You may have already seen the headlines, most of which were a variant on the following: MAN KILLS HIMSELF INSIDE VEGAS CASINO AFTER LIFETIME BUFFET PASS WAS REVOKED.
On Reddit’s charming FatPeopleHate subreddit, where a link to a story on the suicide garnered more than 450 upvotes, this became Fat fuck kills himself, blames it on the loss of free buffet for life.
“And nothing of value was lost,” quipped one Redditor. “Another proof that they live only for food,” added another. “Do these sound like the actions of a man who had ALL he could eat?” joked a third. You can find similarly sensitive remarks in the comments of sites ranging from Breitbart (” Please tell me this was Michael Moore!”) to the Las Vegas Sun (“Man that buffet must be to die for”).
But John Noble, who shot himself in the head at the M Resort buffet on Easter Sunday in front of a roomful of witnesses, wasn’t upset that the M Resort had taken away the free food he’d won in a raffle in 2010. He was upset that the casino, two years ago, had taken away his access to the female staffers he had been stalking.
We know this because, before he took his own life, Noble sent a box full of documents to the Las Vegas Review-Journal detailing his case against “the M Resort Spa Casino and [the] employees” he said had wronged him. As the newspaper reported:
Noble’s hand-bound stack of notes and documents stretches on for more than 270 pages and includes a table of contents, photographs and a two-hour DVD of him talking about his troubles.
The second-to-last page, titled “The Curse,” spells out all the harm he wishes on those he believed wronged him.
Included on the list are several women who worked at the buffet and who were showered with gifts and unwanted attention by Noble after he won meals for life there in September 2010.
Noble, who described himself in one Facebook posting as “just a lonely nice guy,” was a deeply troubled man reportedly suffering from depression; in 2013, when he lost his buffet privileges, he spent several days in the state psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.
But it’s clear he was driven not only by despair but by anger — an anger obvious to everyone, it seems, but him. This anger seems to have played a large part in his choice of where and when to end his life: in front of hundreds of diners and staff on Easter Sunday. His actions, as he no doubt intended, horrified and terrified not only those who witnessed it directly — including a number of children — but those elsewhere in the casino who heard the gunshot.
Adding to the confusion and chaos: before shooting himself, Noble set his car on fire, closing down the parking garage for several hours and forcing many casino patrons to remain at the scene of his crime for hours.
I suppose we should be thankful that he didn’t decide to take anyone else with him.
Noble’s very public suicide shows once again the destructive power of aggrieved male entitlement.
Some people are puzzled, or profess to be puzzled, when someone like Noble — a sad and lonely man who saw himself as a victim — is described as “entitled.” But a deep sense of entitlement seems to have been at the heart of his anger and despair. It wasn’t just that he felt entitled to free food; he felt entitled to the attention of the women working at the buffet that he had become obsessed with.
It’s easy enough to see what worried the Casino staffers about him. In the alternately angry and self-pitying note he posted on Facebook after his 2013 suicide attempt, he recounted the numerous notes and gifts he’d given to various female staffers, and blamed them for “encouraging” him with hugs and smiles. Never mind that these were women whose jobs more or less required them to act friendly to customers, and that his acts of “generosity” towards them were impositions rather than gifts.
He claims to have been blindsided when security finally showed him the door, though it’s clear even from his self-serving account that he was given plenty of warnings first; if he was blindsided it was because he was willfully blind.
Another self-described “nice guy” who literally could not take no as an answer. Another “nice guy” who was anything but nice. In that 2013 rant, a lengthy list of grievances, he lashed out at everyone he feels has wronged him, posting an assortment of accusations, some petty, some serious, against an assortment of casino staff by name, raging from the hostess he was most obsessed with to the company CEO. His sense of victimhood was such that he turned his favorite hostess’ butterfly tattoo into yet another Exhibit in his case against her.
So she has a small Butterfly Tattoo on her leg in honor of her Mother, Which now everytime I see something with a Butterfly on it I think of [name redacted]. And if you ever been to Vegas there’s a lot of stuff with Butterfly’s the décor at Encore Casino, the Butterfly exhibit they had in the conservatory at Belagio, The Butterfly bench at Nathan Adelson Hospice (Which I think she would like) among plenty of others scattered thru the city.
