A buffet of ignorance

HEADLINE: Man commits suicide after losing buffet for life privileges in Vegas.. 

The world is busy laughing at this man’s plight, as it’s one of those headlines that you can easily disconnect from and pretend that his existence didn’t matter more than just for the main reason of having a ridiculous headline printed with his demise.

For the purpose of history, we should dig a bit deeper. There appears to be a longer-standing issue of mental illness in this story, and not just an obese man who wanted food. There are multiple accounts of John Noble harassing women at the resort, suicide threats in 2013 after he was kicked out of the resort and after his mother died..

He also spent three days at the state psychiatric hospital..  Noble continued a social media assault on the resort..
I am not excusing any behavior..

I just the headline is deceptive. He didn’t commit suicide because he lost the privilege of all your can eat buffets.. but instead because of a longstanding issue of mental illness and most likely lots of missed chances for others to actually help him. Now Noble is dead.

And in death, he has become a punchline even though what happened to him was far from funny..