America, you disgust me

[altivo]

So bargain-crazed shoppers trampled a 34-year-old Wal-Mart temp employee to death today, and two men shot each other to death with handguns in the aisle of a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, California. (The actual reason for the latter argument has not yet been clarified.)

How far do we have to stoop before it becomes so embarrassing that we finally grow up as a culture and stop behaving like moronic, spoiled two-year-olds?

How far do businesses have to stoop in the name of quick profit before they realize the social irresponsibility of whipping crowds into such a frenzy with promises of "bargains" that are usually limited to the "first five lucky shoppers" or whatever? Wal-Mart is officially "saddened by the incident" but accepts no guilt. Sorry, Wal-Mart, you are guilty, guilty, guilty, just as if you threw handfuls of candy into a busy roadway while children were playing along the curb.

It's time to put a stop to this obscenity. "Black Friday" is really black for one man and his family today.

Interestingly, reports from people who actually went out today are pretty varied. Some found no crowds at all, but they went to the malls. Those who went to the big box discount places found the ravening hordes all right.

I'm not a Christian, so I won't lecture about "the spirit of Christmas" or whatever. But this is just the Spirit of Greed, no better than the greed that has created our current economic mess. Time for the US to grow up folks. Really time.

Comments

[doco.livejournal.com]

Reality has managed to outdo fiction once again, for sure:



(but hey, gotta run up some more credit card debt before it all gets repossessed, right?)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Right. We already have the stupid situation where on one paw the "experts" are blaming consumers for borrowing too much so they got into trouble and on the other paw they are trying to "restart" the economy by encouraging more borrowing.

Experts are morons too.

[corelog.livejournal.com]

Absolutely disgusting and revolting.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*hides under the bed...*

*slips a paw out, grabs you by the footpaw, and drags you under there with him*

>:D

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Oh well, at least they got exactly what they deserved for bringing guns... TO A TOY STORE. :-O

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and it may have been unrelated to the venue, SoCal being the gang hotbed that it is. The Wal-Mart incident, however, was clearly shopping frenzy related and I blame both a culture that has overemphasized consumption in the extreme and a business environment that believes absolutely anything should be permissible, ethics be damned.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

More details have been released. Apparently two women were fighting over some object of consumer lust, and the men who were with them joined in the fray and pulled out their guns. The women continued to fight even after their boyfriends were dead. Both are in jail now.

More details on the Wal-Mart incident too. Even when the police declared the store to be a crime scene and ordered shoppers to leave, they refused to do so, acting totally callous about what had happened. That really stinks. So much for the "season of good will and compassion" eh?

"A person is smart. People, on the other hand, are stupid, panicky animals."

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely tragic, and my heart goes out to the family of the victim. To be fair though, this isn't really a "how far do we have to stoop" sort of thing, as this is nothing really new to us or to other cultures. Any time you have a motivated crowd, stupid things can happen, whether it's at a Who concert, a soccer game, or the Hajj. I was nearly trampled myself on a night in the French Quarter when the crowd reacted to shouts that the police would be arresting people en masse. No Mardi Gras for me, thanks. Anyway, hopefully we'll learn something from this, and laws and policies will change to make things like this less likely, as they did after other tragedies like the Cincinnati Who Concert and the Coconut Grove.

Re: "A person is smart. People, on the other hand, are stupid, panicky animals."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid retailers will fight shark tooth and lawyer skin suit against any legal changes that restrict their ability to create this disgusting "feeding frenzy."

One would think that the so-called credit crisis would have already put a damper on this stuff, but apparently not.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Me? I'm only looking in my usual online shopping places for special Black Friday/Pink Weekend (okay! okay! Breast cancer is important, geez, I'm assaulted by pink! I'm not that gay!) deals. If there's something I truly need (like, replacing my still picture camera), I'll get it.

For instance, one year I replaced the broken MIDI keyboard with a sale item (with free shipping) from the Apple Store.

I like to give folks stuff that will go away and not crap up their home, like food or soap, or something. Or small stuff, like a DVD.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Online shopping at least reduces the likelihood that you'll be trampled or hit by stray gunfire. ;p

I was really discusted when i heard that.

[bladehorse.livejournal.com]

Poor sod was most likely tryin to make ends meet possibly to pay for the dinner the night before.
And he made the one mistake in his life of standing in the way of stupid ferrats looking for shinies.
Yes the world is heading 'further down the downward spiral'.

I know its bad when my parents appologise for bringing me into a world that is falling apart. Oh how I long for the 70s and its missle crisies. At least it seemed that people at least had a soul.

Re: I was really discusted when i heard that.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the victim in that case was really a victim. And I'm betting the people who killed him don't even feel guilty about it. He was just in their way.

[loriana.livejournal.com]

Yeah,... no surprises here. People are greedy... only getting more so.

Sadly things like "Thanksgiving" is also a farce... Seriously, yesterday I stopped and thought a moment about the irony of it.

We want to show our 'thanks' for having it good.. so what do we do? Pig out and gorge ourselves on food.

Urf :/

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yup, you got it. It's genuine hypocrisy.

[deffox]

I was quite happy to not spend a dollar Friday except for getting an oil change.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We went to the grocery and bought food, nothing else.

[felder.livejournal.com]

I read about that last night. it was shocking to hear about the wal-mart incident.

*sighs* you think people would have some self -restraint these days but I guess some folk don't bother to climb above the baser instincts.

*snugs on 'tivo and curls up with him*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, and that's what really offends me about this: the marketing stunts that create this behavior have grown worse every year. I hold retailers responsible for the dirty little tricks they use, creating scarcity and then following it with a frenzy of advertising and "loss-leader" specials to draw these huge crowds and whip them into what amounts to mob action. It's unethical and irresponsible.