Aggrieved entitlement doesn’t feel like entitlement; it feels like rejection, failure, emptiness, and even, as in Noble’s case, like betrayal. That’s what makes it so insidious — and so dangerous.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
Oh, how horrible.
I hope everyone who had to witness that, and get their faces rubbed in it because they couldn’t leave, heals as quickly as possible.
Excellent insights on the dangers of aggrieved entitlement. I have great sympathy for all the innocents forced to see such a violent lashing-out.
Oh, fatpeoplehate. That subreddit’s been growing at an exponential rate this year. Which is unsurprising, because Reddit.
They even have a spin-off sub called HAESSuccessStories, where they literally rejoice whenever fat people die. Of course, the admins won’t do anything about it until it lands on CNN or something.
“Noble’s very public suicide shows once again the destructive power of aggrieved male entitlement.”
Or, alternatively, it might have been driven entirely by mental illness and had nothing to do with politics — in the same way the Columbine shootings weren’t really about the kinds of music people listen to.
Oh thanks Tod Kelly, I’m glad you’re here to remind us to ignore the expressly written motivations.
Mental illness contributes to a lot of suicides, and should not be ignored, but please don’t take the victim’s own words and just throw them away on a whim.
As you say, the only thing to be thankful for is that he did not turn that into a murder spree before his suicide.
I think that he assumed entitlement, but also was one of the least self aware people around, not seeing at all how his behaviour impacted on other people.
I think the public nature of his suicide shows that he wanted to punish the casino staff for ‘rejecting’ him, and absolutely could not see how he had acted inappropriately.
I really wish that men like this could see that a woman being friendly and polite because it is a requirement of her job is not at all the same as encouragement.
@David Futurelle “ In the alternately angry and self-pitying note he posted on Facebook after his 2013 suicide attempt, he recounted the numerous notes and gifts he’d given to various female staffers, and blamed them for “encouraging” him with hugs and smiles. Never mind that these were women whose jobs more or less required them to act friendly to customers, and that his acts of “generosity” towards them were impositions rather than gifts.
And this is why the dreck of an idea that it’s “rude” to refuse gifts needs to go die in a fire. Ladies, raise your hand if you’ve ever had “a friendly, non-platonic gift” suddenly sprout strings as soon as you accepted, smiled, and thanked the guy as dictated by social norms.
*raises hand*
@Tom Kelly, “aggrieved male entitlement” refers to a social/psychological phenomenon, not a person’s politics. Play again?
Man. This is obviously a guy who just didn’t have anything else, who was isolated to the umpteenth degree. I wonder if he had a job or if this was what he did all day?
Also, as someone who’s been through CBT to treat depression, not only does having a mental illness NOT excuse faulty beliefs, but faulty beliefs can play a role in causing mental illnesses like depression. I have sympathy for Mr. Noble because he was clearly depressed/mentally ill.
However, just maybe he wouldn’t have been so miserable if he didn’t have such a false sense of entitlement over being allowed to continue behavior that others felt uncomfortable with.
“Aggrieved entitlement doesn’t feel like entitlement; it feels like rejection, failure, emptiness, and even, as in Noble’s case, like betrayal. That’s what makes it so insidious — and so dangerous.-David Futrelle”
Quoted For Truth!
Ugh. Tell me about it. Fortunately I’ve never had trouble with types as extreme as Noble but there have been a handful of male customers over the past 3 years who think my friendliness (I work in door to door sales, but yes it is genuine friendliness because I like people) means I’m open to romantic invitations. Sir, I can not give you my number as per code of conduct. Your number is for the client to call you and check that you are happy to proceed with the sale, not for me to go out to dinner with you, and I have NO access to the number once the form has been electronically submitted.
I’m going to be honest here. I don’t outwardly reject them because they’re often subtle in their approach anyway and I work on commission. I need to be paid to put food on the table and if they cancel on the phone I get zilch. Also, I’m afraid of calmly rejecting a guy who turns out to have serious entitlement issues and tells a terrible lie about me to the client in order to get me fired.
