Online Life Is Fast

When serious things happen - wars, natural disasters, and so on - I like to imagine the silliest and most tenuous consequences. After Brexit, for example, I imagined everyone in Britain taking oars to the coast and rowing our island to a new home in the Caribbean. When Kabul fell, I had visions of Elphy Bey's spirit running around screaming, "I told you it was harder than it looks".

You might think that's puerile or uncaring or disrespectful - people do sometimes die in serious events - but everything's bloody doom and gloom these days, so why not add a little personal levity? Half the planet already watches affable Brits in a baking competition to lighten its mood, and what, other than a yearning for simpler times, can explain the boom in pop stars with honey-wine voices and kitsch music videos?

That's a boom I'm into, by the way. My current playlists would infuriate my music-snob teenage self, and my latest imagining is this - an executive at Nintendo maniacally laughing out the words, "Thank God for Sabrina Carpenter". I really hope this one's true.

The singer included the words "switch it up like Nintendo" on her summer hit Espresso and the song stormed global charts. "Nintendo" was thus sung into billions of ears. Then, in a rare display of corporate fortune, the games maker received another branding windfall this month. However, this one's so awkward that they may wish to bury any sales bump it generates in a delayed "Carpenter effect". The prime suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO is called Luigi.

The internet did the obvious with that information - Super Mario memes were everywhere. The most recognisable brothers in gaming were all over the internet, putting Nintendo on everyone's mind right between Black Friday and Christmas. As the saying ought to have gone, fortune favours the lucky, and Nintendo got tacked on to an already massive viral story.

Even before Luigi was arrested and named, this story was huge. The shooting seemed to have united America, at least vocally - and very loudly - in condemning its unfathomable healthcare system. It helped that Luigi is handsome and humans are shallow. Three microseconds after the authorities released a CCTV still of him, social media was full of innuendo and comparisons to Jake Gyllenhaal and Timothée Chalamet. And, since he'd 3D printed his gun, written slogans on the shell casings, and left a rucksack full of monopoly money, there were plenty of surreal tones for the internet to chew through. There was even a Luigi lookalike competition. The "I'm Spartacus" jokes wrote themselves.

Then, things became less jocular. People noticed that large corporations were taking down the profile pages of their leadership teams. Companies who provide security services to the rich and famous grew Cheshire Cat grins, winking to the world (investors!) that business had begun booming. Lesser security firms have reportedly conducted direct marketing efforts, pitching their services to the "humbler" wealthy elites. Rich people have been killed before, and their peers have panicked, and this could all have been internet whispers. I don't know. But it felt weirder than usual.

And just as weirdly, normality returned. Only a few days after suspected killer Luigi and Italian plumbers Luigi and Mario were all over any screen with an internet connection, they were all but gone. In those few days, major journalists had weighed in on the meaning behind the memes, there were calls for the Culture War to become a Class War, and opinion columnists piled up word counts on all sides of the debate. Depending on your newspaper preferences, the deceased health insurance CEO was everything from a working-class hero to Ming The Merciless. Then... practically nothing. Story over.

I'm certain there's a moral here about the fleeting nature of modern attention, I've just seen mince pies, bye.

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