was shot and killed in New York on December 4 and a 26-year-old named Luigi Mangione has since been arrested and charged on suspicion of the shooting.
Thompson's passing has led to a variety of responses on the internet, with jokes alongside widespread outrage - and not necessarily over a man being gunned down - but the incident highlighting many American's anger over the US health insurance industry, with one TikToker also now weighing in on why she thinks Gen Zers may hold a certain reaction to the news too.
New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino told NPR's Ailsa Chang that while some of the responses to Thompson's death have been 'remarkable' and 'interesting,' they're hardly 'shocking'.
Advert
Tolentino explained there's multiple forms of violence and while society often tends to 'focus on acts of violence that are like Thompson's murder,' another 'extremely common way that a life is unjustly cut short is by the denial of health care'.
She continued: "And so the response - the glee that people are expressing at this cold-blooded murder is illuminating the fact that many people think of the private health care system in the US - and specifically UnitedHealthcare - as a company that itself has achieved these billions and billions and billions of dollars of profits in not provisioning health care but indirectly provisioning death through a kind of severe and immoral and unjust violence on its own."
And a TikToker has since addressed why Gen-Zers may be feeling 'numb' to the news of Thompson's passing.
Rachel Gaede took to TikTok earlier this month to explain 'why Gen Z will be especially numb to gun violence against public figures'.
"All the CEOs out there being like, 'I'm so scared, violence is not the answer'." she said.
"Gen Z is really sitting here like, 'Omg, y'all really raised the school shooter generation and now you're asking us for sympathy'. You normalize gun violence to the point that we take days to weeks off of school to practice what to do when an armed gunman comes into our building."
The TikToker explains Gen Zer's have grown up in a generation where 'lawmakers look at our dead kids, our dead friends, our dead peers and they tell us the solution to that was a bulletproof backpack'.
She resolves: "And now you're upset, you want us to cry because some man got shot in broad daylight. This happens, welcome to a regular Tuesday at school in America."
And it's not taken long for other social media users to weigh in.
One TikToker wrote: "I’m a boomer and your perspective is not only spot on, but inspirational."
"Former teacher and couldn’t agree more!" Another added.
A third commented: "This…this is a good point."
And a fourth resolved: "This is the take."