The worst I’ve had so far has been a dude who blocked me from leaving his kitchen and tried to make me promise to go on a date with him (behind me was his back door which I knew was unlocked, so if shit went down I did have an escape route. Shit didn’t go down though, phew). I blathered that I knew his name and would look him up on Facebook and then got the hell out of there. He didn’t cancel the sale, surprisingly.
Except Columbine didn’t have anything to do with mental illness.
Sad, just utterly sad. The notion that you are somehow ‘owed’ sex/companionship simply for being ‘nice’ is another concept for the firepit, ASAP.
Standing by to email the big red head if Tod Kelly doubles down. We don’t need that anywhere, but especially not on this thread.
And it only took four comments before some dude dropped by to say “nuh-uh!”
Aggrieved entitlement is a very real, very misguided way people (usually dudes) deal with life not matching up with their expectations of how things were “supposed to” turn out for them.
It’s evident in Andreas Lubitz’s probable murder-suicide — that guy crashed a plane because he couldn’t have the highest-profile kinds of pilot jobs. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be a pilot, he was, he just wasn’t Top Pilot.
It’s evident in Elliot Rodger’s rampage, seeking to hurt other college students who he felt deprived him of sex, friendship, and popularity. Rodger felt entitled to be the most popular guy at school, and when fancy clothes and a fancy car didn’t get him that he seethed inwardly the perceived injustice. I read his whole freaking manifesto– there’s a scene in it where he went to the premiere of The Hunger Games and even to the after party with the cast. Rather than enjoy himself Rodger spent the whole night binge drinking and seething at the guy who played Peeta.
It’s evident in George Sodini and his coffee table books about pick up artistry. When the cheat codes didn’t get him women, Sodini felt so wronged he shot up an aerobics class.
It’s evident in manosphere writers like Roosh V. Roosh seems to want to have a relationship for the long term, but because nobody he meets can meet his antiquated, unfair standards he remains alone.
It’s evident in Paul Elam’s ridiculous conference ticket prices — he really believes his presence is worth $650 a head.
It’s evident in the countless YouTube vlogs which spring up every time Anita Sarkeesian posts a video. These guys honestly feel entitled to yell at Anita as if she were there; but their videos aren’t criticism, they’re tantrums. (Anita does make critical videos; notice how she never ends them screaming at her viewers or calling her opponents “bitch.”)
It’s evident in the way 8ch.net admin Fredrick Brennan responded when his shitty 4chan knockoff site was taken down by the domain registrar. Hotwheels honestly felt entitled to host child porn on his site and sent his flying monkeys to DDos the host until they released his domain.
And these are just examples off the top of my head.
I can’t imagine being so embroiled in hatred that you would a) join a forum declaring how you literally hate people, and b) consequently find it funny that they committed suicide, and c) find it so funny that you don’t care about all the people traumatized by the event, because it’s an excuse to laugh at said person you hate.
I love the internet, but egads it scares me sometimes.
@freemage “Sad, just utterly sad. The notion that you are somehow ‘owed’ sex/companionship simply for being ‘nice’ is another concept for the firepit, ASAP.”
Agreed, but with a note of caution. I think some guys are legitimately confused when a girl rejects them after accepting gifts and smiling, because smiling and gift giving are part of genuine flirting, as well as being general social niceties. So in addition to our problems with guys feeling entitled to sex after being nice, and guys using gifts to manipulate women, we have an entire social structure that’s set up to assume that feelings will always be returned.
I didn’t read past the headlines on this story so I only knew about the taking away free food angle. I’m not surprised there was more to the story. It’s scary that either male entitlement is so normalized that it isn’t news and doesn’t warrant a headline, or people will just bend over backwards to make destructive male behavior about anything other than male entitlement.
