Funny or Offensive?: Potter Fan Commits Suicide
Andy Borowitz on the Huffington Post:
HUDSON, OHIO (The Borowitz Report) — A rabid Harry Potter fan took his life yesterday after inadvertently learning a plot spoiler from the soon-to-be-released J.K. Rowling movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
Jude Ralston, 32, of Hudson, Ohio left a suicide note indicating that since overhearing the plot spoiler at a shopping mall earlier in the day, “I no longer have a reason to live.”
Family and friends who gathered for a candlelight memorial outside Mr. Ralston’s house remembered a man who seemed to live only for Harry Potter – and wondered if they could have done anything to prevent his tragic fate.
“When Jude got that vanity license plate that said ‘Hogwarts,’ that seemed harmless enough,” said Polly Clovis, who attended Model U.N. with Mr. Ralston while the two were in high school. “But when he started wearing that wizard hat around town, we really should have seen that as a cry for help.”
Man Commits Suicide After Learning Harry Potter Spoiler
liz | 12:14 PM | Funny or Offensive?
Neither. Just a crappy, unfunny Onion ripoff.
Since it’s a gag story in the style of the typical Onion spoof; I go with funny. The tip off that it’s a gag, besides the writer’s bio, should have been the last line of the article.
“Elsewhere, stocks rallied on news of Goldman Sachs’ joint venture with Satan. More here.”
Sadly, I’ve already seen several entertainment news sites reporting this as real because they couldn’t be bothered to go back to the source material and read the entire thing.
I’m quite familiar with this type of satire. A lot of the time these mock new stories are really funny. What’s not funny about this one is the subject matter. There’s nothing funny about suicide. And there is not enough public knowledge about mental illness to use it as a basis for humor. These types of jokes help to continue the stigma of mental illness.
Yah, there is no way this is real, because all the books have come out already and any true Harry Potter fan would already know about every plot event! But I think I should start wearing my wizarding hat around town! Good idea!
This guy wrote this hoax several years ago when one of the books came out. He just replaced the name of the book with the name of the movie for this post. Lazy attempt to get some hits.
The huffington post is a piece of garbage anyway… why would you read it? To the person who says these jokes increase the stigma of ‘mental illness’…. I’d say to you nothing increases the stigma of mental illness more than those who perpetuate the lie that human distress is a brain disease.
Neither. It’s stupid and lazy.
I just think it’s late…the spoiler to the movie’s been around in what they called in the olden days a “book” but i did a reverse of this honestly. Whenever I contemplated suicide, I’d remind myself there was still harry potter books coming out…and no Harry is over, I have lithium instead
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