*snuggles back 'cuz who needs materialism in the face of affection*

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of a disaster that unfolded in front of my eyes when I was younger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_Disaster

Concentrations of people that dense can cause problems. The culture that causes this kind of frenzy does not investigating though.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ugh. You actually witnessed one of those? I'd be having nightmares about it even now. I'm claustrophobic to begin with, and have always avoided crowds because of that sort of thing.

Of course a football pitch should be designed to handle dense crowds of spectators safely. We can point to other disasters, such as the Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 or the Eastland sinking as classic examples where failure to plan properly for crowd behavior produced tragic and terrible results, yet these things are repeated again and again. That's the point of my point, really. We know better, and yet we continue to allow individuals or corporations to play right along the risky edges of these things.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

That's sick, yeah - I feel particularly sorry for the first guy. The other two, well... it's still tragic, but given that they apparently *both* shot each other, I feel less sorry for them (their families, on the other hand, are a different story, probably).

On a side note, what I don't get is comments like the following that one Sarah Pacia apparently made at the site of the second incident: "This is Toys "R" Us. There are kids shopping in there." Ah, yes, I see. If it had been a store where only adults typically shop, it would've been OK - glad we cleared that up.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's along the lines of "Who cares if these gangbangers kill each other? If they be like to die, let them do it and decrease the surplus population." (Paraphrasing Dickens of course.)

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Seems that consumer brainwashing has worked well. Perhaps too well. There is no other explanation.

It is almost like they were telling people "You are nasty and evil people, UNLESS you shop in our retail establisment and buy as much of our shit as possibly to give to your loved ones on ONE DAY IN A YEAR. Doesn't matter a damn if you have been a nice, caring and loving person normally. No. You are a bad, bad person that eats kittens and puppies for breakfast if you don't buy stuff.

I don't like it when they try to make me feel guilty for not buying presents. I rarely do, tho. I can live with it. But I guess I am a bad person.

Looks like sales are something when logic and humanity flies out of the window and people turn into savage mobs, fighting over stuff that is a bit cheaper than it normally would be and which they probably wouldn't buy in normal circumstances and are even ready to kill over it.

I see. Who is the bad guy now, I wonder...

It is a really sad thing things like this have to happen before someone even pauses to think for one second.

I am not a christian, either, but I don't think this is what that "Christmas" thing is all about. To me, Christmas is not about getting presents or giving them. For me it is about being together with friends and family, having a nice meal and calming down for a few days without a worry in the world.

*hugs good ol' 'Tivo tight*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The retail trick that has become more and more common here in the past few years is for the store to advertise some "special" item in "limited supply" to go on sale the day after Thanksgiving. This will be at a ridiculously low price, but they will have only three or four of the item to sell. Game consoles, computers, or some expensive and scarce toy will be the typical choice. Then they put the artificially scarce item out on the retail floor just before opening the doors that Friday, often opening at absurd hours such as 3 am in order to increase the frenzy and encourage people to line up outside waiting to get in. A mad rush ensues with shoppers trying to locate and grab the scarce item before anyone else can get it, and fist fights or other obnoxious incidents have grown frequent. Setting up this sort of situation should be made illegal, and perhaps it will be eventually.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm just jaded, but crap like this neither surprises nor particularly bothers me anymore. Even the temp employee was killed sounds like a pretty big idiot to have put himself in that particular situation with anything short of riot gear and a baton, or preferably, a submachine gun.

The main problem with American culture is that it hypes-up the expected violent rushes and the news folks run-on about the "Black Friday Mayhem" for a week or two leading up, and then everyone acts all shocked when shoppers do live up to the expectations that were set for them. The retailers encourage the behavior, the news advertises it, and the powers-that-be turn a blind eye to the dangers. I was just joking to coworkers the other day that they should all just cut the pretenses and have shoppers fight in televised cage matches to win the deals, at least then they could enforce a modicum of safety and provide everyone else with entertainment. There might also be an incentive for the participants to get into shape.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's exactly my issue. The retailers and the media literally promote this behavior, and then when something really bad happens they pretend it "isn't our fault." Of course it's their fault.

The whole thing is a festival of greed on both sides, and it's time for us to put an end to it by sheer social disapprobation if nothing else.

In Wal-Mart's case, they go out of their way to hire employees who aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the box (mostly because it's cheaper, not for any humanitarian reason.) As far as I'm concerned, that means they'd better be taking extra precautions to keep such employees from getting entangled and hurt in this sort of thing.

[animist.livejournal.com]

It's not an American problem, per se, it is a human problem. You could just as easily say we are acting like European or South American soccer fans! (They have corwd surges that kill people, violence and sometimes looting.) But I agree that we, as Americans, have a specific problem, and that we are responsible for it. Boycott Black Friday is a good start.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's a serious human defect. What really makes me angry is the willingness of commercial organizations to take advantage of it and push it to these extremes. There is no need for stores to be opening at 3 am or midnight in order to be "first" to get the shoppers. There is no need for these fake "bargains" where they advertise something heavily but only have two or three of the item and when they're gone they're gone. It's really disgusting.

The whole thing promotes selfishness and greed, just exactly what we need at this time of year and especially in this year's economic climate.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I reckon if they're going to act like kids treat them like kids. I feel really sorry for the guy's family :(

Its not a lot better in Australia I'm afraid although usually because of less people the crowds are not so big.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You don't have this special "black Friday" thing, though, do you? It's always a big problem.