Yes Tod Kelly, his depression played a big role in this. But you don’t hear about women committing suicide in a dramatic fashion that traumatizes others intentionally anywhere near as often. You don’t see women expressing this kind of rage and entitlement when someone they’re interested in doesn’t return the feelings anywhere near as often. Male entitlement is a thing. If you deny it, it’s because you aren’t paying attention. Presumably, based on your name because you’re a man and haven’t experienced first hand how scary men can be if you don’t behave the way you want them to.
Idledillettante,
I’d throw revenge porn sites in there too. Not just the men who run them. The men who submit the photos of their exes. Even the men who just go and look and deny that they are sexually violating a woman by looking at and fapping to a picture she didn’t consent for him to see.
Funny how these guys can distinguish “customer service friendly” from “flirting” when it comes to male wait-staff and customer service reps. But when the women do it? Well, they MUST be interested in me!
Most of my jobs have been customer service (movie theater ticket sales, store clerk/cashier, etc.) and I’ve dealt with a reasonable amount of flirting. Happily, none of it ever extended to customers giving gifts or asking for my number. But from age 17 onward, it is amazing how the tone some men used with me was flirty and how that just dropped the second they turned to a male co-worker or manager.
We have an entire social structure that’s set to assume that women OWE men affection if the men pursue them properly. That if a man is “nice,” she is obligated to like him. That if you want to end a relationship, you have to prove to your partner’s satisfaction that they deserve to get dumped — and if you can’t prove it, you have to stay. “I don’t feel that way about you” is not good enough.
This sort of story pops up fairly often on the Internet, the “person commits suicide because of silly inconvenience, oh wait, actually no” dance. Like that boy whose last Facebook post was griping about his iPhone , after he killed himself in response to long standing depression, channels fucking swarmed it. Up to and including leaving phones on his grave.
@WWTH: damn right they are. Those revenge porn guys are all about aggrieved entitlement. And also the dudes who got so *thrilled* when that celebrity nude leak came out they gave it a special name.
Also add to that aggrieved entitled butthole list Eron Gjoni and anyone else who posts “cringe-worthy breakup stories”. That dude basically felt so entitled to control his ex’s life that he tried to throw her to the trolls in front of a huge audience to comfort him and his hurt feelz.
I think we could probably trace most of the behavior of people featured on WHTM as exercises in aggrieved entitlement TBH
You know, I really think that you’re on to something when you point out that the women were required by their jobs to be nice to him. I work in a lot of hotels. ALL the staff are required to be pleasant and accommodating regardless of their position and gender. However, the way that that looks, practically, is different for men than women. I can absolutely see how to the confused male mind it looks like the women are being flirtatious. They’re not. If they don’t act like that they will lose their jobs.
What a double-bind. And One that perpetuates this cycle of violence, I wonder?
Nailed it. Feelings are important, but they don’t justify harmful actions.
If there is one extremely widespread, insidiously harmful and outright dangerous belief that applies to pretty much all of society that I wish we could be rid of, it’s the idea that evil things are only done by “evil” people. That is, stereotypical cackling comic book villains driven either by a generic “mental illness” (thanks for being another ableist ass, Tod) or the simple, pure will to hurt others. It’s othering people who do evil things, making them into non-people who don’t share the same prejudices and beliefs as myself. That’s how the internal justification narrative goes:
Those people, they are not “normals”, like me. They hurt others because they enjoy it. They are evil. I am not evil. When I get angry and hurt someone, it’s for a good reason. I was rejected. I was hurt. I am the victim, and the people I’m angry with are the aggressors. They are evil. They hurt me deliberately. I am a good and honest person whose anger and hatred towards those evil people are completely justified.
In other words:
“By smiting those evil individuals, I am doing the work of God.”*
It’s very easy to fall into this mindset if you’ve absorbed toxic social values. It’s about taking one’s very one-sided, misinformed and ignorant worldview and turning it into a self-justifying system of ethics that pretends to see the world in an objective, non-biased manner while actually being driven entirely by one’s personal whims. Kinda like Objectivism.
Actually, scratch that, it’s exactly like Objectivism.
*Aaand that’s why some people should never be allowed to play paladins in D&D. Because that’s exactly the kind of internal narrative that gives birth to knight templars, not paladins.
/ pointless philosophical monologue