Before Luigi Mangione became a sex symbol after being accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on December 4, 2024, he was just another young guy exploring the world in a quest to find… himself.
The New York Times recently published a lengthy and detailed account of Mangione’s spring 2024 trip through Thailand and Japan, as if the investigation sheds any light on why he allegedly murdered a healthcare CEO.
Can a lengthy article explaining the details of your trip to Asia explain why you allegedly murdered a healthcare CEO? Wouldn’t the fact that he’s a healthcare CEO be all the explanation you need?
You’d think, but the Times went and had itself a ball writing a long and deeply unnecessary story that has one silver lining, at least: “pornstar Pokémon cards.”
Luigi Mangione Joked About Buying Sex With Pornstar Pokémon Cards. What Are Those?
In the spring of 2024, Mangione wandered across Thailand and Japan, where his texts to friends reveal a man searching for something of worth and value in this world. The trip sounds like the kind of stuff you’d see in a ’90s movie about an upper-middle-class kid going on a spiritual journey through Asia.
The article reads like a Wikipedia summary of The Beach, but without dramatic conflict or even points of interest. He lost his phone in a taxi, got roughed up by seven “ladyboys” (his words), and sent selfies showing scratches on his arm.
Yawn. Thank you for this riveting account that will surely, inevitably, become the missing piece in the Mangione puzzle.
Later, in Osaka, he joked about trying to pay a Yakuza boss for a prostitute with “pornstar Pokémon cards.” Those three words represent the only interesting idea and the entire article. They lead one to wonder just what is a “pornstar Pokémon card?”
The first thing that came to mind was a story from this past April, initially published by Ynes Sarah Filleul of the Tokyo Weekender, about kids in a small Japanese town who collect Pokémon-style cards featuring local middle-aged men.
Mind you, the middle-aged men are not porn stars. They’re just common smalltown folk—bus drivers, firefighters, retirees, and the like.
All the cards come with all the appropriate stats and flavor text you’d expect to find on your standard Pokémon-style trading card game. It’s a delightful little story that really warmed my heart when I wrote about it earlier this year.
But what about Pokémon-style cards featuring people who f**k each other for a living? Where did he get those? What even is that?
A quick Google search didn’t turn up much. It did lead me to this eBay search for “adult Pokémon cards,” which mainly features stuff like this: a custom Pokémon-style card of an anime-inspired voluptuous woman.
It’s been viewed 50 times in the last 24 hours, so these things must be somewhat popular at least.
None of the cards in that eBay search feature any porn stars. Not human ones, at least. If I search for the exact words “pornstar Pokémon cards,” I get lots of eBay listings for cards with porn stars on them… but they’re more of the traditional American-style trading cards.
Like this baseball card with Jenna Jamison on it, which, unfortunately, I don’t think the back of the card is filled with her career stats. I would love to know her ERA, her VORP, and how many c*mshots she’s taken.
I also came across a Pornhub video where someone is opening fresh packs of Pokémon cards while naked. You know what? Shame on me for not realizing that was probably a thing. I also came across an xHamster video of a guy c*ming on a Pokémon card. It was Milotic, if you’re interested.
So, I found a lot of other stuff, but nothing, not even images, that seem like they could be the fabled “pornstar Pokémon cards” that Luigi exchanged for sex. Oh well. That’s a shame. But at least this little perverted journey I went on through Google was much more enlightening and nourishing for the soul than whatever the f**k that New York Times article was about.
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